On this day 250 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Irish immigrant Stephen Moylan wrote a letter to his friend Joseph Reed with the first documented use of the name “United States of America.” Both Moylan and Reed were from Philadelphia but both were serving on General Washington’s staff in Cambridge at this time, so it is interesting that the term was recorded in a letter between the two. Moylan wrote:

I should like vastly to go with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain.

Moylan was Muster-Master General of the Continental Army at that time and would continue in service rising to the rank of Brigadier General at the end of the War in 1783. But he was not appointed as an ambassador to Spain as he was hoping in 1776.

Sources: https://irishamerica250.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/stephen-moylan-proof-package-with-version-1.1-.pdf; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Moylan;

Stephen Moylan, the Irishman Who Coined “United States of America”