Woodbury Langdon was the elder son of John and Mary (Hall) Langdon, and the brother of Gov. John Langdon. The exact date of his birth is not known, but without doubt the place was Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where the Langdon family had been established since the middle of the seventeenth century. His father, a farmer on the outskirts of the town, was now and then elected a selectman. His mother was descended from Gov. Thomas Dudley of Massachusetts Bay.
Woodbury attended the Latin grammar school, which was kept by an excellent master, Major Samuel Hale.
Later Langdon entered the counting-room of Henry Sherburne, a prominent merchant of Portsmouth. His commercial ventures were successful and in 1770 he was accounted a rich man. As the dissensions with the British government increased, he took the conservative side.
In 1770 he was influential in keeping Portsmouth out of the nonimportation agreement (Portsmouth Town Records, MS. , vol. II, folio 246), and in town meeting, December 16, 1773, he registered his disapproval of a series of resolutions which were passed condemning the British government's new policy. Nevertheless, Portsmouth elected him to the provincial Assembly in the spring of 1774, to the revolutionary convention at Exeter in the following summer, and reëlected him to the Assembly in February 1775.
After war broke out Langdon went to England to conserve "a considerable sum of money" belonging to him there. Much of what he did during the next two years is a mystery. He visited France twice, and Lord George Germain believed that he was concerting a plan of trade between that country and the United States. When Langdon returned to America in the summer of 1777, he landed at New York and was held a prisoner within the British lines.
In December 1777 he escaped and returned to Portsmouth (Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 1901, edited by F. B. Dexter, II, 240). In the spring of 1779 Langdon was elected to the Continental Congress and he took his seat in the following autumn. In 1780, 1781, and 1785 he was reëlected, but on each occasion declined to serve. Instead, he remained in New Hampshire, where he held various offices.
His appointment as a justice of the superior court in 1785 had unpleasant consequences. On June 17, 1790, he was impeached by the House of Representatives for neglecting his duty, specifically for not holding court at various places in 1789 and 1790. The trial was held in January 1791, but it came to naught, and Langdon was allowed to resign. Meanwhile he had been appointed one of the federal commissioners for settling the accounts between the United States and individual states. In 1796 and again in 1797 he ran for Congress as the Republican candidate, but was not elected.
Langdon was a handsome man, but he lacked the winning manners of his brother John. He was buried in the North Cemetery at Portsmouth.
Langdon was remembered mainly for his pre-Revolutionary affairs, and throughout the war; for his service as New Hampshire's delegate to the Continental Congress. He was also active in preventing Portsmouth from subscribing to the colonies' Non-Importation Agreement, which was an attempt to prevent use of British-made products in the colonies.
Quotes from others about the person
His contemporary, William Plumer, wrote of him (post, p. 815): "He was a man of great independence and decision--bold, keen, and sarcastic, and spoke his mind of men and measures with great freedom. . He was naturally inclined to be arbitrary and haughty but his sense or what was right, and his pride prevented him from doing intentional evil. "
In 1765 Langdon married Sherburne's daughter, Sarah.
