When did Americans start calling themselves Americans?

Americans started calling themselves Americans well before the independence of the United States, and the usage evolved over time. In the early 1600s, British colonists in North America began to distinguish themselves from people in England by calling themselves Americans to denote that they lived in the Americas. By the 1700s, the term was common in British newspapers and colonial writings to refer to colonists of British descent living in the thirteen colonies. Figures like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson used American to describe themselves in the 1760s and 1770s. After the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the name United States of America was adopted, and American became the official demonym for citizens of the new nation. In the Continental Congress and early federal documents, the phrase American citizen appears by the 1780s. The sense of a distinct American identity grew strongly after the American Revolution and the War of 1812, when people no longer wanted to be seen as British. By the early 19th century, calling oneself American was standard for US citizens. So the term was used informally from the 1600s, politically from the 1760s, and officially from 1776 onward.