Signers of the Declaration

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The later career of Adams—as a diplomat, the first Vice President, and the second President of the United States—overshadows those of all the other signers except Jefferson. Adams also had a distinguished family. His son John Quincy became well-known as a diplomat, Congressman, Secretary of State, and President. John's grandson Charles Francis and great-grandsons John Quincy II, Charles Francis Jr., Henry, and Brooks excelled in politics, diplomacy, literature, historiography, and public service.

Adams, coming from a long line of small farmers, was born in 1735 in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1755 and briefly taught school in Worcester, Massachusetts. At that time, he thought about becoming a minister but ultimately chose to pursue law and began studying it with a local lawyer. Adams was admitted to the bar in Boston in 1758 and started practicing in his hometown. Six years later, he married Abigail Smith, who would give birth to three sons and a daughter. She was also the first lady of the White House and the only woman in U.S. history to be the wife of one President and the mother of another.

Adams, like many others, was pushed into the Revolutionary camp by the Stamp Act. In 1765, he wrote a protest for Braintree that many other Massachusetts towns adopted. Three years later, he temporarily left his family and moved to Boston. He advanced in his legal career but spent more and more time supporting the patriot cause. In 1768, he gained recognition throughout the Colonies for defending John Hancock, who had been accused of smuggling by British customs officials. Adams later felt a strong sense of legal duty but faced public backlash for representing the British soldiers charged with murder in the Boston Massacre (1770). Ill health forced him to return to Braintree after serving a term in the colonial legislature (1770–71), and for the next few years, he split his time between Braintree and Boston.

A 3-year term in the Continental Congress (1774–77), interrupted by short breaks for recovery and his work in the colonial legislature in 1774–75, brought Adams national attention. He was very aware of the mood in Congress and knew that many members were frustrated with Massachusetts’ radical approach, so he initially supported efforts to make peace with Britain and held back in public. When Congress decided to pursue independence, he became its strongest supporter, abandoning attempts at compromise and promoting the idea of a colonial confederation.

Adams was a pro at finding workable compromises and engaging in meaningful debates, although he could be a bit impatient at times. He led 25 of the more than 90 committees he served on, with the most significant ones focused on military and naval issues. He played a key role in getting Washington appointed as commander in chief of the Continental Army. Adams was part of the five-member committee responsible for drafting the Declaration in June 1776, although he likely didn’t make any major changes to Jefferson’s draft. However, he was actively involved in defending it against congressional critics, persuading those who were unsure, and ensuring its passage.

The independence battle won, worn out from the endless work and stress and concerned about his finances and family, Adams retired from Congress in November 1777—never to return. He went back to Braintree planning to restart his law practice. But, before the month35 was over, Congress appointed him to a diplomatic position in Europe—a part of his career that lasted more than a decade (1777–88).

Adams was in France from 1778 to 1785, except for a trip to the United States in the summer of 1779, during which he participated in the Massachusetts constitutional convention. He was independent-minded and straightforward, but also somewhat resentful of the success of others. This often put him in conflict with fellow diplomats Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, as well as French officials, whose policies toward the Colonies he did not trust. Nonetheless, he teamed up with Franklin and John Jay to negotiate the Treaty of Paris (1783), which established Britain’s recognition of the United States' independence.

Meanwhile, over the last three years, Adams had convinced the Dutch to recognize the Colonies as an independent nation, provide a series of loans, and negotiate a treaty of alliance. As the first American Envoy to Great Britain (1785–88), he worked to address issues stemming from the Treaty of Paris and to ease the strained relations between the two countries.

Back in the United States, Adams was soon elected as the first Vice President (1789–97), a position he thought was unimportant but where he became a leader of the Federalist Party. During his turbulent yet statesmanlike presidency (1797–1801), he faced the intense political conflict between the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians that had developed during Washington’s time in office. Adams followed a neutral path without compromising his beliefs. He kept the United States out of a declared war with France and managed to secure a peaceful resolution. However, he struggled to bring his party together, which was split by Hamilton’s schemes and the effects of the French Revolution.

The Jeffersonians pushed the Federalists out of office in 1800, and Adams retired to Quincy, where he spent his later years in peace. The death of his wife in 1818 made him sad, but he never lost interest in public affairs and lived to see his son John Quincy become President. John died at age 90 just a few hours after Jefferson, on July 4, 1826—ironically, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration. Besides Charles Carroll, who lived until 1832, Adams and Jefferson were the last two surviving signers. The remains of John and Abigail Adams are buried in a basement crypt at the United First Parish Church in Quincy.

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Adams was one of 12 children of a successful and politically engaged brewer and landowner. He was born in Boston in 1722 and received a great education at the Boston Latin School and Harvard College. After graduating in 1740, he showed his lifelong dislike for conventional jobs right away. He studied law for a bit and then bounced from job to job, working for a while in his father's brewery, in a counting house, and wasting a loan from his dad on a failed business venture.

When his father died in 1748 and his mother soon after, Adams inherited a large estate, including the family home and brewery. By 1764, when the colonial dispute with Britain started, he had already lost the brewery. In the eight years he served as the city tax collector, he had fallen behind by about £8,000 in his collections.37 At 42, unable to support a new wife and two children from his first marriage while living in his dilapidated hometown, he was broke and overwhelmed by creditors. He mostly survived on gifts and donations from loyal friends and neighbors.

Adams was considered a failure by most standards, but he had long discovered the only meaningful “occupation” he ever pursued. For almost twenty years, he had been involved in local political clubs, where he built a reputation as a writer and became the leader of the “popular” party that opposed the powerful conservative aristocracy in control of the Massachusetts government. As a clerk in the colonial legislature (1765–74), he drafted most of the official documents and quickly took hold of the tools of power. He jumped on the taxation issue raised by the Sugar and Stamp Acts (1764–65), and within a year, he and his party fueled public anger against the conservatives and gained control of the legislature. He also encouraged the formation of the militant Boston Sons of Liberty, a secret society. As time passed, the intensity of his anti-British speeches increased and sometimes became loud enough to concern John Hancock and John Adams.

The Townshend Acts (1767), which placed a series of taxes on imports, gave Adams a new reason to protest. He encouraged merchants to stop buying British goods, stirred up resistance against customs officials, increased the anger toward British troops stationed in the colony that eventually led to the Boston Massacre (1770), and publicly shamed the Royal Governor to the point that he was recalled. Adams also wrote a circular letter opposing British taxation and promoting united resistance. When, in 1768, the Massachusetts legislature sent this letter to the 12 other colonial assemblies, the Royal Governor dissolved the legislature, which soon became a common British tactic in America. All these actions, along with writing numerous newspaper articles and maintaining extensive correspondence with influential figures in the Colonies and England, earned Adams widespread recognition.

The conservative backlash from merchants, lawmakers, and the public that arose after the repeal of nearly all the Townshend Acts in 1770 didn’t stop Adams, even though his popularity and influence took a hit. He kept the debate going, which was perhaps his main contribution to the Revolution, by constantly filling the Boston newspapers with reports of British wrongdoings and warnings of more to come. Additionally, in 1772, he started to build a Revolutionary organization in Massachusetts. Drawing on a similar plan he had suggested for all the Colonies two years earlier that had gone nowhere, he got Boston and other towns to set up committees of correspondence. The following year, he was appointed to the Massachusetts committee, formed in response to a call from the Virginia House of Burgesses.38

Passage of the Tea Act (1773) provided the spark Adams was seeking to reignite the flame of rebellion. He helped to incite and likely participated in the “Boston Tea Party,” which led to a series of rebellious incidents throughout the Colonies and pushed them closer to war. Parliament retaliated the next spring by passing a series of acts aimed at punishing Massachusetts.

Adams, realizing that the other Colonies would only implement non-intercourse measures together, pushed for an intercolonial congress to talk about shared grievances and plan a unified response. Then, in June, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, meeting behind closed doors to avoid interference from the Royal Governor, decided to invite the other 12 Colonies to send representatives to Philadelphia in September and also appointed five Delegates, including Adams. That same day, the Royal Governor disbanded the legislature for the last time. Before heading to Philadelphia, dressed in new clothes provided by friends, Adams helped organize the convention that adopted the Suffolk Resolves, which effectively declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion.

Adams was part of the Continental Congress until 1781, longer than most of the other delegates, but his role wasn't as prominent as his earlier career suggested it would be. During the early sessions, he often wisely kept a low profile alongside his fellow Massachusetts delegates, whose radical views annoyed many of their peers. Throughout the Congress, he operated in the shadow of John Adams, who was the standout figure in the discussions.

But nothing in the latter's career could compare to the drama of an episode involving Samuel during the time between the First and Second Continental Congresses. One night in April 1775 in Lexington, Mass., he and Hancock narrowly escaped a British force trying to seize the colonial supply depot at Concord. The start of armed conflict the next morning—a “glorious morning” for Adams—marked the beginning of the War for Independence.

While still in Congress, from 1779 to 1780, Adams took part in the Massachusetts constitutional convention. He returned to Boston for good the next year and joined the State Senate (1781–88), where he served as president. He chose not to attend the Constitutional Convention of 1787 because he opposed a stronger National Government, and the following year participated in the Massachusetts ratifying convention with little enthusiasm. His long career in public service culminated in his election as Lieutenant Governor (1789–93), serving as interim Governor that same year after Hancock’s death, and then as Governor (1794–97). Still living in “honest poverty,” he died in Boston in 1803 at the age of 81 and was buried in the Old Granary Burying Ground.

Bartlett was born in 1729 in Amesbury, Massachusetts. At 16, with a basic education and some knowledge of Latin and Greek, he began studying medicine with a relative. Five years later, in 1750, he set up his practice in nearby Kingston, New Hampshire. He quickly gained a reputation not just as a general practitioner40 but also as an innovator and experimenter in diagnosis and treatment. After marrying in 1754, he had 12 children.

During the decade before the start of the War for Independence, Bartlett served as a justice of the peace, militia colonel, and legislator. In 1774, he joined the Revolutionaries. He became a member of the New Hampshire committee of correspondence and the first provincial congress, which was formed after the Royal Governor disbanded the colonial assembly. That same year, Bartlett was elected to the Continental Congress, but tragedy struck and kept him home. Arsonists, likely Loyalists, burned his house to the ground. Discouraged but not defeated, he quickly built a new one on the same spot.

While in Congress (1775–76), Bartlett also served on the New Hampshire council of safety. Although he rarely took part in congressional debates, which he found frustrating, he was a member of various committees. He was reelected in 1777, but was too worn out to attend. However, he still found time in August to offer his medical expertise to Gen. John Stark’s group of New Hampshire militia and Continental troops. They defeated mainly German forces under Gen. John Burgoyne in the Battle of Bennington, N.Y.—one of the setbacks that contributed to his surrender two months later at Saratoga, N.Y. Bartlett’s final term in Congress was in 1778–79, after which he declined reelection due to fatigue.

Bartlett spent the rest of his life involved in state affairs. Even though he had no formal legal training, he served first as the chief justice of the court of common pleas (1779–82), and then as an associate (1782–88) and chief (1788–90) justice of the Superior Court. In 1788, he participated in the state convention that ratified the Federal Constitution, which he strongly supported. The following year, likely due to his age and the demands of his judicial responsibilities, he turned down an election to the U.S. Senate. The year after that, he became the chief executive, or president, of the state. He held that title for two years, and in 1793–94, he was named the first Governor, as the newly amended constitution changed the title.

Despite all his political activities, Bartlett had never lost interest in medicine. In 1790, Dartmouth College awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine. The following year, he established the New Hampshire Medical Society and became its first president.41 In 1794, the year before he passed away in Kingston at the age of 65, his poor health forced him to retire from public life. He is buried in the yard of the Universalist Church in Kingston.

Braxton was born in 1736 at Newington Plantation, on the Mattaponi River, in King and Queen County, Virginia. His father was a wealthy and politically connected planter. His mother, who passed away during childbirth, was the daughter of Robert “King” Carter, a well-known landowner and politician.

In 1755, the same year Braxton graduated from the College of William and Mary, he got married. His wife died during childbirth two years later. The next year, he went on an extended trip to England. He came back to Virginia in 1760 and moved into Elsing Green, an estate overlooking the Pamunkey River in King William County, which his brother George had apparently built for him in 1758 while he was away. At 25, in 1761, Carter remarried and joined the House of Burgesses. He served there, except for a term as county 42 sheriff in 1772–73, until 1775. In the meantime, in 1767, he had built a new home, Chericoke, a couple of miles northwest of Elsing Green.

When the conflict with Great Britain broke out, Braxton, like many other conservatives, supported the patriots, although he did not approve of violence. In 1769, he signed the Virginia Resolves, a document that protested against parliamentary control over the colony's affairs, and the Virginia Association, which was a nonimportation agreement. Between 1774 and 1776, he attended several Revolutionary conventions. In 1775, after the royal government was dissolved, he took a position on the council of safety, the temporary governing body.

In the spring of that year, Braxton played a key role in stopping the outbreak of war in Virginia. On April 20, the day after the clashes at Lexington and Concord, Royal Governor Lord John M. Dunmore took control of the gunpowder in the Williamsburg magazine. Several colonial militia units got ready to fight back, but moderate leaders like George Washington and Peyton Randolph held them back. Patrick Henry, however, refusing to be calm, led a group of the Hanover County militia into Williamsburg and demanded either the return of the gunpowder or compensation for it. Before any violence broke out, Braxton, acting as Henry's spokesperson, met with crown official Richard Corbin, his father-in-law, and persuaded him to pay for the powder.

In the fall of 1775, Braxton was chosen to take a seat in Congress after Peyton Randolph passed away. He arrived in Philadelphia early in 1776 and initially voiced strong criticism of the independence movement, but eventually went along with the majority and supported the Declaration. That same year, both in writing and during a speech at a Virginia convention, he pushed for a conservative form of state government and showed such distrust of popular government that he lost his congressional position. However, the conservatives elected him to the new state legislature, where he served for the rest of his life. For many years, he was also a member of the Governor’s executive council.

The War for Independence caused financial troubles for Braxton. At the start, he had invested a lot in shipping, but the British seized most of his ships and devastated some of his plantations and large landholdings. The business failures in the following years left him broke. In 1786, although he still owned Chericoke, he relocated to Richmond, where he passed away in 1797 at the age of 61. He was buried in the family cemetery next to Chericoke.

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Of Irish descent, Carroll was born in 1737 at his father’s townhouse, Carroll Mansion in Annapolis. He was educated by Jesuits until he was about 11 years old. He then traveled to Europe and studied liberal arts and civil law at several schools and universities in Paris, other parts of France, and London.

Carroll returned home in 1765 at the age of 28 and built a house at Carrollton Manor, a 10,000-acre estate in Frederick County that had just been given to him by his father. At that point, he added “of Carrollton” to his name to differentiate himself from relatives with the same name. However, for most of his life, he preferred his family’s ancestral home, Doughoregan Manor, in Howard County as his country residence; when he was in Annapolis, he usually stayed at his birthplace. For nearly a decade after coming back from Europe, he kept a low profile because of his religion, living quietly. During that time, in 1768, he got married. He had seven children, three of whom survived to adulthood.

In 1773, Carroll became a strong supporter of the patriots through his newspaper criticisms of the Proprietary Governor. The governor was opposing reforms in officers’ fees and salaries for Anglican clergy that the lower house of the legislature had proposed. From that point on, Carroll played a significant role in provincial matters. Between 1774 and 1776, he backed nonimportation measures, attended the first Maryland Revolutionary convention, and served on local and provincial committees for communication and the safety council. In 1776, he and his cousin John, a priest—chosen for their faith and knowledge of French—traveled to Canada with Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Chase as part of a congressionally appointed committee that aimed, but ultimately failed, to secure a union between Canada and the Colonies.

Carroll and Chase got back to Philadelphia on June 11 of that year, the day after Congress had postponed the vote on Richard Henry Lee’s independence resolution (June 7) until July 1. Maryland had held out on making a decision. Carroll and Chase hurried to Annapolis, got William Paca on board, and ran a fast campaign that convinced the provincial convention to pass a unanimous independence resolution. It reached Congress just in time to count Maryland in the yes column on July 1, the day of the first vote. Three days later, Carroll himself became a Delegate and served in that role until 1778.

Two years earlier, Carroll had also been elected to the State Senate, a position he held until just after the turn of the century. Along with fellow signers Chase and Paca, he was part of the committee that drafted Maryland’s constitution in 1776. Although he was elected to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he didn’t attend, but he still aligned himself with the Federalists and helped secure his State’s ratification of the Constitution. From 1789 to 1792, while also serving in the State Senate, he was one of Maryland’s first two U.S. Senators.

