Dr. John Archer was either the consummate renaissance man or went through a period of “Warbling,” as a 1932 article about him suggested. The eldest of five children of Irish immigrant family, he grew up with a firm grounding in the classics, and first announced he would be opening a grammar school, only to reconsider soon after and apply for the clergy. The Presbyterian examiners found he lacked sufficient knowledge of matters divine, and recommended against his joining. With that, Archer decided to start anew in the medical field.

On this day, June 21, in 1768 John Archer graduated from the Department of Medicine in what today is the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the first graduate in the U.S. to earn a medical degree.

But Archer did not go into practicing medicine; he went into practicing law in Hartford County, Maryland. He was active in organizing troops for the Revolutionary War, and during the war itself volunteering as an aide-de-camp to General Anthony Wayne at Stony Point. He was made a major in the Continental Army, as well thrice elected to Congress.