The SSN: A History Lesson

rity Administration). But Winant turned down the honor.

Then it was offered to the head of the agency’s regional office for the northeastern United States, but he also said no. They tried to designate a couple other officials for the alleged honor, but with no luck. In frustration, the agency’s PR people nixed their plans for a ceremonial first “official” SSN recipient. So instead, they just decided to issue card number 001-01-0001 to the first Social Security number applicant from New Hampshire. This proved to be Grace D. Owen of Concord, New Hampshire, who applied for her number on Nov. 24, 1936.

There is one more little twist to this story. If you do some research into old press reports, you may find a story that says the very first Social Security card was issued to John Sweeney of New Rochelle, New York.

What actually happened is this. All the SSN records prepared by post offices were shipped to the SSA’s headquarters in Baltimore. One of their first jobs was to create an official Social Security record (primarily to track earnings) for each SSN issued. When the first batch of SSN records came in from the postal service, the agency’s head of accounting operations pulled the top card off the pile and declared it to be the official first Social Security record. It happened to be card number 055-09-0001 belonging to the aforementioned Mr. Sweeney. The next day, newspapers around the country announced that Sweeney had been issued the first SSN. That wasn’t quite right. It would be more accurate to say that the first Social Security “earnings record” was established for John Sweeney. But because those 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 John Sweeney had his 15 minutes of fame in 1936.

But neither 001-01-0001 nor 055-090001 is the most well-known Social Security number. That honor belongs to 07805-1120.

In 1938, a wallet manufacturer in New York decided to promote its product by showing how the still relatively new Social Security card would fit into its wallets. The president of the company thought it would be a bright idea to insert a sample for display purposes in each wallet. His next not-so-smart idea was to put a real Social Security number on the display card. The number shown on the card, 078-005-1120, actually belonged to the president’s secretary, a woman named Hilda Witcher.

The wallets were sold by Woolworth stores all over the country. Even though the card was only half the size of a real card, was printed all in red and had the word “specimen” written across the face, many purchasers of the wallet adopted the SSN as their own! In the peak year of 1943, 5,755 people were using Hilda’s number. The SSA acted to eliminate the problem by voiding the number and publicizing that it was incorrect to use it. (Witcher was given a new number.) However, the number continued to be used for many years. In all, over 40,000 people reported what became known as the “Woolworth number” as their SSN. In fact, as late as 1977, 12 people were found to still be trying to use Hilda’s original SSN.

By the way, some of you may be wondering how I could be giving real names and real Social Security numbers in this column. First, the people mentioned have all long since passed away. Second, the SSA has flagged those SSNs (and other famous or infamous numbers) so that if anyone ever tried using them, they would be instantly investigated.

If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has two books with all the answers. One is called “Social Security -- Simple and Smart: 10 Easy-to-Understand Fact Sheets That Will Answer All Your Questions About Social Security.” The other is “Social Security: 100 Myths and 100 Facts.” You can find the books at Amazon.com or other book outlets.

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