Not reelected to the State Senate in 1804, the 67-year-old Carroll retired from public life and focused on managing his land holdings, which included about 80,000 acres in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York, as well as his business interests. These included investments in the Patowmack Company, which set up a canal system in the Potomac and Shenandoah Valleys, and its successor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. Carroll was also a member of the first board of directors for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

45 In his last years, admired by the country as the last living signer of the Declaration, Carroll spent most of his time at Doughoregan Manor. However, he spent the winters at the home of his youngest daughter and her husband in Baltimore. There, in 1832, he passed away at the age of 95. His body was laid to rest in the family chapel at Doughoregan Manor.

Chase was the son of an Anglican priest. He was born in 1741 at his maternal grandparents' farmhouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, close to the city of Princess Anne. His mother had traveled there from nearby Allen for a visit. She passed away at or shortly after his birth. It’s probable that Chase’s grandparents looked after him for at least a few years until his father took a parish in Baltimore. His father gave him his early education, which focused primarily on the classics.

Between the ages of 18 and 20, Chase studied law with a firm in Annapolis and became a lawyer in 1761. The following year, he got married; his wife had at least two sons and two daughters. Two years after getting married, he joined the colonial/State legislature and remained a member for twenty years. From the start, he opposed the royal government. Annapolis officials criticized him for his involvement in the violent protests of the Sons of Liberty in 1765 against the Stamp Act. In 1774–75, he participated in the Maryland committee of correspondence, council of safety, and the provincial convention.

In the past year, Chase had joined the Continental Congress.46 He pushed for a trade embargo with Britain, showed a strong interest in diplomatic issues, early on called for a union of the Colonies, defended George Washington against his critics in Congress, and in 1776 traveled to Montreal with a commission that tried, but ultimately failed, to establish a union with Canada. When he returned to Philadelphia around mid-June, Congress had just postponed the vote on the Lee independence resolution. Realizing that Maryland was undecided on the issue, Chase hurried home. Along with Charles Carroll of Carrollton and William Paca, he worked for two weeks to overcome opposition and secured a commitment to independence from the convention. The Maryland Delegates registered it in time for the first congressional vote, on July 1. In 1778, Chase lost his position because of negative publicity generated by his use of insider information from Congress to participate in a profiteering scheme.

In 1783–84, Chase traveled to London as a state representative on a fruitless mission to recover Maryland stock in the Bank of England from two escaped Loyalists. After he returned, it seems that his first wife had died, and he remarried. He restarted his law practice and got involved in several unsuccessful business ventures that led to bankruptcy in 1789. In the meantime, he reentered politics. In 1785, he represented Maryland at the Mount Vernon (Va.) Conference, which was the precursor to the Annapolis Convention. The following year, he moved his family from Annapolis to Baltimore, where he quickly became the chief judge of the Baltimore County criminal court (1788–95). As a delegate to the Maryland ratifying convention in 1788, he strongly opposed the Constitution, although he later became a committed Federalist. From 1791 until 1794, while still serving as a county judge, he also held the role of chief justice of the Maryland Superior Court.

Chase became most famous as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1796–1811). He was one of the most skilled judges before Chief Justice John Marshall (1801–35) and gave many important opinions. His struggle to manage his political bias while serving—as other judges did at the time—resulted in several judicial missteps and impeachment proceedings against him in 1805. However, Congress found him not guilty.

Still a Justice, Chase passed away in Baltimore two months after celebrating his 70th birthday. His grave is located in St. Paul’s Cemetery.

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An only child, Clark was born in 1726 on his father’s farm in what is now Roselle, N.J. As a boy, he was too weak for farm work. He had only a basic education, but through self-study, he showed a talent for mathematics. When he became an adult, in addition to farming his father's land, he took up surveying and casually studied law to help settle land disputes. Although he likely was never admitted to the bar, he earned a reputation as the “poor man’s counselor” for being willing to give free legal advice or accept produce or goods instead of payment. He got married in 1749 and had 10 children.

Clark followed in his father's footsteps by actively participating in civic matters. For many years, he served the Crown as the high sheriff of Essex County and as a clerk in the colonial legislature. The exact date he joined the patriots isn't known, but between 1774 and 1776, he became a member and secretary of the New Jersey council of safety, attended several Revolutionary conventions, and was elected to the provincial assembly. In June of the latter year, he and four other men replaced the current congressional delegates who were against independence.

Despite his poor health and deep worry for his family’s well-being and the safety of his home, which was close to a British-occupied area, Clark remained in Congress during the War for Independence48 and sometimes also served in the State legislature at the same time. He experienced even more anxiety when the British captured his two soldier sons and imprisoned them for a period on the prison ship Jersey, where hundreds of captives died.

At the end of the war in 1783, Clark went back to his life in New Jersey. The next year, he started a 3-year term in the State legislature, where he represented the state at the Annapolis Convention (1786). The following year, due to health issues, he couldn't attend the Constitutional Convention. He later opposed the Constitution until it included the Bill of Rights. From 1787 to 1789, he returned to the Continental Congress, but from 1789 to 1790, he stayed in New Jersey as a commissioner to settle his state's accounts with the Federal Government. From 1791 to 1794, he wrapped up a long career of alternating between state and national service as a Representative in the Second and Third Congresses.

Clark was hit with a sunstroke in 1794 at his hometown in Roselle, where he had lived his entire life except when political duties took him away. He died a few hours later, at the age of 68, in the nearby town of Rahway and was buried there in the Presbyterian Cemetery.

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Clymer was orphaned in 1740, just a year after his birth in Philadelphia. A wealthy uncle raised him and gave him informal education, promoting him from clerk to a full partner in his mercantile firm, which he left to Clymer upon his death. Later, Clymer combined operations with the Merediths, who were well-known businessmen, and strengthened their connection by marrying his senior partner’s daughter.

Motivated at least partly by the effects of British economic restrictions on his business, Clymer quickly embraced the Revolutionary cause and was among the first to advocate for independence. He attended patriotic meetings, served on the Pennsylvania council of safety, and in 1773 led a committee that forced the resignation of Philadelphia tea agents appointed by Britain under the Tea Act. Naturally, given his economic background, he focused his efforts on financial matters. In 1775–76, he served as one of the first two Continental treasurers, even personally supporting the war by exchanging all his own cash for Continental currency.

In the Continental Congress (1776–77 and 1780–82), the quiet and unassuming Clymer rarely spoke during debates but made significant contributions in committee work, especially in areas related to commerce, finance, and military affairs. During and between his two terms in Congress, he also served on various commissions that conducted important field investigations. In December 1776, when Congress moved from Philadelphia to Baltimore, he and fellow signers George Walton and Robert Morris stayed behind to continue congressional business. Within a year, after their victory at the Battle of Brandywine, Pa. (Sept. 11, 1777), British troops advancing on Philadelphia took a detour to vandalize Clymer’s home in Chester County, about 25 miles outside the city, while his wife and children hid nearby in the woods.

After a short retirement following his last term in the Continental Congress, Clymer was reelected from 1784 to 1788 to the Pennsylvania legislature, where he had also served part-time from 1780 to 1782 while still in Congress. As a state legislator, he pushed for reform of the penal code, opposed the death penalty, and represented Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The next stage of his career involved serving as a U.S. Representative in the First Congress from 1789 to 1791, followed by his appointment as the collector of excise taxes on alcoholic beverages in Pennsylvania from 1791 to 1794. In 1795 and 1796, he served on a presidential commission that negotiated a treaty with the Native Americans in Georgia.

During his retirement, Clymer supported different community projects, including the Philadelphia Agricultural Society, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, and the Philadelphia Bank. At 73 years old, he died in 1813 at Summerseat, an estate a few miles outside Philadelphia in Morrisville that he had bought and moved to in 1806. His grave is located in the Friends Meeting House Cemetery in Trenton, N.J.

The second son in a family of four, Ellery was born in 1727 in Newport, where he lived his whole life. He followed in his father's footsteps, a wealthy merchant and political leader, by attending Harvard.52 After graduating in 1747, he returned home. Over the next two decades, he tried out various jobs, eventually studying law, which he started practicing in 1770. In the meantime, he got married twice and raised two sons and three daughters. Among his grandchildren were William Ellery Channing, an influential theologian and advocate of Unitarianism, and Richard Henry Dana, Sr., a well-known poet and essayist.

By May 1776, when the colonial legislature sent Ellery to the Continental Congress, he had already built a reputation for his work on local patriotic committees. Tradition says that, at the formal signing of the Declaration on August 2, he positioned himself next to the Secretary and noted “undaunted resolution” on every face as the Delegates signed their “death warrant.” The following year, Rhode Island started electing congressional Delegates through popular vote, and Ellery’s Newport constituency kept him in office until 1786, except for the years 1780 and 1782. In 1780, he stayed in Philadelphia as an ex officio member of the board of admiralty, where he had been serving. His other committee assignments focused on commercial and naval matters. Occasionally, to entertain himself and others, he wrote clever epigrams about various speakers. In 1785, he declined the chief justiceship of the Rhode Island Superior Court to stay in Congress, where he had gained significant seniority.

The very next year, Ellery ended his congressional career to take a position as commissioner of the Continental Loan Office for Rhode Island (1786–90). He likely accepted this role due to the need to get his finances back on track. British troops had destroyed his home and property during their 3-year occupation of Newport starting in 1778, and he had been too occupied to rebuild his wealth. In 1790, President Washington appointed Ellery as the customs collector for the Newport district, a role he held for thirty years. Although he was a Federalist, he managed to stay in office during the Democratic-Republican administrations, likely due to his Revolutionary credentials and competence.

In his later years, Ellery thrived. He remained engaged in public affairs and dedicated many hours to scholarly activities and correspondence. Living to 92, which was a greater age than all the signers except Charles Carroll, he passed away in 1820 in Newport. His remains are laid to rest in the Common Ground Cemetery.

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Floyd was born in 1734 in what is now Mastic, Long Island, N.Y., in Brookhaven Township. He was the second child and the oldest of two sons in a family of nine. His father, a successful farmer of Welsh descent, kept him busy with chores. As a result, his education was limited to informal instruction at home. When Floyd turned 20, his parents passed away within two months of each other, and he inherited a large estate along with the responsibility of caring for his siblings. Six years later, he got married. His wife helped care for the family and assisted in managing the farm, which relied mostly on slave labor. A community leader, Floyd also dedicated a lot of time to the Brookhaven church, served as town trustee (1769–71), and rose through the ranks of the Suffolk County militia to become a colonel in 1775.

The Revolutionary movement in New York was much less intense and started later than in the other Colonies. The strong opposition in Massachusetts to the Tea Act in the latter half of 1773 and in 54 1774 stirred up the first major activity in New York. One of the key areas was eastern Long Island, where Floyd lived. He and many of his neighbors participated in meetings that expressed support and provided aid to Massachusetts and protested the closure of the Boston port by the British. Despite such local reactions, by the end of 1774, New York was one of only two Colonies, the other being Georgia, where the patriots did not control the government. Because of this, the Revolutionaries mainly operated on a county level.

In 1774, Suffolk County sent Floyd to the Continental Congress. He stayed there until 1777, returned from 1779 to 1783, and during that time, he served in the State Senate and on the Council of Safety. Giving way to the other New York delegates in Congress, he worked on a few committees without any special recognition. However, worries about his family's well-being were a significant distraction. In 1776, when British forces took over Long Island, his wife, son, and two daughters escaped north across the sound and sought refuge in Middletown, Connecticut. His wife passed away there in 1781. To make matters worse, the redcoats used his home in Mastic as barracks, and Loyalists looted his property. When he brought his children back in 1783, he discovered the fields and timber stripped, the fences destroyed, and the house damaged.

After the war, Floyd served multiple terms in the State Senate, participated in the constitutional convention of 1801, backed the Federal Constitution, was elected as a Representative in the First Congress from 1789 to 1791, acted as a presidential elector four times, and became a major general in the New York militia. His second wife, whom he married in 1784, gave birth to two daughters.

About this time, Floyd became interested in western lands. The year he got married, he bought a piece of land in central New York at the headwaters of the Mohawk River near what is now Rome; three years later, he added to this by getting a state grant of over 10,000 acres in the region. He spent most of his summers visiting and developing the property.

In 1803, at nearly seventy, when most men have smaller dreams, Floyd transferred ownership of his Long Island home and farm to his son Nicoll and set off with his family to start a new life on the frontier. In the first year, he built a house in what is now Westernville, N.Y. He passed away at the age of 86 in 1821 and was laid to rest in the Presbyterian Cemetery.

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Franklin was born in 1706 in Boston. He was the tenth son of a soap and candle maker. He received some formal education but was mostly self-taught. After doing an apprenticeship with his father from ages 10 to 12, he started working for his half-brother James, who was a printer. In 1721, James started the New England Courant, the fourth newspaper in the Colonies. Benjamin anonymously contributed 14 essays to it, which were his first published writings.

In 1723, after a falling out with his half-brother, Franklin moved to Philadelphia. He only stayed there for a year before sailing to London for another two years. When he returned to Philadelphia, he quickly made his mark in the printing industry. He published The Pennsylvania Gazette (1730–48), which had been started by someone else in 1728, but his biggest success was the annual Poor Richard’s Almanac56 (1733–58). It became incredibly popular in the Colonies, second only to the Bible, and its reputation eventually spread to Europe.

Meantime, in 1730 Franklin had taken a common-law wife, who was to bear him a son and a daughter, as was another woman out of wedlock. By 1748 he had achieved financial independence and gained recognition for his philanthropy and the support he provided to important civic causes like libraries, educational institutions, and hospitals. Energetic and tireless, he also found time to pursue his strong interest in science and get involved in politics.

Franklin worked as a clerk (1736–51) and a member (1751–64) of the colonial legislature, as well as the deputy postmaster of Philadelphia (1737–53) and deputy postmaster general of the Colonies (1753–74). He also represented Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress (1754), which aimed to unite the Colonies during the French and Indian War. The congress accepted his “Plan of Union,” but the colonial assemblies turned it down because it infringed on their authority.

During the years 1757–62 and 1764–75, Franklin lived in England, initially as the agent for Pennsylvania and later for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. During the latter period, which coincided with the rise of colonial unrest, he went through a political transformation. Until then, he had been a satisfied Englishman focused mainly on Pennsylvania provincial politics; he was skeptical of popular movements and felt that extreme principles were often unnecessary. Before the issue of parliamentary taxation disrupted the old alliances, he led the conservative Quaker party in its opposition to the Anglican proprietary party and its Presbyterian frontier supporters. His goal throughout his years in London was actually to replace the Penn family administration with royal authority—essentially changing the province from a proprietary to a royal colony.

It was during the Stamp Act crisis that Franklin transformed from leading a broken faction of a provincial party to a well-known spokesperson in London for American rights. Although, as the agent for Pennsylvania, he used every persuasive tactic he could think of to oppose the bill in 1765, he initially didn’t grasp the extent of colonial anger. He thought the bill’s passage was inevitable and preferred to comply while actually working to have it repealed. His nomination of a friend and political ally as the stamp distributor in Pennsylvania, along with his apparent acceptance of the legislation, gave his proprietary opponents plenty of controversial issues to work with. Their vigorous use of these issues put his reputation at risk back home until credible information was released showing he still opposed the Act. For a while, public anger threatened his family and new home in Philadelphia until his business supporters came to his aid. Eventually, Franklin’s defense of the American position in the House of Commons during the debates over repealing the Stamp Act restored his standing back home.

Franklin came back to Philadelphia in May 1775 and quickly joined the Continental Congress. Thirteen months58 later, he was part of the committee that wrote the Declaration. According to a well-known story, after he finished signing it, he said, “Gentlemen, we must now all hang together, or we shall most assuredly all hang separately.” He went on to play a significant role in the government and took on the responsibilities of president of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention.

But, less than a year and a half after he returned, the older statesman set sail again for Europe, starting a diplomatic career that would take up most of the rest of his life. From 1776 to 1779, as one of three commissioners, he led the negotiations that resulted in treaties of commerce and alliance with France, where the people admired him, but he and the other commissioners always argued. While he was the sole commissioner to France from 1779 to 1785, he, John Jay, and John Adams negotiated the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which ended the War for Independence.

Back in the United States, from 1785 to 1787, Franklin was the president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. At the Constitutional Convention in May 1787, even though he didn’t agree with many parts of the finished document, he used his influence to calm tensions and help resolve conflicts. In his later years, while working on his Autobiography, he could reflect on a successful life that made him the toast of two continents. He remained active almost until the end; in 1787, he was elected as the first president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery—an issue he had dedicated himself to since the 1730s. His last public act was signing a memorial to Congress urging the abolition of the slavery system. Shortly after, in 1790, at the age of 84, Franklin passed away in Philadelphia and was buried in Christ Church Burial Ground.

