Was the First-Ever Social Security Number Really 001-01-0001?

On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Bill into law. The Depression-era plan provided a pension for Americans over age 65 that was fed by employee and employer payroll contributions. To track those sums, citizens were to be assigned a Social Security Number, or SSN—a nine-digit code that often doubles as identity verification. (It’s also handy information for identity thieves, but let’s table that.)

As Boing Boing recently observed, the system presents an intriguing question: Who was the recipient of the country’s first-ever Social Security Number? And was it 001-01-0001?

As is the case with most bureaucratic matters, you shouldn’t be hoping for a straight answer.

1. The First Social Security Number
2. Who Got the Lowest Social Security Number?
3. The Most Famous Social Security Number

The First Social Security Number

Social Security collections were to begin in 1937, with benefits averaging $22.60 doled out monthly beginning in 1942. (It was later moved up to 1940.) Before that could happen, the Social Security Administration (SSA) needed to assign numbers to workers.

The SSA didn’t have the infrastructure for that, but the United States Postal Service did. In 1936, the USPS began surveying employers for their employee lists. Using that information, Social Security numbers and cards could be prepared and issued, with workers either getting them in the mail or picking them up in person.

Because this practice was being facilitated by 45,000 post offices across the country simultaneously, it’s impossible to know who got the first-ever Social Security Number. Even though the SSA had set November 24, 1936, as the initial date of issue, some post offices likely got to work sooner.

So is the question of the first-ever designation a lost cause? Not exactly. While we’ll never know who received the first SSN, we do know the identity of the first person to be recognized by the Social Security Administration. Number records created at the post offices were forwarded to the SSA headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, where Americans would have their earnings record tracked. Because the SSA had a measure of control over how these records were cataloged and processed, it was possible to make a deliberate show of plucking one record from the top of the first orderly pile and declaring it the first-ever SSN record.

That honor went to John Sweeney, a 23-year-old electrical supply clerk from New Rochelle, New York, who would begin to collect an estimated $85 per month beginning in 1978.

“He got account No. 055-09-0001, and was the first of 26,000,000 American workers to be assured of an old-age pension upon retirement, or a death benefit for his family if he dies before reaching the retirement age of 65,” The Baltimore Sun reported in 1936. The paper also noted the SSA was working two shifts to handle the influx of records coming in.

Sweeney, incidentally, didn’t live long enough to see any Social Security benefits. He died at the age of 61.

Who Got the Lowest Social Security Number?

Sweeney was the first Social Security account to be set up, but as we can see, that had nothing to do with his number designation. So who, if anyone, got that venerated 001-01-0001 card?

Again, the SSA had some measure of control over this. That’s because the first three digits of a Social Security number, called the area number, are assigned to specific areas beginning in the Northeast. The SSA played a little fast and loose with this, however, and slid the 001 designation over to New Hampshire, where Social Security Board chairman and former governor John Winant resided.

Somewhat surprisingly, Winant didn’t really care to have the lowest number and declined it. The SSA next went to John Campbell, Federal Bureau of Old Age Benefits’ regional representative of the Boston region. He, too, wasn’t that interested.

A possibly-exasperated SSA then opted to simply turn to the first Social Security applicant in New Hampshire. That was Grace Owen of Concord, who was the first to turn in an application in the state and was also the first to have it typed up. Owen’s SSN was 001-01-0001, the lowest—but not the first—SSN to be assigned.

The Most Famous Social Security Number

Owen’s low number didn’t receive a lot of attention, but Hilda Witcher’s did. A secretary for the E.H. Ferree wallet company, Witcher had her number (078-05-1120) plucked by the company president in 1938 and used on an obviously phony Social Security card to demonstrate how the wallet could accommodate this new addition. Incredibly, thousands of people began using Witcher’s number as their own, assuming their new wallet conveniently came with a viable card—even though it was red and had “VOID” written across it. The SSA was forced to discontinue it and issue her a new number.

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