The lowest Social Security number ever issued was 001-01-0001.
You might have trouble remembering your Social Security number, but Grace D. Owen probably didn’t. Not long after applying for the program on November 24, 1936, the Concord, New Hampshire, resident received the lowest number ever issued: 001-01-0001. It wasn’t the first Social Security number, however — that would be 055-09-0001, which happened to be on top of the first block of 1,000 cards and was issued to John D. Sweeney Jr. of New Rochelle, New York. Social Security Board Chairman John G. Winant, the former governor of New Hampshire, was originally set to receive 001-01-0001, but declined, as did John Campbell, who served as Boston’s regional representative at the Federal Bureau of Old-Age Benefits, the precursor to the Social Security Administration. (SSNs were distributed geographically beginning in the Northeast, but started with New Hampshire rather than Maine specifically to honor Winant.)
It was then decided to give the lowest number not to a government official involved with the program but rather to the Granite State’s first applicant, which happened to be Owen. Social Security numbers were initially distributed through post offices, 1,074 of which served as “typing centers” where the cards themselves were made. All of this was made possible by the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, which was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