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Gerry was born in 1744 in Marblehead, Massachusetts, as the third of 12 children. His mother was the daughter of a Boston merchant, and his father was a wealthy, politically active merchant-shipper who had once been a sea captain. After graduating from Harvard in 1762, Gerry joined his father and two brothers in the family business, which focused on exporting dried codfish to Barbados and Spain. From 1772 to 1774, he entered the colonial legislature, where he was influenced by Samuel Adams and participated in the Marblehead and Massachusetts committees of correspondence. In June of the latter year, when Parliament closed Boston Harbor and Marblehead became a major entry point for supplies donated by patriots from all over the Colonies to help the people of Boston, he assisted in the transshipment.

Between 1774 and 1776, Gerry participated in the first and second 60 provincial congresses; worked alongside Samuel Adams and John Hancock on the council of safety, which got the colony ready for war; and, as chairman of the committee of supply—perfect for his merchant background—raised troops and handled military logistics. On the night of April 18, 1775, he narrowly escaped being captured by British troops heading to Lexington and Concord. After a meeting of the council of safety at an inn in Menotomy (Arlington), while traveling from Cambridge to Lexington, he had gone to bed for the night but quickly responded to the alarm and fled.

Gerry joined the Continental Congress in 1776 and voted for independence in July, but missing the formal ceremonies on August 2 meant he had to sign the Declaration later that year. His focus in Congress was on military and financial issues, where he showcased a mixed attitude that would become his political trademark. He earned the nickname “soldiers’ friend” for pushing for better pay and equipment, but he was inconsistent on the topic of pensions. Even though he didn’t approve of standing armies, he suggested long-term enlistments. While he was skeptical of military officials, he formed friendships with both George Washington and Thomas Conway, two generals who were fierce rivals.

Until 1779, Gerry sat on and sometimes chaired the congressional treasury board, which managed Continental finances. As both an Army procurement agent and a merchant-supplier, he used information he gathered in Congress to benefit his profitable business. However, he criticized profiteering and personally followed a fair-price schedule. In 1780, as wartime financial issues worsened, the Delegates decided to update the schedule. Gerry's strong objections led to an argument, and he stormed out of Congress. Though he was technically still a Member, he didn’t return for 3 years. During that time, he was involved in trade and privateering and served in the lower house of the State legislature.

Back in Congress from 1783 to 1785, Gerry was one of those Representatives who had shown talents as Revolutionary activists and wartime leaders but struggled to handle the tough job of stabilizing the National Government. He was experienced and dedicated, but his lack of humor, skepticism about others' motives, and constant fear of political and military oppression made him many enemies. In 1786, a year after leaving Congress and with his fortune secure, he retired from business, got married,61 and took a seat in the State legislature. The following year, he moved from Marblehead to Cambridge and bought a confiscated Loyalist estate, where he would live for the rest of his life.

Gerry was one of the most outspoken delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He annoyed almost everyone with his inconsistency and, as a colleague put it, “objected to everything he didn’t propose.” Initially, he supported a strong central government, but in the end, he rejected and refused to sign the Constitution, mainly because it didn't include a bill of rights and he saw it as a threat to republicanism. He led the opposition to ratification in Massachusetts. In 1789, when he changed his mind and decided to support the Constitution, he was elected to the First Congress, where, much to the dismay of the Antifederalists, he promoted Federalist policies.

Gerry left Congress for the last time in 1793 and took a 4-year break. During this time, he grew skeptical of the Federalists' goals, especially their efforts to build an alliance with Britain, and aligned himself with the pro-French Democratic-Republicans. In 1797, President John Adams appointed him as the only non-Federalist on a three-person commission tasked with negotiating peace with France, which was on the verge of war with the United States. During the subsequent XYZ affair (1797–98), Gerry damaged his reputation. The French foreign minister misled him into thinking that his presence in France would prevent war, and he stayed much longer than the other frustrated commissioners. Eventually, the embarrassed Adams recalled him, facing criticism from the Federalists.

In 1800–03, Gerry, who was never very popular with the voters in Massachusetts due to his aristocratic arrogance, lost four attempts to become governor. However, he finally succeeded in 1810–12. Toward the end of his two terms, battered by political controversy, the Democratic-Republicans pushed through a shady redistricting plan to ensure their control over the State Senate. In response, the Federalists mocked Gerry and cleverly came up with the term “gerrymander” to describe the salamander-like shape of one of the newly drawn districts.

Despite his old age, poor health, and the risk of poverty due to neglecting his personal affairs, in 1813 Gerry accepted the Vice-Presidency in James Madison’s Democratic-Republican administration.62 In the fall of 1814, the 70-year-old politician was fatally struck down while heading to the Senate. He left behind his wife, who would live until 1849, as the last surviving widow of a signer, along with three sons and four daughters. Gerry is buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Gwinnett was likely born in 1735 in the village of Down Hatherly, Gloucestershire, England. He was the second son in a family of at least seven children, the son of an Anglican vicar of Welsh descent and a mother with English heritage. He probably learned about trade and finance from an uncle who was a merchant in Bristol, and in 1757, he moved to Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. He married the daughter of a grocer, with whom he had three daughters, and for a while, he was in a partnership with her father. In 1759, however, Gwinnett got into the export shipping business and developed a significant trade with the American Colonies, possibly even visiting them himself at times.

63 The exact date Gwinnett moved to Savannah, Ga., is unknown, but in 1765, he bought a store there. Later that same year, for some reason, he sold it and suddenly changed careers. Clearly captivated by dreams of being a plantation owner on a big estate but undeterred by his lack of money, experience, and training, he borrowed £3,000 and bought large St. Catherine’s Island. It was off the Georgia coast, not far from the busy mainland port of Sunbury, which was a competitor of Savannah. At this time, he likely built a home on the island. However, even though he was already heavily in debt, he also bought some coastal lands on credit and received grants for others from the colony, as well as purchased a large number of slaves to work his properties. Poachers made his situation worse by stealing the island’s livestock.

Gwinnett’s land, slaves, and other belongings were quickly taken by creditors. Eventually, in 1773, they seized the island but let Gwinnett keep his home there. He lived there for the rest64 of his life. However, during the war, the arrival of British ships, which restocked their food supplies using the livestock on the vulnerable island, occasionally compelled him and his family to hurriedly cross over to Sunbury for temporary shelter.

Meantime, Gwinnett had already gotten into politics. In 1768–69, he was appointed as one of the King’s justices of the peace and as a local pilotage commissioner. From 1769 to 1771, the voters of St. John’s Parish elected him to the colonial assembly in Savannah, but he attended only sporadically due to his financial struggles. When his situation worsened, he stepped away from public office for five years.

Gwinnett made a comeback on the national scene. Unlike the other two Georgia signers, Lyman Hall and George Walton, he joined the patriot side later than them—apparently delayed for some time due to his English birth and strong family ties in England. His friend Hall, who lived in Sunbury and was also part of the Midway Congregational Church, probably convinced him starting in the summer of 1775. The following February, the provincial congress appointed Gwinnett to the Continental Congress, though he didn’t reach Philadelphia until May. He was there for only about 10 weeks. After signing the Declaration on August 2, he returned to Georgia, where he hoped to secure a colonel position in one of the units the State was forming, but he was unsuccessful.

In October, Gwinnett was reelected to the Continental Congress but decided not to attend. Instead, over the next five months, he was instrumental in drafting the state’s first constitution, during which he helped prevent a proposed union between South Carolina and Georgia. After the death of the governor, or president of the Executive Council, in March 1777, the council appointed Gwinnett as Acting Governor for two months, but he was unable to secure reelection. Before leaving office, he had a conflict with the controversial General Lachlan McIntosh, an old rival. This led to a pistol duel in May just outside Savannah. Both men were wounded, but Gwinnett died a few days later from a gangrenous infection in his leg. Colonial Park Cemetery in Savannah has a grave that is believed to be his.

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A native of Wallingford, Conn., Hall was born in 1724. He graduated from Yale College in 1747 at the age of 23, returned home, and answered a family call to the Congregational ministry. An uncle, Rev. Samuel Hall, taught him theology. In 1749, he started preaching in Bridgeport and nearby towns. Young and inexperienced, he likely found himself caught in the middle of a liberal-conservative divide and somehow distanced himself from his congregation, but he quickly regained their trust after showing remorse following his dismissal in 1751, and for a few years, he temporarily filled vacant pulpits.

During this time, in 1752, Hall got married, but his wife only lived for a year; about two years later, he remarried, and this union produced a son. Meanwhile, Hall became disheartened by his experiences as a minister. He studied medicine with a local doctor and partially supported himself by teaching. Once he finished his medical training, he moved back to Wallingford and set up his practice.

In 1757, 33-year-old Hall moved to Dorchester, S.C., a community of New England Puritans near Charleston, searching for better opportunities. Within a few months, he joined some of the locals in a move that had started back in 1752. They were66 heading south to Georgia’s coastal Midway District, in St. John’s Parish (now Liberty County). This region offered more land and a healthier climate.

In 1758, the colonists completed their move and established Sunbury. It developed into a bustling seaport that supported the surrounding slave-based rice and indigo economy. Like many other planters, Hall had a home there, which was healthier than inland, as well as at Hall’s Knoll, the plantation he bought just north of what is now Midway shortly after arriving in the area. Because the plantations were near malarial swamps, Hall was occupied with providing medical care and managing his estate.

St. John’s Parish became the richest in Georgia. But that wasn’t its only distinction; the people were deeply rooted in the New England tradition of independence. When tensions with Britain flared up in the mid-1760s, the parish, under Hall's leadership, stood out in its opposition compared to almost everyone else in the colony, except for another group of Revolutionaries in Savannah led by George Walton and others. Georgia, which would be the last of the colonies to join the Continental Association, was the youngest, most isolated, and most sparsely populated. Also the poorest, it felt less of the impact from British economic restrictions. The Loyalist ruling elite in Georgia looked down on the small group of Revolutionaries and fought against their every effort.

Hall was shocked by the inadequate representation of the parishes as a whole and the indecisiveness of the Revolutionary conventions he attended in Savannah during the summer of 1774 and the following January, particularly their failure to send Delegates to the Continental Congress. He sadly returned to St. John’s Parish. It was poised to break away from the colony and proposed an alliance with South Carolina, which rejected the offer. Unfazed, in March 1775, the parish held its own convention and sent Hall as its own “delegate” to the Continental Congress.

Two months later, Congress welcomed Hall as a nonvoting member. In July, Georgia, finally on board, approved Hall’s presence in Congress and appointed four other delegates. Hall served until 1780. Two years earlier, he had moved his family a bit north right before British troops devastated and took over the Georgia coast. During this, they destroyed Hall’s Knoll and his Sunbury home and seized his property.

67 When the British left Savannah in 1782, Hall moved there and restarted his medical practice to improve his finances. The following January, St. John’s Parish, where he had kept connections, chose him for the State legislature. That group, in turn, named him governor (1783–84). His administration, which focused on reconstruction, was somewhat tainted by his buying and speculating on lands taken from Loyalists, but it helped rebuild the war-torn state and established a foundation for future growth.

In Hall's later years, he served for a time as a judge of the lower court in Chatham County and as a trustee for a proposed state university (initially named Franklin College and later the University of Georgia). However, his role as executor of Button Gwinnett’s complicated estate demanded years of legal disputes. In 1785, he sold his Hall’s Knoll land. Five years later, he relocated from Savannah to Burke County and bought Shell Bluff Plantation, located on the Savannah River about 25 miles south of Augusta. A few months later, he passed away and was buried there. His remains are now interred at the Signers’ Monument in Augusta.

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Hancock, born in 1737 in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, lost his father, a Congregational pastor, when he was 7. He spent the next 6 years living with his grandparents in Lexington before moving in with his guardian, Thomas Hancock, a childless uncle who was one of the richest merchant-shippers in Boston. After attending Boston Latin School and graduating from Harvard College in 1754, John started working as a clerk in his uncle’s business and quickly learned the ropes. In 1760–61, while visiting London to see the English side of the business, he attended the funeral of George II and the coronation of George III, who reportedly granted him an audience. In 1763, he became a partner in his uncle's business, which his uncle left to him when he died the following year, along with a fortune that was likely the largest in New England and a luxurious house on Beacon Street.

Hancock teamed up with other merchants to protest the Stamp Act (1765), and the following year began a long career in politics. However, he didn’t really connect with the patriots until two years later. At that point, British customs officials, feeling emboldened by the arrival of a warship in Boston Harbor, accused him of smuggling and confiscated one of his ships. During the riots that followed, the frightened customs officials escaped to an island in the harbor. A few months later, the first large group of British troops arrived in the port, creating a tense situation that ultimately led to the Boston Massacre (1770). John Adams successfully defended Hancock in court until the British dropped the smuggling charge, but this incident made him a hero across the Colonies.

Other factors connected Hancock to the patriots. Samuel and John Adams, recognizing the benefits of having such a wealthy and prominent ally, welcomed him into their group, supported his popularity among the public, and helped elevate his status in the Revolutionary hierarchy. When the first provincial congress met in Salem and Concord in 1774, he served as its president and as chairman of the crucial council of safety. The second provincial congress, which met the following year in Cambridge and Concord, chose him to represent them in the Continental Congress.

On April 18, just 3 days after the provincial congress finished, British troops marched from Boston to take rebel supplies at Concord. Paul Revere warned Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were visiting nearby Lexington, about their approach during the night, allowing them to escape. However, the conflicts between the British and Americans at Lexington and Concord marked the start of the war. The two men avoided Boston and hid in various locations for 2 weeks before heading to Philadelphia. Later that summer, Hancock got married and had a daughter who died as an infant and a son, John George Washington Hancock, who lived only 9 years.

From 1775 until 1777, Hancock led the Continental Congress. In his first year, his ego often created tension with many members and caused personal bitterness as well. He was unaware of his own limitations, especially his lack of military experience, and foolishly hoped that he, rather than Washington, would be appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army. Hancock also stirred resentment among his fellow New Englanders, particularly Samuel Adams, by seeking the support of moderates like John Dickinson and Benjamin Harrison. Hancock believed that Samuel Adams was the one who, in 1777, blocked a congressional vote of thanks for his services and he never forgave him.

Only Hancock and Charles Thomson, the President and Secretary of Congress, signed the broadside copy of the Declaration, which was printed the night it was adopted, July 4, 1776, and shared with the public the next day. During the formal signing of the parchment copy on August 2, tradition says that Hancock wrote his name in large letters so that the King wouldn't need glasses to recognize him as a “traitor.” After stepping down as the presiding officer in 1777, he kept serving as a Member of Congress until 1780, although he spent much of his time in Boston and solidified his political standing in Massachusetts for the rest of his life. In 1778, as a major general in the militia, he led an expedition that failed to reclaim Newport, R.I., from the British. He made a more direct contribution to the war by accepting Continental currency from his debtors, despite the fact that his wealth had already taken a hit due to the war.

In 1780, the same year Hancock stepped down from his position in Congress and attended his state's constitutional convention, he was overwhelmingly elected as the first Governor (1780–85). He won reelection in 1787–93. In between (1785–86), he once again served in Congress. In 1788, he chaired the Massachusetts convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution, which he supported.

While still Governor, in 1793 at the age of 56, Hancock died in Boston. His funeral, one of the most impressive ever held in New England, ended with burial at Old Granary Burying Ground.

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Harrison was born in 1726 at his father’s estate, Berkeley, in Charles City County, Virginia. He enrolled at the College of William and Mary but left before graduating in 1745 after his father passed away to take over the management of the family plantation. Soon after, he got married, and seven of his children would survive infancy. Over time, his landholdings expanded to include eight plantations and other properties, and he also ventured into shipping and shipbuilding. Following in the footsteps of his predecessors, around 1749 he was admitted to the House of Burgesses. He served there, often as speaker, until 1774, when the Royal Governor disbanded the assembly.

Harrison's conservatism showed itself early in the Revolutionary movement. In 1764, when the burgesses learned about the Stamp Act that was about to be passed in Parliament, they created a committee to write a protest. As a member of that committee, Harrison helped write the document. However, the next year, when the act took effect, he refused to support Patrick Henry's resolutions calling for civil disobedience as a response. When he had to take a stand as the divide with the Crown grew, Harrison aligned himself with the patriots. Between 1773 and 1776, he participated in the work of the Revolutionary conventions, the committee of correspondence, and the provincial congresses.

Meantime, in 1774, Harrison was appointed to the First71 Continental Congress. Although he usually stayed quiet during discussions, he made important contributions on the foreign affairs, marine, military, and financial committees. As chair of the committee of the whole (1776–77), he led the discussions that resulted in the adoption of the Declaration and the early debates about the proposed Articles of Confederation.

