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The lowest ever Social Security number

DavidBrooks | 03 August, 2008 23:28

Via this post at the delightful Cow Hampshire blog, I learned that the lowest-possible Social Security number (001-01-0001) was given to a New Hampshire woman in 1936, just as the system started.

I've written about Social Security numbers a couple of times for my newspaper column, but before electronic archiving started so we'll be link-free here. The first three numbers are based on geography according to where you applied for the card (not necessarily where you were born), in a system roughly similar to ZIP codes. Northern New England births start with 001, 002 or 003 by random choice.

My wife is a 001-er even though she was born in Burma to her Foreign Service parents, because her grandfather, living in Derry, registered her birth with the Social Security Administration. All her life people have assumed she received a dead person's SSN, as if they were reused starting at 001.


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