Ida May Fuller

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Ida May Fuller (September 6, 1874 – January 27, 1975) was the first beneficiary of recurring monthly Social Security payments.

Biography[]

Fuller was born on September 6, 1874, on a farm outside of Ludlow, Vermont. She attended school in Ludlow. In 1905, after working as a school teacher, she became a legal secretary. Fuller never married and had no children. She lived alone most of her life in Ludlow, but she spent eight years near the end of her life living with her niece, Hazel Perkins, and her family in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Fuller filed her retirement claim on November 4, 1939, having worked under Social Security for a little short of three years. While running an errand, she dropped by the Rutland Social Security office to ask about possible benefits. She would later observe: "It wasn't that I expected anything, mind you, but I knew I'd been paying for something called Social Security and I wanted to ask the people in Rutland about it."

Her claim was taken by a Claims Clerk, Elizabeth Corcoran Burke, and transmitted to the Claims Division in Washington, D.C., for adjudication. The case was adjudicated and reviewed and sent to the Treasury Department for payment in January 1940. The claims were grouped in batches of 1,000, and a Certification List for each batch was sent to Treasury. Fuller's claim was the first one on the first Certification List—and, as such, the first Social Security check (check number 00-000-001) was issued to Fuller in the amount of $22.54 (equivalent to $416 in 2020) and dated January 31, 1940. During her lifetime, she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits and paid in average installments of $24.75.^[1][2]

Fuller died on January 27, 1975, in Brattleboro, Vermont.

References[]

 This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Social Security Administration document: "The First Social Security Beneficiary".