In 1777, the same year Harrison stepped away from Congress, he joined the lower house of the Virginia legislature, where he served as speaker from 1778 to 1781. His three terms as Governor (1781–84) marked a rise in influence for the conservatives in Virginia, which included Harrison, Braxton, and former extremists like Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee. After being succeeded by Henry, Harrison returned to the legislature (1784–91), taking on the speaker role at times. In 1788, at the Virginia ratifying convention, he raised concerns about the Federal Constitution for not including a bill of rights. However, once ratification was achieved, he supported the new Government. Three years later, Harrison passed away in his mid-sixties at Berkeley and was buried in the family cemetery there.

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The year after Hart was born in 1711 in Stonington, Conn., his parents moved to New Jersey and settled on a farm near Hopewell. Hart lived there and farmed the land for the rest of his life. In 1740, he got married and started a family of 13. Over time, he earned the nickname “Honest John” and acquired a significant amount of property, including grist, saw, and fulling mills, becoming a community leader. From the 1750s until the start of the War for Independence in 1775, despite having limited education, he climbed the political ranks in Hunterdon County and the state. He served as a justice of the peace, county judge, colonial legislator (1761–71), and judge of the New Jersey court of common pleas.

In the legislature's conflict with the Royal Governor, Hart opposed parliamentary taxation and the presence of British troops in the colony. During the years 1774–76, he participated in the New Jersey provincial congresses, where he became the vice-president and was appointed to the council of safety and the committee of correspondence. In June 1776, he and four other delegates were selected to replace the current conservatives in the Continental Congress. The new delegation arrived in Philadelphia just a few days before the votes for independence on July 1 and 2 and voted in favor.

In August 1776, right after Hart signed the Declaration, he left to become the speaker of the lower house of the New Jersey legislature. That winter, during the British invasion of the area, the Redcoats caused a lot of destruction on his farm and mills, forcing him to hide in the hills around the Sourland Mountains. When he came out of hiding after the American victories at Princeton and Trenton, he found that his wife, who had been ill during the attack, had died and his family was scattered. In 1777–78, he served again on the council of safety, but his declining health led to his retirement. He passed away the following year at the age of 69 on his Hopewell farm. He is buried in the yard of the First Baptist Church at Hopewell.

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Born in 1730 at Maybury Hill, an estate on the outskirts of Princeton, N.J., Hewes was the son of a devout and well-off Quaker farmer. He had a strict religious upbringing and attended a local school. After learning the trade from a Philadelphia merchant, he started his own business. Around 1760, eager to grow his modest wealth, he moved to the bustling seaport town of Edenton, N.C. There, where he would live for the rest of his life, he established a successful mercantile and shipping company and gained recognition. Only one significant event disrupted his life. A few days before his planned wedding, his fiancée unexpectedly passed away. Hewes remained single for the rest of his life.

As a member of the North Carolina assembly (1766–75), the committee of correspondence (1773), and the provincial assemblies (1774–75), Hewes helped the Whigs take down the royal government. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1774, he strongly backed nonimportation measures even though it meant personal financial setbacks. By the time the War for Independence broke out the following year, he had completely rejected the pacifistic beliefs of the Quakers—this change had been developing due to his passion for dancing and other social activities, as well as his involvement in Revolutionary efforts.

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Hewes was one of those who initially opposed breaking away from Great Britain. So, when he had to present the Halifax Resolves to the Continental Congress in May 1776, it was a tough role for him. These resolves, passed the month before by the provincial assembly, directed the North Carolina Delegates to vote for independence if it was proposed. Hewes, who thought the resolves were hasty, went against his State’s commitment and initially opposed Richard Henry Lee’s independence resolution on June 7. However, according to John Adams, a change overcame Hewes during the debate. “He suddenly stood up straight,” Adams reported, “and lifting both his hands to Heaven, as if he had been in a trance, shouted, ‘It is done! and I will abide by it.’”

One incident involving Hewes highlights the ongoing issue of regional rivalries among the Delegates. As key members of the marine committee, Hewes and John Adams played crucial roles in setting up the Continental Navy. When it came time to select the nation’s first naval captains, the two men had a conflict. For one of the positions, Hewes nominated his friend John Paul Jones, an experienced sailor who had recently moved to Virginia from Scotland. Adams argued that all captain positions should go to New Englanders and stubbornly opposed the nomination. New England had already given in to the South by accepting George Washington, an able Virginian, as commander in chief of the Continental Army, so Adams wasn’t about to make another concession for the Navy. Sensing that arguing was pointless, Hewes reluctantly backed down. Jones, who would become the most celebrated naval hero of the Revolution, ended up receiving only a lieutenant’s commission.

In 1777, Hewes lost his attempt to get reelected to Congress, which was one of the few setbacks in his life. In 1778–79, he found comfort in the State legislature. In 1779, despite health issues, he agreed to be reelected to the Continental Congress. A few months after returning to Philadelphia and not long before his 50th birthday, he died from exhaustion and fatigue. He is buried in Christ Church Burial Ground there.

The eldest son of one of the wealthiest planters in South Carolina, Heyward was born in 1746 at Old House Plantation in St. Helena’s Parish (later St. Luke’s Parish and now Jasper County) near the76 Georgia border, about 25 miles northeast of Savannah. In 1771, after studying in London for 5 years, he started practicing law. The following year, his parish elected him to the colonial legislature (1772–75), which was in conflict with the Royal Governor over taxes imposed by Parliament. During that time, in 1773, he got married and settled at White Hall Plantation, just a couple of miles from his father's home.

While serving as a legislator, Heyward seemingly joined the Revolutionaries, as he attended a provincial convention in the summer of 1774 that selected Delegates for the Continental Congress. Throughout 1775–76, he was active in the first and second provincial congresses, along with the council of safety and the committee that wrote a State constitution. During his time in the Continental Congress (1776–78), he signed both the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration. After his term, he traveled to Charleston and moved into the townhouse he had inherited from his father the previous year. He became a circuit court judge, represented Charleston in the State legislature that met in the city, and held the title of militia captain.

In 1779, Heyward was injured during Brig. Gen. William Moultrie’s successful defense against a British attack on Port Royal Island, located along the South Carolina coast near where Heyward lived. The next year, the British raided White Hall and took all the slaves. When they captured Charleston, they also took Heyward, who was helping to defend the city. He was held in prison in St. Augustine, Florida, until July 1781. Just before he was released, he celebrated Independence Day by rewriting patriotic verses to the British national anthem. “God save the King” became “God save the thirteen States,” a version that quickly spread from New Hampshire to Georgia.

From 1782 to 1789, Heyward returned to his role as a circuit court judge while also serving two terms in the State legislature (1782–84). In 1785, he helped establish and became the first president of the Agricultural Society of South Carolina. The next year, his wife died, and he remarried; it seems only one child from his two marriages reached adulthood. He spent most of the rest of his life—except for attending the State constitutional convention in 1790—managing his plantation; he sold his townhouse in Charleston in 1794. The last surviving signer from South Carolina, he died in 1809 at the age of 62 and was buried in the family cemetery at Old House Plantation.

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Hooper was born in Boston, MA, in 1742, the first child of William Hooper, a Scottish immigrant and Congregationalist minister who five years later would switch to the Anglican Church. Prepared for the ministry in his youth, Hooper spent seven years in pre-college education at Boston Latin School. This allowed him to enter Harvard College as a sophomore in 1757. He graduated three years later, but much to his father's disappointment, he rejected a career in ministry. The following year, he further distanced himself from his Loyalist father and isolated himself from his family by studying law under James Otis, a brilliant but radical lawyer.

Partly to ease family conflict and partly to improve his legal prospects, around 1764, Hooper went to Wilmington, N.C. Three years later, he married the daughter of an early settler, and they had two sons and a daughter. He lived either in Wilmington or at his nearby estate, Finian, about 8 miles away on Masonboro Sound, traveled from court to court, and built a clientele among the wealthy planters of the lower Cape Fear region. Ambitious, he had political ambitions and by 1770–71 had secured the role of deputy attorney general of North Carolina.

In this role, looking out for his own financial interests and political objectives, Hooper supported Royal Governor William Tryon during a clash between the government and a group of North Carolina78 frontiersmen known as the Regulators. They were rising up against government corruption and oppression, as well as excessive legal and other fees. Hooper advocated for using force to suppress the rebellion, and in 1771, he joined the government forces that defeated the rebels at the Battle of Alamance.

Within a few years, Hooper’s loyalty to the royal government faded. At the time of his election to the colonial assembly (1773–75), the law establishing the colony’s court system was about to expire. The assembly tried to attach a provision to the new court law that would allow the colony to seize American property owned by foreign debtors, including residents of Great Britain. When the Royal Governor blocked the bill, a 4-year struggle for control of the colony began. Hooper, despite losing his income as a lawyer and relying on his wife’s small fortune for support, advocated for the assembly’s cause.

Hooper rose to a leadership role among the Whigs, although he wasn’t a fan of extreme actions. In a letter from April 1774 to his friend James Iredell, he predicted the Colonies’ separation from Great Britain—the earliest known forecast of independence, which earned him the nickname “Prophet of Independence.” That summer, after the Royal Governor dissolved the colonial assembly, he helped organize and led an unofficial conference in Wilmington. It decided to hold a provincial assembly, which gathered in August at New Bern and elected Delegates, one of whom was Hooper, to the Continental Congress. Later that same year, he became a member of the committee of correspondence.

During the years 1774–77, Hooper split his time between Congress, where he became known as a great speaker, and the North Carolina provincial assembly, where he worked to establish a state government. In 1777, though, financial issues with his law practice and a wish to be closer to his family led him to resign from Congress and head back to Wilmington. He was quickly elected to the state legislature and served there almost continuously until 1786.

In 1780, the British invaded North Carolina. Hooper moved his family from Finian to Wilmington for safety, but in January 1781, while he was away on business, the city fell to the enemy. Separated from his loved ones for over 10 months and often in dire straits, he relied on friends in Edenton and nearby areas for shelter and food.79 One time, after contracting malaria, he was nursed back to health by Iredell’s wife. When the British evacuated the Wilmington area in November, Hooper returned to find most of his property, including Finian, in ruins. Shortly after, he rejoined his wife and children, who had fled to Hillsborough, which he made his home for the rest of his life.

During the aftermath of the Revolution, Hooper, despite his ongoing political ambitions, lost the public's support. Unable to adapt to the rise of republicanism in the State, he took a conservative approach. His aristocratic outlook, lenient attitude towards Loyalists, and skepticism of the common people hurt his popularity. In 1788, he vigorously campaigned for the State to ratify the Federal Constitution, which was accomplished early the following year. By then, he was in poor health and feeling down, but he managed to hang on for almost 2 more years. He died in 1790 in his late forties. His remains, relocated from the Hillsborough town cemetery in 1894, now rest at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park near Greensboro.

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Hopkins achieved success entirely through his own efforts. Born in 1707 in Providence and with just a basic education, he grew up in the nearby farming community of Scituate, made a living as a farmer and surveyor, and got married at 19. Five years later, in 1731, when Scituate Township split from Providence, he got involved in politics. Over the next ten years, he held various elected and appointed positions: moderator of the first town meeting, town clerk, president of the town council, justice of the peace, justice and clerk of the Providence County court of common pleas, legislator, and speaker of the house.

In 1742, about two years after he and his brother Esek started a shipping and trading business, Stephen moved back to Providence. Over the next thirty years, he grew his business and likely would have amassed a fortune if he hadn't also supported various community projects and expanded his political involvement. He remained active in the legislature, served as assistant and chief justice of the Superior Court, was elected governor ten times, and represented Rhode Island at several intercolonial meetings. At the Albany Congress (1754), he developed a friendship with Franklin and helped draft a plan for colonial unity that the congress approved, but the Colonies ultimately rejected. The following year, two years after the death of his first wife, who had given birth to five sons and two daughters, he remarried.

About this time, Hopkins took charge of the colony’s radical faction, backed by merchants from Providence. For over a decade, it fiercely battled for political dominance in Rhode Island against a conservative group in Newport, led by Samuel Ward, who was a political rival of Hopkins.

Hopkins was a man with a wide range of interests, including humanitarianism, education, and science, and he applied his skills in many areas. Around 1754, he helped establish a public subscription library in Providence. He served as the first chancellor of Rhode Island College (later Brown University), which was founded in 1764 in Warren, and six years later, he played a key role in moving it to Providence. He was also a member of the Philosophical Society of Newport. Firmly against slavery, in 1774 he wrote a bill that was passed by the Rhode Island legislature, prohibiting the importation of slaves into the colony—one of the earliest antislavery laws in the United States.

Long ago, Hopkins had aligned himself with the Revolutionaries. In 176281, he helped establish the influential Providence Gazette and Country Journal. Two years later, he contributed an article titled “The Rights of the Colonies Examined,” which criticized parliamentary taxation and advocated for colonial self-governance. Released as a pamphlet the following year, it spread widely across the Colonies and Great Britain, positioning Hopkins as one of the earliest patriot leaders. He also served on the Rhode Island committee of correspondence while managing his responsibilities in the legislature and Superior Court, all while being a Member of the Continental Congress (1774–76). He participated in the committees that drafted the Articles of Confederation and established the Continental Navy, appointing Esek Hopkins as its commander in chief. Due to poor health, Stephen had to step back in September 1776, a month after he signed the Declaration.

Hopkins chose not to run for Congress again after his initial terms, but he was active in the State legislature for a while and participated in several political conventions in New England. He stepped away from public service around 1780 and passed away five years later in Providence at the age of 78. He was buried in the North Burial Ground.

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Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia in 1737, the oldest of eight kids. His father, who passed away when he was 14, was a well-known lawyer, politician, and community leader. After graduating from the College of Philadelphia (which later became part of the University of Pennsylvania) in 1757, young Hopkinson studied law under Benjamin Chew, the attorney general of the province, and four years later he was admitted to the bar. In 1763, he took the job of customs collector in Salem, N.J. Three years later, after struggling in business, he went to England to try to get a position as a colonial customs collector with the help of friends and family. During his year there, although he didn't find the job he was looking for, he met with Benjamin Franklin, Lord North, and other notable figures, and he may have studied under the artist Benjamin West.

Back in Philadelphia, Hopkinson ran a store and got married in 1768. Four years later, he became the customs collector in New Castle, Delaware. Around 1774, he moved in with his father-in-law in Bordentown, New Jersey, started practicing law, and began a two-year term in the legislature. As a Member of the Continental Congress for just a few months in 1776, he kept himself entertained by drawing caricatures of his fellow members. His later positions included: chairman (1777–78) of Philadelphia’s Continental Navy Board, treasurer of loans (1778–81), judge of the admiralty court of Pennsylvania (1779), and Federal circuit judge for the eastern district of the state (1789–91).

During his busy public career, the ambitious Hopkinson left his mark on music, art, and literature. His “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free” (1759) is likely the first American piece of secular music, while his “Temple of Minerva” (1781) was the first American attempt at an opera. In the art world, he was especially recognized for his crayon portraits and his work on heraldic symbols. However, his literary achievements were more impressive than all his other contributions.

Between 1757 and 1773, Hopkinson wrote a lot of poems and essays, many of which were humorous and satirical, for various periodicals. The following year, he started promoting the patriot cause. He published a number of widely read and influential pamphlets, essays, and letters, often in an allegorical style, that mocked the British and Loyalists, highlighted colonial grievances, and motivated the colonists. The Prophecy, written in 1776 before the Declaration of Independence was adopted, predicted that event.83 After the war, Hopkinson continued to address political and social issues and became one of the best-known writers in the United States.

While serving as a Federal circuit judge, Hopkinson passed away in Philadelphia at the age of 53. He was buried in Christ Church Burial Ground. He is survived by his wife and five children.

Born into a large family in 1731 in Windham (present-day Scotland), Conn., Huntington grew up on a farm, received a limited education, and at 16 began working as a cooper. However, his ambition soon drove him to pursue more. He self-studied borrowed legal books, gained admission to the bar around 1758, and started his practice. Two years later, he moved to nearby Norwich. The following year, he got married; he and his wife, who remained childless, later adopted three children. As time went on, he thrived in law and became a community leader.

In 1764, Huntington started his public career in the Connecticut legislature. The following year, he was appointed as the King’s Attorney for the colony and was elected as a justice of the peace for New London County. He held these positions for almost the entire decade leading up to the start of the War for Independence in 1775. In the meantime, two years earlier, the colonial legislature had appointed him as a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court, a position he was reappointed to every year for a decade.

In 1774, Huntington, showing his increasing support for the Colonies in their fight against the Crown, stepped down as King’s Attorney and joined the Revolutionaries. The following year, he became a member of the upper house of the legislature (1775–84) and got involved in national politics as a Delegate to the Continental Congress. His committee work included areas like Indian affairs, ordnance supply, and maritime issues. In the fall of 1776, health concerns and exhaustion led him to return to Connecticut. From then until 1783, he struggled with illness, attending congressional sessions sporadically (1778, 1779–81, 1783), often going home to recover. Despite these challenges, he took on the significant role of President of Congress (1779–81), presiding on March 1, 1781, when the Articles of Confederation were adopted.

