The "First"
Social Security Number (SSN)
Issued Through Local Post Offices
Since the Social Security Board did not have a network of
field offices in late 1936, it contracted with the U.S. Postal
Service to distribute and assign the first batch of Social
Security numbers through its 45,000 local post offices around
the country. Of these 45,000 post offices, 1,074 were also
designated as "typing centers" where the cards themselves
were prepared. The procedure for issuing the first SSNs were
that the SS-4 application forms were to be distributed by
the post offices to employers beginning Monday, November 16,
1936. These forms asked the employers to indicate how many
employees they had at their place of business. Using the data
from the SS-4 forms, the post offices then supplied an SS-5
form for each employee and these forms (on which the assignment
of an SSN was based) were to be distributed by the post offices
beginning Tuesday, November 24, 1936. The completed SS-5 forms
were returned to the post office where an SSN would be assigned
and a card typed with the name and SSN. This step could happen
on one of several ways. The person could return the card in
person and wait while the "typing center" prepared
their card, or they could hand the form to their local letter
carrier, or they could put it in the mail. Once the SSN was
assigned and the card typed, the local letter carrier then
returned the card to the place of business as a piece of regular
mail. The record of the SSN assignment was sent to Social
Security headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, where the master
file of SSNs would be kept.
So the first card was issued, sometime in mid-November, 1936,
somewhere in one of 1,074 post offices to someone whose identity
and SSN are unknown. In theory, the first card should have
been issued on November 24th, but there have been reports
of cards showing earlier dates. It is not clear whether the
cards with earlier dates were actually issued on that day
or whether some post offices predated some of their cards.
If the 45,000 local post offices followed their procedures,
no cards could have been issued before November 16th, and
none should have been issued before November 24th. But here
again, there is always the possibility that some local post
offices failed to follow their instructions. The best we can
say with certainty is that the first SSN was issued sometime
in mid-November 1936. In any case, on whatever day the first
card was issued, hundreds of thousands of SSNs were probably
issued on that same day, so many people had Social Security
cards issued on the very first day they became available.
The First Official SSN
Once the SSN records were received in Baltimore they were
grouped in blocks of 1,000 and the master records were created.
On December 1, 1936 the first block of 1,000 records were
assembled and were ready to start their way through the nine-step
process that would result in the creation of a permanent master
record and the establishment of an earnings record for the
individual. When this first stack was ready, Joe Fay, head
of the Division of Accounting Operations in the Candler Building,
walked over to the stack, pulled off the top record, and declared
it to be the official first Social Security record. (This
was the first point in the process where there was enough
control to designate an official first card--it would have
been impossible to try and identify the first card typed in
one of the 1,074 typing centers around the country.) This
particular record, (055-09-0001) belonged to John D. Sweeney,
Jr., age 23, of New Rochelle, New York. The next day, newspapers
around the country announced that Sweeney had been issued
the first SSN. It would be more accurate to say that the first
Social Security record was established for John David
Sweeney, but since master records were invisible to the public
and the Social Security card was a very visible token of the
program, the newspapers overlooked the nuance.
And so John David Sweeney, Jr. is the closest thing we have
to the first person to have received a Social Security card--although
his status is more symbolic than actual.
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