Huntington's well-deserved "retirement" when he returned to Connecticut in 1783, after eight years of service to the nation, ended up being 12 years of active engagement—despite his declining health. Even while he was in Congress, he continued to serve his state in various other ways, and all his legislative and other positions were kept open for him. He held a series of appointed and elected offices: chief justice of the Superior Court (1784), Lieutenant Governor (1785), and Governor (1786–96). As Governor, he championed Connecticut's ratification of the Federal Constitution and worked to enhance the educational system. As one of Connecticut's seven first presidential electors in 1789, he received two "favorite son" votes for the presidency.

Ever interested in education, despite not having a college degree himself, in the 1780s Huntington received honorary degrees from Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth, and was appointed as one of the original trustees of Plainfield (Conn.) Academy. Before that, he served as an adviser to the president of Yale.

In 1796, at the age of 65, he was still Governor when he passed away at his home in Norwich and was buried in the Old Burial Ground.

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As the author of the Declaration of Independence, an influential political thinker, a cofounder of the Democratic-Republican Party, a Virginia legislator and Governor, the first U.S. Secretary of State, the second Vice President, and the third President, Jefferson has made a lasting impact on our political system and philosophy. Additionally, he set the groundwork for the westward expansion of the nation; and two of his followers, Madison and Monroe, succeeded him in the White House.

Like most successful politicians, Jefferson made his fair share of enemies and experienced the pain of failure. His struggle to balance his contradictory traits of idealism and pragmatism led to inconsistencies that made him vulnerable. He didn't have the aggressiveness or charisma of many leaders. To make up for his natural shyness and shortcomings as a speaker, he excelled in written communication and learned to wield administrative power. His time as governor ended poorly. His vision of an agricultural America,86 filled with well-educated and politically savvy farmers, was never achieved. Yet none of these factors diminish his reputation or undermine his accomplishments.

The oldest of two sons in a family of ten, Jefferson was born in 1743 at Shadwell, a frontier plantation in Goochland (now Albemarle) County, Virginia. However, two years later, his father, Peter, a self-made surveyor-magistrate-planter who had married into the prominent Randolph family, moved the family east to Tuckahoe Plantation, near Richmond. He did this to fulfill a promise he made to his wife's recently deceased cousin, William Randolph, to act as guardian for his son, Thomas Mann Randolph. Young Jefferson spent most of his childhood in the Randolph home, starting his elementary education with private tutors. In 1752, when he was about nine years old, the family returned to Shadwell. His father passed away five years later and left him almost 3,000 acres.

In 1760, at 17 years old, Jefferson started at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. An unexpected advantage was the opportunity to witness practical politics in the colonial capital. Jefferson graduated in 1762, studied law locally under the well-known teacher George Wythe, and was admitted to the bar in 1767.

At Shadwell, Jefferson took on the civic duties and status that his father had held. In 1770, when a fire destroyed the building, he moved to his nearby estate, Monticello, where he had already started constructing a home. In 1772, he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow. During their ten years together, she gave birth to six children, but only two daughters lived to adulthood.

Meanwhile, in 1769 at the age of 26, Jefferson was elected to the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg. He served continuously until 1775 and aligned himself with the anti-British group. Unlike his eloquent peers Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson focused his efforts on committee work instead of public debate. A skilled writer, he drafted many of the revolutionary documents adopted by the House of Burgesses. His A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), one of the most influential essays of the time, rejected parliamentary control of the Colonies and argued that their connection to the King was based solely on their own choice and recognition of mutual benefits.

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Jefferson used the same working methods in the Continental Congress (1775–76), where his decisiveness in committees stood in stark contrast to his silence on the floor. However, his colleagues rejected several of the documents he wrote in his first year due to their extreme anti-British tone. But by the time he returned the following May after spending the winter in Virginia, the mood in Congress had changed significantly. The very next month, at just 33 years old, he was appointed to the five-man committee tasked with drafting the Declaration of Independence, a responsibility his colleagues gave him. In September, shortly after Congress adopted the draft with changes and most Delegates signed it, Jefferson went back to Virginia—eager to be closer to home and feeling he could have a bigger political impact there.

A notable career in the House of Delegates (1776–79), the lower house of the legislature, followed. There, Jefferson took over leadership of the "progressive" party from Patrick Henry, who stepped down to become Governor. Highlights of this service included revising the state laws (1776–79), in which Jefferson worked with George Wythe and Edmund Pendleton; and writing a bill for establishing religious freedom in Virginia, which was introduced in 1779 but not passed until seven years later.

Although limited as Governor (1779–81) by wartime conditions and constitutional restrictions, Jefferson turned out to be a weak leader, often hesitating to use his authority even in emergencies. When the British invaded the state in the spring of 1781, chaos ensued. On June 3, while the legislature was meeting in Charlottesville because the British controlled Richmond, Jefferson suggested merging civil and military agencies under Gen. Thomas Nelson, Jr., effectively stepping down from his position. The next day, British raiders nearly captured him and a group of lawmakers he was hosting at Monticello. Even though he was later formally cleared of blame for leaving the governorship, his actions led to a conservative takeover of the government, and his reputation remained tarnished for a while.

Jefferson stayed out of the spotlight for two years while his wife passed away. In 1783, he returned to Congress, which the following year sent him to Paris to help Benjamin Franklin and John Adams negotiate trade agreements with European countries. During his five years there, Jefferson took over from Franklin as Minister to France (1785–89), secured various trade concessions from the French, strengthened ties with them, visited England and Italy, experienced European culture, and witnessed the early stages of the French Revolution.

In the years that followed, along with enjoyable breaks at Monticello, Jefferson held the highest offices in the country: Secretary of State (1790–93), Vice President (1797–1801), and two terms as President (1801–09). Always resistant to political conflict, he took on these roles as much out of civic and party responsibility as personal ambition. On top of the usual burdens and pressures were his intense disagreements with Alexander Hamilton on most national policy matters and the harsh attacks from Federalists. However, Jefferson found significant satisfaction in his many achievements. One of these was cofounding the Democratic-Republican Party with James Madison, which eventually pushed the Federalists out of power.

Physically and mentally worn out, in 1809 Jefferson retired for the last time to Monticello. He maintained his health and diverse interests, keeping in touch with and hosting statesmen, politicians, scientists, explorers, scholars, and Native American leaders. When life became too hectic, he found peace at Poplar Forest, a getaway near Lynchburg that he had designed and built between 1806 and 1819. His main focus during most of his final decade was establishing the University of Virginia (1819) in Charlottesville.

Painfully distressing to Jefferson, however, was the miserable state of his finances. His small salary in public office, the resulting neglect of his fortune and estate, the general economic conditions, and debts he inherited from his wife had taken a heavy toll. He lived more frugally than usual in an attempt to avoid disaster and sold off as many of his lands and slaves as he could. But when a friend defaulted on a loan for a large amount, Jefferson fell hopelessly into debt and had to sell his library to the government. It became the foundation of the Library of Congress.

Jefferson died just a few hours before John Adams at the age of 83 on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. For his tombstone at Monticello, overlooking his many high offices and numerous other achievements, he chose three accomplishments he wanted to be remembered for: authoring the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and founding the University of Virginia.

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Lee, a member of one of the most famous families in Virginia and U.S. history and the sixth son and eighth child of plantation owner Thomas Lee, was born in 1734 at the family estate, Stratford Hall, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He was educated by a private tutor and never attended college. In 1750, after his father passed away, he inherited Coton, an estate in Fairfax County. Seven years later, when Loudoun County was created, it took over Coton. At that time, the colonial legislature appointed him as Loudoun's lieutenant. The following year, he moved to Coton and became a trustee of the newly incorporated village of Leesburg, named after him or his brother Philip Ludwell, both local landowners. For the next ten years, Francis Lightfoot represented the county in the House of Burgesses.

In 1769, Lee married socialite Rebecca Tayloe from Richmond County. The newlyweds lived at the Mount Airy estate with Rebecca’s parents for a few months until Menokin, a new home that Colonel Tayloe was building nearby for them, was finished. From then until 1774, Lee served again with the burgesses.

Lee joined the Revolutionary movement early on. From the time of the Stamp Act (1765) until the war broke out a decade later, he took part in most of the protests and assemblies in Virginia. He didn’t often speak in Congress (1775–79), but frequently disagreed with his brother Richard Henry and was on the military and marine committees, as well as the one responsible for drafting the Articles of Confederation.

In 1779, tired of his duties and craving the peace and quiet of Menokin, Lee left Congress. Aside from a few years in the State legislature, he completely stepped away from public service and lived a quiet life. In 1797, just a few months after his wife passed away without any children, he died at the age of 62. He was buried in the Tayloe family graveyard at Mount Airy.

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Fifth son and seventh of 11 children, Lee was born in 1732 along the Potomac River at Stratford Hall. His early education was enhanced by extensive study at Wakefield Academy in Yorkshire, England, and a tour of northern Europe. He returned home around 1751 at the age of 19, the year after his father's death, and lived with his oldest brother, Philip Ludwell, at Stratford Hall. In 1757, Richard Henry got married. Around this time, he started building and soon moved into Chantilly, about 3 miles to the east on land leased from his brother. In 1768, Richard Henry’s wife passed away, leaving him with four children; the following year, he remarried, which resulted in five more kids.

Lee, following family tradition, had committed himself to politics. In 1757, at the age of 25, he became a justice of the peace for Westmoreland County. The next year, he was elected to the House of Burgesses and served there until 1775. One of the first to oppose Britain, he quickly allied with Patrick Henry. As a protest against the Stamp Act (1765), Lee created the Westmoreland Association (1766), a nonimportation agreement signed by some citizens of his county. The following year, he denounced the Townshend Acts. A year later, he proposed in a letter to John Dickinson of Pennsylvania that the individual colonies establish committees to communicate with each other—an idea that wouldn't be realized for another 5 years.

In 1769, when Lee and Henry wrote a letter to the King protesting various actions by Parliament, the Royal Governor dissolved the House of Burgesses. Lee then gathered with other patriots at Raleigh’s Tavern and helped create the Virginia Association, a nonimportation agreement. Many other colonies established similar groups, but in 1770, Parliament canceled most of the duties, and the spirit of protest faded.

In March 1773, when anti-British sentiment surged again, Lee, Henry, and Jefferson, who had joined the House of Burgesses in 1769, set up a Virginia committee of correspondence and invited the other colonies to do the same. After learning about the British closing of Boston Harbor in May 1774, they convinced their colleagues to declare a day of fasting and prayer as a form of protest. The Royal Governor dissolved the burgesses once more. The Revolutionaries gathered again at Raleigh’s Tavern, created a new nonimportation agreement, and decided to reach out to the other colonies for an intercolonial congress. However, before any action could be taken, Virginia received an invitation from Massachusetts to send representatives to a congress planned for September in Philadelphia—the First Continental Congress. Virginia’s first provincial assembly met in August and appointed seven Delegates, including Lee and Henry.

Lee’s remarkable congressional achievement was presenting the resolution for independence from Britain on June 7, 1776, which was supported by John Adams. This document was Lee’s shortened version of one that had been sent to him by a convention that met in Williamsburg on May 15. It called for breaking away from Britain, forming foreign alliances, and preparing a plan for confederation. On June 13, two days after a committee was formed to draft the Declaration, Lee returned to Virginia, likely due to a family illness. He didn’t come back to sign the Declaration until sometime after the official ceremony on August 2. Like his brother Francis Lightfoot, he also endorsed the Articles of Confederation in 1777. However, after 1776, his influence in Congress diminished, and three years later, poor health forced him to resign.

As a state legislator from 1780 to 1784, Lee was part of the conservative group that represented the interests of large plantation owners. He returned to Congress from 1784 to 1789 and served as its President during 1784-85. In 1787, despite being elected to the Constitutional Convention, he chose not to attend and led the congressional opposition to the Constitution, mainly due to the lack of a bill of rights. Though he recognized the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, he and others were worried about a stronger central government. Lee’s “Letters of the Federal Farmer to the Republican,” the title for two pamphlets expressing his objections to the Constitution, summed up antifederalist feelings.

In 1789, Lee joined the U.S. Senate, but due to declining health, he resigned in 1792, the year after the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. He passed away in 1794, at the age of 62, in Chantilly. His grave is located in the Lee family cemetery near Hague, Virginia.

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Lewis was the only child of a minister. He was born in 1713 in Llandaff, Glamorganshire, Wales. Orphaned at a young age and raised by relatives, he went to Westminster School in London and then got a job with a local company. In 1738, he decided to start his own business, opening branches in New York and Philadelphia, and for a few years, he traveled back and forth between those cities and northern European ports. In 1745, he married a girl from New York, who was his partner’s sister.

During the French and Indian War in 1756, while working as a clothing contractor for British troops at Fort Oswego in what is now New York, Lewis was captured and sent to France for imprisonment. After his release, likely in 1763, the British Government compensated him with a large land grant in America. He went back to New York City, got back into business, and quickly made a fortune. In 1765, he retired to the village of Whitestone (now part of Flushing) on Long Island, but in 1771, he temporarily returned to New York City to help his son start his career, possibly even making a trip to England with him.

Back home, Lewis dedicated most of his efforts to the Revolutionary movement, which he joined in 1765 by going to the Stamp Act Congress. He was probably one of the leaders of the New York Sons of Liberty. In 1774, he became a member of the New York Revolutionary committees of fifty-one and sixty, attended the provincial convention the following year, and later helped establish the State government.

In the Continental Congress (1775–79), Lewis seldom spoke up but was a member of the marine, foreign affairs, and commerce committees. He also sat on the Board of Admiralty and worked on troop supply issues. He defended Gen. George Washington against the criticism from the Conway Cabal. Due to Tory influence in New York, Lewis and the other Delegates were told not to vote for independence on July 1 and 2, 1776, but Lewis signed the Declaration on August 2.

That same year, when the British invaded Long Island, they destroyed Lewis' home in Whitestone and took his wife into custody. She was eventually released in exchange for the wives of British officials, but the hardships she endured ruined her health and led to her death in 1779. The grief-stricken Lewis immediately left Congress but stayed on the Board of Admiralty until96 1781, at which point he completely abandoned politics. He lived in retirement with his sons and died in 1802 at the age of 89 in New York City. He was buried there in an unmarked grave in the yard of Trinity Church.

Livingston was the fifth son of Philip Livingston, the second lord of Livingston Manor, who was of Scottish descent, and Catherine Van Brugh, who had Dutch ancestry. Young Livingston was born in 1716 at his father’s townhouse in Albany and spent most of his childhood either there or at the family manor in Linlithgo, located about 30 miles to the south.

Upon graduating from Yale in 1737, Livingston started working in the import business in New York City. Three years later, he got married97 and moved into a townhouse on Duke Street in Manhattan; he went on to have five sons and four daughters. As time passed, he built up a fortune, especially as a trader-privateer during the French and Indian War (1754–63). In 1764, while keeping his home on Duke Street, he bought a 40-acre estate on Brooklyn Heights overlooking the East River and New York Harbor.

While thriving as a merchant, Livingston committed much of his energy to humanitarian and philanthropic efforts. Among the organizations he supported, funded, or helped manage were King’s College (which later became Columbia University), the New York Society Library, St. Andrew’s Society, the New York Chamber of Commerce, and New York Hospital.

Livingston was also a supporter of political and religious freedom. As an alderman in New York City (1754–63), he aligned with the popular party that opposed the aristocratic ruling class of the colony. During his ten years of service (1759–69) in the colonial legislature, he backed the Whigs in their conflict with the Royal Governor and attended the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. However, as someone who believed in dignified protests led by lawyers and merchants, he disapproved of the violent actions of groups like the Sons of Liberty.

98 In the 1769 elections, the Tories took control of the legislature. In his attempt to get reelected, Livingston, worried about the rise of extremism among the people, tried to bring together the moderate groups. After losing in New York City, which became Tory-dominated from that point on, he was able to get reelected from the Livingston Manor district. However, the new assembly, claiming he couldn't represent an area he didn't live in, removed him from office.

In 1774, Livingston joined a group of fifty-one, an unofficial committee that chose New York City delegates for the Continental Congress, one of whom was Livingston himself. He also served on a committee of sixty, established to implement congressional decisions. The following year, he was elected to the committee of one hundred, which temporarily governed New York City until the first provincial congress of the colony convened later that year.

Between 1774 and 1778, Livingston split his time between the Continental Congress and the New York provincial assembly/legislature. In Congress, he served on committees focused on marine, commerce, finance, military, and Indian affairs. He was absent on July 1–2, 1776, possibly intentionally, even though the New York Delegates chose not to vote on the independence issue. However, he signed the Declaration on August 2.

After their defeat in the Battle of Long Island (August 27, 1776), Washington and his officers met at Livingston’s house in Brooklyn Heights and decided to evacuate the island. After the unsuccessful peace talks at Staten Island in September between Admiral Lord Richard Howe and three representatives of the Continental Congress, the British took control of New York City. They used Livingston’s Duke Street home as a barracks and his Brooklyn Heights residence as a Royal Navy hospital, in addition to taking over his business interests. He later sold some of his remaining property to keep public credit alive. As the British advanced, Livingston and his family fled to Esopus (later Kingston), N.Y., where the State capital was temporarily located before moving to nearby Poughkeepsie.

Livingston died at 62 in 1778, making him the third earliest signer to pass away (after John Morton and Button Gwinnett). At that time, despite being in bad health, he was still a member of Congress, which was meeting in York, PA. He is buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery in that city.

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The only son of Thomas Lynch, Sr., a wealthy rice planter, Lynch was born in 1749 at Hopsewee Plantation, located in Winyaw on the North Santee River in Prince George’s Parish (now Georgetown County), S.C. After attending the Indigo Society School in nearby Georgetown, he studied abroad at Eton and Cambridge from 1764 to 1772 and studied law in London. Upon returning home, he chose not to pursue a legal career, got married, and settled at Peach Tree Plantation. This plantation, a gift from his father, was located in St. James Parish (now Charleston County) on the South Santee River, about 4 miles south of Hopsewee.

As the heir to one of the most passionate Revolutionaries and influential figures in the colony, Lynch naturally had a strong interest in politics and received significant support from voters. From 1774 to 1776, while his father was in the Continental Congress, he worked on the home front, participating in the first and second provincial congresses, as well as the first State legislature, and serving on the State constitutional committee.

In 1775, however, fate dealt Lynch a harsh blow. He accepted a captaincy in the First South Carolina Regiment of Continentals—much to his father's disappointment, who had hoped to leverage his position for a higher rank. During a recruiting trip to North Carolina, young100 Lynch contracted bilious fever. This put an end to his military career and left him partially disabled for the rest of his years.

Early in 1776 in Philadelphia, the elder Lynch suffered a stroke that left him unable to continue his public service. In the spring, his worried colleagues in South Carolina elected his son to the Continental Congress, likely so he could take care of his father and represent him officially. Despite being ill himself, Lynch made the challenging journey to Philadelphia. He stayed there throughout the summer, long enough to vote for and sign the Declaration of Independence at the age of 27. His father couldn't participate in the ceremony. The two were the only father-son pair to serve together in the Continental Congress.

By the end of the year, the declining health of both men forced them to head home. On the way, in Annapolis, Md., a second stroke claimed the life of the senior Lynch. His son, devastated and unable to continue in politics, retired to Peach Tree. Later in 1779, he and his wife, trying to regain his health, boarded a ship bound for the West Indies that sank. The couple died without children.

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Of Scotch-Irish descent, McKean was born in 1734. He was the second son of a farmer and tavern owner who lived in New London Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, close to the borders of New Jersey and Delaware. After studying for seven years at Rev. Francis Alison’s academy in nearby New London, McKean studied law with a cousin in New Castle, Delaware. In 1754, at the age of 20, he was admitted to the Delaware bar and quickly broadened his practice to include Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

During the next twenty-five years, McKean held various appointed and elected positions in Delaware, often at the same time: high sheriff of Kent County; militia captain; trustee of the loan office of New Castle County; customs collector and judge in New Castle; deputy attorney general of Sussex County; chief notary officer for the province; and clerk (1757–59) and member (1762–79) of the legislature, including serving as speaker of the lower house (1772–73). In 1762, he also helped compile the colony’s laws.

McKean's revolutionary tendencies first showed during the Stamp Act (1765) controversy. He was one of the most vocal delegates at the Stamp Act Congress. In 1774, a year after his wife's death, whom he had married in 1763, he remarried and set up his home in Philadelphia. However, he kept his position in the Delaware legislature, which elected him to the Continental Congress that same year. Except for the period from December 1776 to January 1778, when conservative opposition removed him, he remained there until 1783 and served as President for a few months in 1781. He played a crucial role in the Revolutionary program while also promoting the formation of governments in Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Furthermore, it was McKean who broke the Delaware tie in the congressional vote for independence. On July 1, 1776, the date of the first vote, the two Delaware representatives present, McKean and George Read, were deadlocked. McKean, who had voted in favor, sent an urgent message to the third Delegate, Caesar Rodney, who was at his home near Dover, Del., dealing with military matters, to hurry to Philadelphia. Rodney, making an 80-mile horseback ride through a storm, arrived just in time to swing Delaware in favor of independence on July 2.

During his break from Congress, from late 1776 to early 1778, McKean stayed in the lower house of the 102 Delaware legislature, where he once again became speaker. In that role, from September to November 1777, he temporarily took over for the president of Delaware, who had been captured by the British. They also tried to capture McKean, forcing him to move his family several times. In July, he was appointed chief justice of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, a position he would hold for 22 years.

After 1783, when his time in Congress ended, McKean concentrated his political work in Pennsylvania. As a Federalist, he played a key role in the state's ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. At the state constitutional convention from 1789 to 1790, he showed his distrust of popular government. During the 1790s, frustrated with Federalist foreign policy, he switched to the Democratic-Republicans.

While serving as governor for three terms (1799–1808), McKean was at the center of intense partisan conflict. Even though he provided strong leadership and promoted education and infrastructure improvements, his overbearing nature annoyed the Federalists, caused many in his own party to turn against him, and led to an attempt to impeach him. His strict use of the spoils system, which included appointing friends and family, and his refusal to convene a group to revise the constitution were particularly controversial. As a result, he only managed to win reelection with the backing of members from both parties who were against the revision.

McKean lived a quiet life in Philadelphia. He passed away in 1817 at the age of 83, leaving behind his second wife and four of his 11 children from two marriages. He was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery. His considerable estate included stocks, bonds, and large parcels of land in Pennsylvania.

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Middleton was born in 1742 at Middleton Place, the family estate on the Ashley River near Charleston. His father owned numerous plantations covering 50,000 acres and employing about 800 slaves, making him one of the wealthiest and most politically active men in the province. As a young boy, Arthur sailed to England for his education. He attended Hackney School, graduated from Cambridge University, and studied law in London. In 1764, the year after his return, he married the woman who would give him nine children and began his career as a justice of the peace and a colonial legislator. However, from 1768 to 1771, he and his wife took an extended tour of Europe.

Reelected the following year to the legislature, Middleton joined the Revolutionaries in their fight against the Royal Governor. While serving in the first and second provincial assemblies (1775–76), Middleton helped organize a night raid on public armories in Charleston before the Governor could take them, raised funds for armed resistance, suggested defense strategies for Charleston Harbor, served on the council of safety, and pushed for strict enforcement of the Continental Association. An extremist, he supported the tarring and feathering of Loyalists and the seizure of the estates of those who had escaped the country.

104 In 1776, while helping to draft a state constitution, Middleton was chosen to take his more conservative father's place in the Continental Congress. Two years later, when young Middleton turned down reelection, he also declined an offer from the legislature for the governorship of South Carolina, which had enacted a new constitution that he disagreed with. In 1779 and 1780, even though he was reelected to the Continental Congress, Middleton didn’t show up, likely due to worries about the British threat to his state. While serving in the militia during the siege of Charleston in 1780, he was captured by the British along with fellow signers Heyward and Rutledge, and they were imprisoned in St. Augustine, Florida, until July 1781.

Two months later, Middleton went back to Congress and served throughout 1782. He then retired to Middleton Place, which had been damaged by the British. He restored it, went back to his life as a planter, occasionally served in the State legislature, and took on the role of one of the original trustees of the College of Charleston. He passed away in 1787 at the age of 44. His remains are at Middleton Place.

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Born in 1726, Morris was the oldest son of the second lord of the large manor of Morrisania, in Westchester (now the Bronx) County, N.Y. After graduating from Yale College in 1746, he helped run the estate. Three years later, he got married and had 10 children. In 1762, when his father passed away, he inherited Morrisania and became its third lord. Around this time, he became interested in local politics, and in 1769 he served a term in the colonial legislature.

As time passed, despite living in a pro-Loyalist county, Morris became more critical of British policy. In 1775, he helped organize a meeting at White Plains that overcame strong opposition and appointed county delegates, with Morris as chairman, to New York’s first provincial convention. He was elected to the Continental Congress (1775–77), where he focused on military and Native American issues. For most of 1776, he was away from Philadelphia, serving as a brigadier general in the Westchester County militia. During the British invasion of New York that year, the redcoats devastated Morrisania, forcing Morris' family to flee.

When his time in Congress ended, Morris was promoted to major general in the militia and became a county judge (1777–78) and a state senator (1777–81 and 1784–88). After the war ended in 1783, he returned to Morrisania and dedicated much of his time to restoring it. In 1784, he was part of the first board of regents for the University of New York. Four years later, at the state ratifying convention in Poughkeepsie, he strongly backed Alexander Hamilton’s successful push for the approval of the U.S. Constitution.

Morris died in 1798 in Morrisania at the age of 71. His grave is in the family vault in the yard of St. Ann’s Church in the Bronx.

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Morris was born in or near Liverpool, England, in 1734. At 13, he moved to Maryland to join his father, who was a tobacco exporter in Oxford, Md. After a short time in school in Philadelphia, he got a job with the famous shipping company run by Thomas and Charles Willing. In 1754, he became a partner, and for nearly 40 years, he was one of the company’s directors and one of Philadelphia’s most influential residents. He got married in 1769 at 35 years old and had five sons and two daughters.

During the turmoil of the Stamp Act in 1765, Morris joined other merchants in protest, but he didn't fully commit to the Revolution until the hostilities broke out a decade later. In 1775, the Continental Congress hired his firm to import arms and ammunition, and he was elected to the Pennsylvania council of safety (1775–76), the committee of correspondence, the provincial assembly (1775–76), the State legislature (1776–78), and the Continental Congress (1775–78). In the latter body, on July 1, 1776, he voted against independence, which he personally thought was premature, but the next day he purposely stayed away to help ensure a positive vote from his State.

Morris, a key Member of Congress, focused on financial matters and military procurement. Although he and his firm made significant profits, had it not been for his hard work, the Continental Army likely would have had to disband. He collaborated closely with General Washington, secured money and supplies from the States, borrowed funds amid overwhelming challenges, and even occasionally took out personal loans to support the war effort. Right after his congressional service, Morris served two additional terms in the Pennsylvania legislature from 1778 to 1781. During this period, Thomas Paine and others criticized him for profiting while in Congress, leading to an investigation of his accounts, which ultimately cleared him. However, his reputation still declined.

Morris entered the most intense period of his career by taking the position of Superintendent of Finance (1781–84) under the Articles of Confederation. Congress, aware of the dangerous state of the nation’s finances and its inability to fix it, granted him extraordinary powers and agreed to his condition that he could continue his private business ventures. He cut all government and military spending, personally bought supplies for the Army and Navy, improved accounting practices, urged the states to meet their money and supply quotas, and when necessary stretched his personal credit by issuing notes with his own signature or borrowing from friends.

To fund Washington’s Yorktown campaign in 1781, in addition to the methods mentioned above, Morris secured a large loan from France. He used part of this loan, along with some of his own wealth, to establish the Bank of North America, which was chartered that December. It was the first government-incorporated bank in the United States and helped with financing the war.

Although Morris was reelected to the Pennsylvania legislature in 1785–86, he spent most of his time on his private business ventures. In the latter year, he went to the Annapolis Convention, and the next year he attended the Constitutional Convention, where he aligned himself with the Federalists. In 1789, he turned down Washington’s offer to be the first Secretary of the Treasury and instead accepted a seat in the Senate (1789–95).

During the later years of his public life, Morris took risks and speculated heavily, often on borrowed money, in lands in the West and at the site of Washington, D.C. To make matters worse, in 1794 he started building an extravagant townhouse on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, designed by Maj. Pierre Charles L’Enfant. Shortly after that, Morris tried to avoid his creditors by retreating to The Hills, the country estate he had bought in 1770 along the Schuylkill River at the edge of Philadelphia.

Arrested at the request of creditors in 1798 and forced to stop working on the townhouse, which would later be called "Morris’ Folly," Morris ended up in the Philadelphia debtors’ prison, where he was treated well. However, by the time he was released in 1801 under a Federal bankruptcy law, his property and wealth were gone, his health had worsened, and his spirit was broken. He lived on in poverty and obscurity, residing in a modest home in Philadelphia on an annuity Gouverneur Morris had secured for his wife. He passed away in 1806 at the age of 72. He was buried in the yard of Christ Church.

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Morton was born of Finnish-Swedish descent in 1725, shortly after his father's death, on a farm in Ridley Township, Chester (now Delaware) County. John Sketchley, an Englishman who later married Morton's widowed mother, raised and educated him. Their bond was clearly strong, as Morton eventually named his eldest son Sketchley. The stepfather, knowledgeable in mathematics, taught the boy the basics as well as surveying. Morton practiced surveying on and off throughout his life, along with farming, politics, and law. He got married in his early 20s, around 1748 or 1749, and had five daughters and four sons.

At 30, Morton got into politics, which took up most of his energy from that point on. From 1756 until a few months before he died in 1777, he served 18 terms in the colonial/State legislature (1756–66 and 1769–76), leading it during the last year and a half. In 1774, he was appointed as an associate justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Meantime, even with his rise in State circles, Morton always110 kept strong connections to his own county. He lived there his whole life, stayed active in community and church activities, and remained close to the people. Between his terms as county justice of the peace (1757–64 and 1770–74), he served a term as sheriff (1766–69).

Morton’s service to the nation started in 1765 when he was a member of the Pennsylvania legislature. He and two colleagues represented the colony at the Stamp Act Congress in New York. His most significant moment as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–77), where he counted himself among the moderates, was his sudden and important switch on July 1, 1776, to support his friend Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson in the vote for national independence. In the final vote the next day, these three ballots outweighed those of Thomas Willing and Charles Humphreys. Robert Morris and John Dickinson were purposely absent, allowing Pennsylvania to register a “yes.” Less dramatically, Morton was part of many committees, and in 1777, he chaired the committee of the whole on the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, which were finally ratified after his death.

Within a year of signing the Declaration, in the spring of 1777, Morton became ill and died on his farm at the age of 51. A few months earlier, he had passed on his land and property, which included a few slaves, to his wife and five daughters and three surviving sons. But he couldn’t provide them with safety; shortly after he died, they had to escape from their home due to an impending British attack. Morton’s grave is located in Old St. Paul’s Cemetery in Chester, Pa.

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The oldest of five sons, Nelson was born in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1738. At 14, he traveled to England to enhance his early education. In 1761, after graduating from Hackney School and Cambridge University, he returned to Virginia to assist his father in running his plantation and business. The following year, young Nelson got married; he and his wife would go on to have 11 children.

In 1764, Nelson became a justice of the peace for York County and joined the House of Burgesses. He served in the house until May 1774, when Royal Governor Lord Dunmore, angered by its protests against the Boston Port Act, dissolved it. That year and the following one, Nelson attended three of the Virginia provincial assemblies, where he collaborated closely with Patrick Henry. The last assembly elected Nelson to the Continental Congress, at which point he stepped down from his position as a colonel in the Virginia militia.

In Congress, Nelson was vocal about his wish to break away from England. He traveled to Virginia in the spring of 1776. At a convention in Williamsburg in May, he introduced and got approval for a resolution urging national independence, which was drafted by Edmund Pendleton. Nelson took it to Philadelphia and presented it to Richard Henry Lee, who reworked and shortened it into his June 7 resolution. Shortly after, Nelson's health started to decline. After that, he split his time between Philadelphia and Virginia, and in the spring of 1777, he resigned from Congress.

Back in Virginia, Nelson was given the rank of brigadier general in the militia and was elected to the lower house of the legislature. In the spring of 1778, Congress reached out to wealthy individuals in the Colonies to form light cavalry troops. Nelson, mostly at his own cost, raised, equipped, and trained such a unit. In July, he marched it north to Philadelphia. The following month, Congress decided it wasn't needed, and it returned home.

Nelson returned to Congress for a brief period in 1779, but his health issues forced him to step back again. However, the following year, he secured weapons and supplies for the militia, led troops, participated in the legislature, and raised funds to support the war. He was especially successful in getting financial contributions from wealthy plantation owners, promising to personally repay the loans if the State was unable to.

When the British invaded Virginia in 1780–81, civilian control really limited Nelson’s effectiveness as a militia commander.112 As a result, in the latter year, the legislature elected him as Governor and gave him powers similar to those of a military dictator. Even though he was still struggling with health issues, he kept the government running and reinforced defenses. In September-October 1781, while participating in the Yorktown siege, family tradition says he ordered troops to bombard his own mansion when he discovered it was being used as a British headquarters. Shortly after the victory at Yorktown, overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the office and still in poor health, he resigned as governor.

That same year, Nelson partially retired to Offley Hoo, a modest estate in Hanover County that his father had left to him when he died in 1772. Struggling financially due to his sacrifices during the war, the younger Nelson didn't have the money to renovate his Yorktown home, where he had lived since 1767. Aside from occasional stints in the legislature and visits to Yorktown, he spent the rest of his life focused on his business affairs. He died at Offley Hoo in 1789 at the age of 50. His grave is located at Yorktown in the yard of Grace Episcopal Church.

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The second son of a well-known plantation owner, Paca was likely of Italian descent and was born in 1740 at Chilbury Hall, near Abingdon in Harford County, Maryland. He was educated by private tutors and at 15, he enrolled at the College of Philadelphia (which later became part of the University of Pennsylvania). After graduating, he studied law with an attorney in Annapolis and also read law in London. In 1763, the year before he started his practice in Annapolis, he married a local girl from a wealthy family and began building a home, which was finished two years later. While in the country, he lived at Wye Plantation in Queen Anne's County, which he had bought around 1760.

In 1768, Paca won a seat in the colonial legislature, where he quickly teamed up with Samuel Chase and other Whigs to oppose the powers of the Proprietary Governor. In the early 1770s, Paca joined other Maryland patriots in pushing for government regulation of fees paid to civil officers and in opposing the poll tax, which was used to pay the salaries of Anglican clergy, representing the established church. In 1773, he became a member of the Maryland committee of correspondence.114 The following year, along with Samuel Chase and Thomas Johnson, he served as legal counsel for fellow legislator Joseph H. Harrison, who had been jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax. All three men also attended the first provincial convention that same year and received appointments to the First Continental Congress. Around this time, Paca’s wife passed away.

Although he served in Congress until 1779, Paca's most significant contributions were at the state level. In the spring and early summer of 1776, the provincial convention, which was a relatively conservative group, refused to let its congressional delegates vote for independence. Paca, along with Chase and Carroll, rallied enough support on the home front to convince the convention to change its stance and officially bring Maryland into the affirmative side of the congressional vote on July 1–2, 1776. A few months later, he helped draft a state constitution. The following year, he started a 2-year term in the Maryland Senate and participated in militia duty. Additionally, he served on the council of safety and spent a significant amount of his own money to equip the troops.

Between 1778 and 1782, Paca made a name for himself as the chief justice of the State Superior Court and then as the chief judge of the circuit court of appeals for admiralty and prize cases. During that time, in 1780, a few months after the death of his second wife, whom he had married 3 years prior, he sold his home in Annapolis and moved permanently to Wye Plantation. In 1782, he raised funds for Washington College, which was founded that same year in Chestertown as Maryland's first institution of higher learning, and he served on its board of visitors. As Governor of Maryland (1782–85), he focused on the well-being of war veterans and other postwar issues.

A delegate to the state convention to approve the Federal Constitution in 1788, Paca supported its adoption with amendments and helped create a list of proposed amendments. In 1789, President Washington appointed him as a federal district judge. He held this position until his death in 1799 at the age of 58, at Wye Hall on Wye Island, just across the narrows from his home, Wye Plantation. The former was the home of his son John, likely the only one of his five children from his two or possibly three marriages who lived to adulthood. Initially buried at Wye Hall, Paca’s remains are now in the family burial ground near Wye Plantation.

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Among the ancestors of Paine, who was born in Boston in 1731, were many New England religious and political leaders. His father was a merchant who had once been a clergyman. Young Paine topped his class at Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard in 1749. He then taught school for a while before following family tradition and entering the ministry.

In 1755, during the French and Indian War, he served as a chaplain on a military mission to Crown Point, NY. To boost his health, he took a trip to the Carolinas, England, Spain, and Greenland. Around this time, he decided to leave the ministry for a career in law, which he had become interested in during his theology studies. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1757 and opened an office in Portland, but in 1761 he moved to Taunton.

Paine, a friend of John Adams and John Hancock, got involved in the patriot movement early on. Because of this, he was chosen in 1770 as one of the prosecuting attorneys in the Boston Massacre trial, which helped him gain recognition throughout the Colonies. That same year, he got married and had eight children. From 1773 to 1778, except in 1776, he served in the Massachusetts legislature, becoming speaker of the lower house in 1777. He was one of the first five Delegates sent by Massachusetts to the Continental Congress (1774–76), where he focused on military and Indian affairs. He earned the nickname “Objection Maker” because he opposed so many proposals.

Although he was reelected to Congress in 1777, Paine decided to remain in Massachusetts. Along with being the speaker of the legislature, he was elected as the first attorney general, a role he held until 1790. From 1778 to 1780, he played a key part in drafting the Massachusetts constitution. From 1790 to 1804, he served as an associate justice of the Superior Court, appointed by his old friend Hancock.

Meantime, in 1780, Paine moved from Taunton to Boston and became active in local affairs. Reflecting his lifelong interest in science, he was one of the founders of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that same year. In terms of religion, he broke away from Calvinism and adopted Unitarianism. Politically, he aligned himself with the Federalists. In 1804, worsening deafness led to his retirement from the Superior Court, and he passed away a decade later at the age of 83 in Boston. He was buried in the Old Granary Burying Ground.

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Penn was born in 1740 or 1741 in Caroline County, Virginia. His father was a wealthy farmer, and his mother was the daughter of a prominent county judge. Despite the family's social status, Penn only received a few years of formal education. When he was 18 and his father passed away, he inherited a large estate. However, he was unhappy with the opportunities it provided and chose to further his education. Motivated by a relative, Edmund Pendleton, a well-known lawyer who offered access to his personal library, Penn studied law independently and within three years was admitted to the bar. Shortly after that, he got married, and he and his wife raised three children.

In 1774, after over a decade of thriving in his law practice in Virginia, Penn moved to Granville County, N.C., and settled near Stovall. The following year, he was elected to the provincial assembly and just a few weeks later to the Continental Congress (1775–80). In 1777, after Hewes and Hooper retired, he took over as the leader of his state's delegation. He was one of the 16 signers of the Declaration who also signed the Articles of Confederation.

Unobtrusive and unassuming but incredibly efficient, friendly, and discreet, Penn quickly earned the respect of his colleagues in Congress. He rarely argued with others, but when he did, his good humor and calm demeanor resolved the situation. One time, he had a conflict with the President of Congress, Henry Laurens from South Carolina, over a personal issue. He accepted Laurens' challenge to a duel, but on the way to the designated spot, he persuaded Laurens that they should put their differences aside and let it go.

Late in 1780, the Governor of North Carolina brought Penn back from Congress to join the emergency Board of War, which the legislature had created in September to help manage military affairs alongside the Governor. The three-member board, with Penn as its leading member, quickly took charge of all military matters. The Governor and military officials, upset about losing power and control, convinced the legislature to get rid of the board in January 1781.

His health deteriorating, the following July, Penn turned down an appointment to the Governor’s Council. Except for a brief stint in 1784 as the state tax collector for the Confederation, he seemed to spend his final years focused on his law practice. In 1788, at just in his late forties, he passed away at his home near Stovall. Initially buried in the118 family graveyard next to his home, his remains are now interred at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park near Greensboro.

Read’s mother was the daughter of a Welsh planter, and his father, who was born in Dublin, was a well-off landowner. Shortly after George was born in 1733 near North East in Cecil County, Maryland, his family moved to New Castle, Delaware, where he grew up. He attended school in Chester, Pennsylvania, and Rev. Francis Alison’s academy in New London, Pennsylvania. At around 15 years old, he started studying law with a lawyer in Philadelphia. In 1753, he passed the bar exam and began practicing law. The following year, he returned to New Castle, set up his practice, and soon built a clientele that reached into Maryland. In 1763, he married the widowed sister of future fellow signer George Ross, and they had four sons and a daughter together.

While serving as the crown attorney general (1763–74) for the Three Lower119 Counties (now Delaware), Read protested against the Stamp Act. In 1765, he started a career in the colonial legislature that lasted over a decade. As a moderate Whig, he supported nonimportation measures and dignified protests. His participation in Congress (1774–77) was inconsistent. Like his friend John Dickinson, he was willing to defend colonial rights but was cautious about extremism. He voted against independence on July 2, 1776, likely either succumbing to the strong Tory sentiment in Delaware or believing that reconciliation with Britain was still possible.

That same year, Read focused on state responsibilities. He led the Delaware constitutional convention, where he chaired the drafting committee, and began a term as speaker of the legislative council, effectively making him the vice president of the state. When the British took Wilmington the following fall, they captured the president, a resident of the city. At first, since Read was away in Congress, Thomas McKean, the speaker of the lower house, stepped in as acting president. However, in November, after nearly being captured himself while he and his family were traveling to Dover from Philadelphia, which had just been taken by the British, Read took office and held it until the spring of 1778.

During 1779, in poor health, Read stepped down from the legislative council, declined reelection to Congress, and entered a period of inactivity. From 1782 to 1788, he once again served on the council while also holding the position of judge for the court of appeals in admiralty cases. Meanwhile, in 1784, he was part of a commission that resolved the land claims between New York and Massachusetts. In 1786, he attended the Annapolis Convention. The following year, he took part in the Constitutional Convention. He later led the ratification effort in Delaware, which was the first state to ratify.

In the U.S. Senate (1789–93), Read's attendance was again inconsistent, but when he was there, he sided with the Federalists. He resigned to take on the role of chief justice of Delaware. He held this position until he passed away in New Castle five years later, just three days after celebrating his 65th birthday. His grave is located in the Immanuel Episcopal Churchyard.

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Rodney was born in 1728 on his father's 800-acre plantation, Byfield, near Dover in Kent County. In 1745, as the oldest child, he inherited the plantation. Even without formal legal education, ten years later he took on the first of several county positions: high sheriff, register of wills, recorder of deeds, clerk of the orphans’ court, justice of the peace, militia captain, and co-trustee of the loan office.

On the provincial level, for most of the period from 1758 to 1776, Rodney served as a justice of the Superior Court for the Three Lower Counties (now Delaware) and as a legislator in the lower house, including several terms as speaker. Between 1765 and 1774, he owned and lived in a townhouse that he used while in Dover. He and Thomas McKean put together the colony’s laws, and they both attended the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. Three years later, the two of them, along with George Read—who all later signed the Declaration—drafted a protest to the King regarding the Townshend Acts. In 1774, after Parliament closed Boston Harbor, Rodney took the initiative, bypassing the Proprietary Governor, by calling a special meeting of the legislature in New Castle, marking the first Revolutionary convention in the state. Rodney, McKean, and Read were sent to the First Continental Congress.

Although he had been a congressional member for 2 years, Rodney was often away in Delaware, sometimes leading the legislature and other times fulfilling military duties. In May 1775, he was elected as a colonel in the militia, and by September, he was promoted to brigadier general. Late the following June, while the independence resolution was still being debated in Congress, he was looking into Loyalist activities in Sussex County. On the evening of July 1, after returning to Byfield, he received McKean’s message informing him that Read had voted against independence that day and urging Rodney to rush to Philadelphia to break the tie. He rode all night through a thunderstorm, stopping only to switch horses, and completed the 80-mile journey just in time to secure a positive vote for Delaware.

This earned Rodney the anger of the Kent County conservatives, leading to him not being reelected to Congress or the legislature, and he was also not appointed to the State constitutional convention. Out of office, that fall and the following year, he focused on military matters, recruiting troops and participating in minor engagements in Delaware and New Jersey. In September 1777, acting State president McKean appointed him as a major general.

That spring, the legislature appointed Rodney as an admiralty judge. In December, they re-elected him to the Continental Congress. The following year, they nominated him as State president (1778–81), where he boosted Delaware's war effort. After leaving office, he finally sought medical treatment in Philadelphia for a cancerous growth on his face, which had been troubling him for a decade and which he had covered with a green silk veil. In 1783, despite being gravely ill, he joined the State senate and took on the role of speaker, but he passed away the next year at the age of 55. Originally buried at Byfield Plantation, his remains are now laid to rest in the yard of Christ Episcopal Church in Dover.

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The oldest son of an Anglican cleric who had moved from Scotland, Ross was born in 1730 in New Castle, Delaware. After receiving a basic classical education, he studied law with his stepbrother John in Philadelphia and was admitted to the bar in 1750. He settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania the following year, where he married and had two sons and a daughter. He built a successful law practice and served as the crown prosecutor for Cumberland County from 1751 to 1763. A member of the colonial legislature from 1768 until 1775, he occasionally got involved in its conflicts with the Proprietary Governor and showed an interest in Native American affairs.

In 1774, even though he leaned towards Loyalism, a provincial convention that Ross was elected to sent him to the Continental Congress. The following year, for some reason, he chose to align with the Revolutionaries and also served on the Pennsylvania council of safety while holding the rank of militia colonel. In 1776, he helped negotiate a peace treaty with the Indians in northwestern Pennsylvania and served as vice president of the state constitutional convention, where he assisted in drafting a declaration of rights. He wasn’t a Member of Congress during the vote for independence on July 1–2, 1776, but he got appointed soon enough to sign the Declaration on August 2. He gained a reputation among his peers for his eloquence, wit, and friendliness, but he didn’t make any significant contributions to congressional proceedings. Illness led to his resignation in January 1777.

In 1778, while Ross was serving as the admiralty judge in Pennsylvania, a congressional court of appeals overturned his ruling in a case involving a conflict between a citizen of Connecticut and the State of Pennsylvania. Ross, refusing to recognize the authority of the higher court to challenge state decisions, sparked a dispute between Pennsylvania and the Central Government that represented an early sign of the States' rights controversy, which did not die down until 1809. However, Ross did not live to see the outcome, as he passed away in Philadelphia in 1779 at the age of 49. He was buried in Christ Church Burial Ground.

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Rush, the fourth of seven children, was born in 1745 at Byberry (“The Homestead”), near Philadelphia. When he was 5, his father, who was a farmer and gunsmith, passed away. He received a solid education at West Nottingham Academy in Rising Sun, Md., which was run by his uncle, and graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). After returning to Philadelphia in 1760, he initially thought about studying law but decided to pursue medicine instead. In 1766, after completing a 5-year apprenticeship with a local doctor, he sailed to Scotland, where two years later, the University of Edinburgh awarded him a medical degree.

While he was there, with the help of a fellow college graduate and future signer, Richard Stockton, Rush managed to address the concerns of John Witherspoon’s wife and convinced Witherspoon to take on the presidency of the College of New Jersey. In 1769, after further training in London, where Rush met Benjamin Franklin, and a brief trip to Paris, he returned to Philadelphia and started his practice. By the end of the year, he secured the first chemistry professorship in the country at the College of Philadelphia and wrote the first American textbook on the subject.

While thriving as a doctor, Rush developed friendships with notable figures like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine. In fact, Rush encouraged Paine to write his famous pamphlet Common Sense (1776), came up with the title, and helped get it published. He also wrote political articles for the press. That same year, he married Stockton's oldest daughter, Julia.

Rush’s time in the Continental Congress was short. In June 1776, he attended a Pennsylvania gathering of patriots and helped write a declaration supporting national independence. In recognition of his contributions, the provincial convention sent him to Congress the following month—after the Declaration was adopted. In December, with Philadelphia under threat of British invasion, the government fled to Baltimore. However, Rush didn't seem to spend much time there. That same month, he moved his wife to stay with a relative in Cecil County, Maryland, and participated in General Washington’s campaign in New Jersey as a surgeon in the Philadelphia militia.

In April 1777, not re-elected to Congress due to his opposition to the Pennsylvania constitution from the previous year, Rush accepted the position of surgeon general in the Middle Department of the Continental Army. Disgusted by the poor conditions in the medical service, he complained to Washington, accusing his superior, Dr. William Shippen, of mismanagement. Washington referred the issue to Congress, which cleared Shippen of any wrongdoing. In January 1778, Rush resigned in anger. His later criticisms of Washington and his involvement in the Conway Cabal, a movement aimed at replacing General Washington, ended his military career and, for a time, his political career. He returned to practicing medicine in Philadelphia.

In 1787, Rush wrote articles in newspapers supporting the U.S. Constitution. During the Commonwealth ratifying convention that same year, he assisted James Wilson in the effort to get it approved. Between 1789 and 1790, Rush participated in the Pennsylvania constitutional convention. From 1797 to 1813, he held the position of Treasurer of the U.S. Mint.

126 In the meantime, Rush, through his writings and lectures, had become probably the most well-known physician and medical teacher in the country, and he helped establish Philadelphia as the early medical center of the nation. His students, who admired him greatly, traveled from as far away as Europe to attend his classes at the College of Philadelphia, and its successors, the University of the State of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania (1791). He also served on the staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital from 1783 until the end of his life, helped found the Philadelphia College of Physicians (1787), and was the first president of the Philadelphia Medical Society. In 1786, he established the Philadelphia Dispensary, the first free medical clinic in the country. His work with the mentally ill at the Pennsylvania Hospital led to Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812), which, to some extent, anticipated modern psychiatric techniques.

Rush earned much less respect from his professional colleagues than he did from his students. His critics especially targeted his theory of bleeding and purging as a way to treat illness. Even though he was one of the few doctors who stayed in Philadelphia during the deadly yellow fever outbreaks of 1793 and 1798, his opponents condemned his treatment methods.

Aroused by the idealism of the Revolution as well as the struggles of the poor and sick he saw in his medical practice, Rush helped lead various humanitarian and social movements that would reshape U.S. life in the 19th century. These included the abolition of slavery and reforms in education and prisons. Rush also spoke out against public and capital punishment and championed temperance. Many of his reform articles appeared in Essays: Literary, Moral, and Philosophical (1798).

Finally, Rush helped organize and served as a trustee of Dickinson College (1783); assisted in founding the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1787) and later served as its president; was a member of the American Philosophical Society; and was a cofounder and vice president of the Philadelphia Bible Society, which promoted the use of scripture in public schools.

A typhus epidemic took Rush’s life at the age of 67 in 1813. He is survived by six sons and three daughters out of the 13 children he had fathered. His grave is in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.

127

The fifth son and youngest child of an Irish immigrant and doctor, Rutledge was born in 1749 in or near Charleston, S.C. Like Middleton, Lynch, and Heyward, the other South Carolina signers, he studied law in England as a young man. In 1773, during his first year of practicing law after returning to Charleston, he gained recognition from the Whigs by securing the release of newspaper publisher Thomas Powell, who had been imprisoned by the Crown for publishing an article that criticized the Loyalist upper house of the colonial legislature. The following year, grateful Whigs chose Rutledge as one of five Delegates to the First Continental Congress; he also married Henrietta Middleton, the sister of his colleague. The Rutledges were to have three children.

Rutledge spent his first term in Congress overshadowed by the more experienced South Carolina delegates, including his older brother, John, and his father-in-law, Henry Middleton. However, during 1775–76, both in Congress and in two South Carolina provincial assemblies, his growing self-confidence and improved judgment earned him the respect of his peers. In that same year, two senior South Carolina delegates, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Middleton, stepped down from Congress, and Thomas Lynch, Sr., suffered a debilitating stroke. With his brother away on state business, Rutledge became the leader of the delegation.

On June 7, 1776, when Richard Henry Lee from Virginia suggested national independence, Rutledge led the moderates in getting the voting postponed. He understood that independence was unavoidable. In March, his colony, following only New Hampshire, had adopted a constitution. Additionally, that same month, the provincial assembly had given its Delegates the authority to vote for independence if they chose to. However, Rutledge strongly believed that the Colonies should first come together and build foreign alliances to better prepare themselves for the risky move they were about to make. When the vote on independence was held on July 1, he refused to back down and South Carolina voted against it. But nine of the Colonies voted in favor. Realizing that the resolution would likely pass anyway, Rutledge suggested that the vote be taken again the next day. He convinced the other South Carolina Delegates to go along with the majority for the sake of unity, and South Carolina changed its vote.

Rutledge’s last significant assignment happened in September when he went with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin on a fruitless peace mission to Staten Island to negotiate with British Admiral Lord Richard Howe. He was, along with his brother, Gen. William Howe, trying to amicably settle the issues between the Colonies and Great Britain, though it was a late and somewhat unrealistic effort. Two months later, Rutledge left Congress to go back to his law practice in Charleston.

In 1778, Rutledge took a seat in the state legislature and the following year was re-elected to Congress, although military obligations kept him from attending. As a militia captain, he participated in General William Moultrie’s victory over the British at Port Royal Island, S.C., in February 1779. However, in May 1780, during the siege of Charleston, the redcoats captured Rutledge, along with Heyward and Middleton, and imprisoned them in St. Augustine, Fla., until July 1781.

From 1782 until 1798, Rutledge served in the State legislature, which designated him as a presidential elector three times. During this time, his distrust of unrestricted republicanism strengthened his conservative views and led him to join the Federalist Party. In his personal life, he thrived, with his wealth growing through his law practice and investments in plantations. In 1792, his first wife passed away, and he remarried. To top off his achievements, six years later, the people of South Carolina elected him as Governor. However, due to poor health, he passed away in Charleston early in 1800 at the age of 50, nearly a year before his term ended. The yard of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church is where he is buried.

In 1723, when Sherman was 2 years old, his family moved from his birthplace in Newton, Mass., to Dorchester (now Stoughton). As a child, he was driven by a desire to learn and read a lot in his free time to make up for his limited education at a local school. However, he spent most of his waking hours assisting his father with farming tasks and learning the cobbler's trade from him. In 1743, two years after his father's death, Sherman joined an older brother who had settled in New Milford, Conn.

130 Sherman thrived in the community by buying a store, becoming the county surveyor, and winning various local offices. Even without a law degree, he was admitted to the bar in 1754 and began a notable career in law and politics. From 1755 to 1761, with just a short break, he was a representative in the colonial legislature and also held positions as a justice of the peace and county judge. Somehow, he managed to find time to publish an essay on monetary theory and a series of almanacs that included his own astronomical observations and poetry.

In 1761, leaving his law practice behind, Sherman moved to New Haven, Connecticut. There, he ran a store that served Yale students and another in nearby Wallingford. He also became a friend and supporter of Yale College, serving for many years as its treasurer.

Meanwhile, Sherman’s political career had flourished. He advanced from justice of the peace and county judge to an associate judge of the Connecticut Superior Court and served as a representative in both houses of the colonial assembly. Although against extremism, he quickly joined the fight against Britain. He backed nonimportation measures and led the New Haven committee of correspondence.

131 Sherman was a longtime and influential member of the Continental Congress (1774–81 and 1783–84). He was part of the committees that drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, as well as those dealing with Indian affairs, national finance, and military issues. To address economic problems at both the national and state levels, he supported high taxes instead of excessive borrowing or printing paper money. While in Congress, Sherman was also active in state and local politics, continuing to serve as a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court and being part of the council of safety. In 1783, he helped codify Connecticut’s laws. The following year, he was elected mayor of New Haven (1784–86).

Sherman couldn't resist the appeal of serving his country. In 1787, he represented his state at the Constitutional Convention, where he played a significant role. He came up with and introduced the Connecticut, or Great, Compromise, which resolved a stalemate between large and small states by establishing a dual legislative system—representation based on population in the lower house and equal representation in the upper house. He also played a key role in Connecticut's ratification of the Constitution.

Sherman wrapped up his career by serving as a U.S. Representative (1789–91) and Senator (1791–93), supporting the Federalist cause. He passed away in New Haven in 1793 at the age of 72 and is buried in Grove Street Cemetery.

132

Smith, the second son in a large family, was born in northern Ireland around 1719. When he was about 10 years old, his father moved to America and settled on land west of the Susquehanna River in York County, Pa. James studied surveying and classical languages at Rev. Francis Alison’s academy in New London, Pa., and then studied law in the office of his older brother in Lancaster. He was admitted to the bar in 1745 and moved west to the Shippensburg area in Cumberland County. A lack of clients and surveying work led him to move back east to York around 1750, where he got married a decade later. Although he was the only lawyer in town until 1769, he struggled to attract clients. Likely for this reason, between 1771 and 1778, he tried his hand at iron manufacturing, but the business failed and he lost £5,000.

Smith quickly became a local Whig leader. In 1774, at a provincial convention in Philadelphia, he supported non-importation measures and pushed for an intercolonial congress. That same year, in York, he raised a militia company, serving as captain and later as honorary colonel. At two provincial meetings in 1775-76, he advocated for the interests of the western counties and helped create133 resolutions calling for independence, enhanced defenses, and the establishment of a new provincial government. During that year, he was part of the drafting committee at the State constitutional convention. He was elected to Congress (1776-78) on July 20, 1776, right after the vote on independence, and arrived in Philadelphia just in time to sign the Declaration. Among his peers, he earned a reputation as a witty conversationalist and an eccentric.

During the years 1779–82, Smith held several state positions: he was a one-term legislator, a judge on Pennsylvania's high court of errors and appeals, a brigadier general in the militia, and a state counselor during the Wyoming Valley land dispute between Pennsylvania and Connecticut. In 1785, he declined reelection to Congress due to his age. His main focus before retiring in 1801 was practicing law. Smith passed away around the age of 87 in 1806 in York, leaving behind two of his five children. His burial site is in the First Presbyterian Church Cemetery.

134

Stockton, the son of a wealthy landowner and judge, was born in 1730 at Morven, the family estate and his lifelong home, in Princeton, N.J. After getting his early education at West Nottingham Academy in Rising Sun, Md., he graduated in 1748 from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), which had moved from Newark to Princeton eight years earlier. In 1754, he finished an apprenticeship with a lawyer in Newark and joined the bar. The following year, he married poetess Annis Boudinot, with whom he had two sons and four daughters. By the mid-1760s, he was recognized as one of the top lawyers in the Middle Colonies.

Like his father, a supporter of the College of New Jersey, in 1766, Stockton traveled to Scotland to recruit Rev. John Witherspoon for the presidency. Benjamin Rush, a fellow alumnus who was studying at the University of Edinburgh at the time, helped with this effort, which was complicated by Witherspoon’s wife's objections. In 1768, the year after Stockton left, Witherspoon finally agreed to take the position.

Stockton went back to his law practice, using his free time at Morven to breed quality cattle and horses, collect art, and grow his library. However, even though he had previously shown no interest in public life, in 1768 he started a 6-year term on the executive council of New Jersey and then served on the provincial Supreme Court (1774–76).

Stockton got involved with the Revolutionary movement early on. In 1764, he pushed for American representation in Parliament, but during the Stamp Act crisis the following year, he questioned Parliament's right to control the Colonies at all. By 1774, despite fearing the possibility of war, he was advocating for colonial self-rule under the Crown. Two years later, he was elected to Congress, where he voted for independence and signed the Declaration. That same year, he lost in his attempt to become the governor of New Jersey, but turned down the opportunity to be the first chief justice of the State Supreme Court to stay in Congress.

Late in 1776, things took a turn for the worse for Stockton. In November, while reviewing the northern Continental Army in upstate New York with fellow Congressman George Clymer, Stockton rushed home after hearing about the British invasion of New Jersey and moved his family to a friend's place in Monmouth County. While he was there, Loyalists tipped off the British, who captured him and imprisoned him under harsh conditions in Perth Amboy, N.J., and later in New York. A formal complaint from Congress and other efforts to secure his release eventually led to him being freed, although he was in poor health, sometime in 1777. To make matters worse, he discovered that the British had looted and partially burned Morven. Still unwell, he passed away in Princeton in 1781 at the age of 50. He is buried at the Stony Brook Quaker Meeting House Cemetery.

Stone was born in 1743 at Poynton Manor, his father's plantation near the village of Welcome in Charles County, Maryland. He had all the benefits that came with being the eldest son. After receiving private tutoring in the classics as a child, he apprenticed with a lawyer in Annapolis and joined the bar in 1764. For the first two years, he practiced in Frederick, Maryland, and then moved back to his home county. He got married two years later. Using part of his wife's dowry, he bought land a few miles northeast of where he was born. There, near Port Tobacco, he built Habre-de-Venture in 1771, which became his home and primary residence for the rest of his life.136

Stone got into politics in 1773 as a member of the Charles County committee of correspondence. The following year, representing the Proprietary Governor, he helped prosecute Joseph H. Harrison, a Maryland legislator who had refused to pay the poll tax for the support of the Anglican clergy. Although this action was legally ethical, it didn't win Stone any favor with the patriots. His opponents, who represented the defense, included Thomas Johnson, Samuel Chase, and William Paca—all three of whom would later become his colleagues in Congress.

That same year, 1774, Stone was appointed to the provincial convention, which sent him to Congress the following year. Unlike most Congressmen, he was not very enthusiastic about the Revolution and strongly supported reconciliation almost up until the vote on independence. He was one of the few Delegates who backed peace talks with British Lord Richard Howe in September 1776, about two months after the Declaration was adopted. Not a great speaker, Stone rarely took part in debates but was on the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation, although he did not sign the document. He stayed in Congress until 1778.

Meantime, a couple of years earlier, Stone had started a tour in the State Senate that would last for almost the rest of his life. In 1784, he also went back to the Continental Congress, where he served for a few days as acting President but stepped down before the year was over to return to his law practice. His final act of public service took place the following year when he and two others represented Maryland at the Mount Vernon Conference.

In 1787, Stone's wife, who had been in poor health for over a decade, died at the age of 34. Heartbroken, Stone stopped working, refused to go to the Constitutional Convention he had been elected to, and chose to travel to England. A few months later, despite being only in his mid-forties, he died unexpectedly while waiting for a ship in Alexandria, Va. Three of his children survived him. Stone is buried in the family graveyard next to Habre-de-Venture.

137

When Taylor was around 20 years old, he signed an indenture and moved from Northern Ireland, where he was born in 1716, to Pennsylvania. He started as a laborer and later became a clerk at Warwick Furnace in Chester County. Within three years, he was promoted to bookkeeper-manager at Coventry Forge, another business owned by his employer. In 1742, the year after the latter passed away, Taylor took over the business by marrying his widow; she had a son and a daughter with him.

In the mid-1750s, Taylor moved northeast to Bucks County, where he and a partner leased Durham Furnace, located about 2 miles south of the Northampton County line and 10 miles south of Easton. After 1763, Taylor seemingly spent a lot of his time at or near Easton and bought property there. In 1768, his wife passed away; he then fathered five children with his housekeeper out of wedlock. The year his wife died, he built a home about 15 miles west of the138 city on a 331-acre piece of land he had bought the year before. In 1771, he leased most of the land as a farm, and five years later, he sold the house and land.

Taylor began his public life in 1747 when he became a captain in the Chester County militia. In 1761, he was appointed a justice of the peace for Bucks County, but he focused most of his efforts on Northampton County, where he served as justice of the peace (1764–75) and as a representative in the colonial legislature (1764–70). In 1774, Taylor, who was politically moderate, joined the Northampton County committee of correspondence. The following year, he participated in a provincial Revolutionary convention, was elected to the provincial assembly, served on the council of safety, and became a colonel in the Bucks and Northampton County militias.

In July 1776, the Pennsylvania assembly chose Taylor as one of its new Delegates to the Continental Congress. His only significant action there was signing the Declaration. The following January, however, he and fellow signer George Walton from Georgia negotiated a peace treaty with the Six Indian Nations (Iroquois) in Easton, Pa., but Congress did not approve it. In March, voters in Northampton County elected Taylor to the new Supreme Executive Assembly of Pennsylvania, but illness and financial issues limited his participation to just 6 weeks, after which he stepped back from public life.

By this time, Taylor’s Durham Furnace was producing grapeshot, cannonballs, bar shot, and cannons for the Revolutionary army—though he was poorly compensated for it. In 1778, the State took away his lease on the Durham Furnace, which belonged to the Philadelphia Loyalist John Galloway and was seized by the State. Taylor then relocated to Greenwich Township, N.J., and leased Greenwich Forge, which he ran until he died at the age of 65 in 1781. The year before, as his health declined, Taylor returned to Easton and rented a home. He was initially buried in the yard of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Easton, but his body was later moved to the Easton Cemetery.

139

Thornton was born in Ireland around 1714. About four years later, his Scotch-Irish parents moved the family to America, initially settling in Wiscasset, now in Maine, and then near Worcester, Massachusetts. Young Thornton, after going to local schools, started studying medicine with a nearby doctor. In 1740, he launched what turned out to be a successful practice in the Scotch-Irish community of Londonderry (now Derry Village), New Hampshire. Five years later, serving as a surgeon in the New Hampshire militia during King George’s War (1740–48), he took part in the British expedition from New England that captured Louisbourg, the French fortress in Nova Scotia.

By 1758, Thornton was representing Londonderry in the colonial legislature and stayed there until 1775. During that time, around 1760, he got married and started a family of five. Throughout this period, he played a significant role in New Hampshire politics and Revolutionary activities. In 1775–76, he held the positions of president of the provincial assembly and constitutional convention, chairman of the council of safety, and member of both the upper and lower houses of the legislature, as well as speaker of the former. Although he didn't join Congress until November 1776, three months after the formal signing of the Declaration, he was allowed to put his signature on it.

About a year later, Thornton left Congress to focus on his role as an associate justice of the State Superior Court. Even though he didn't have a formal legal education, he landed this position in 1776. He held it until 1782, about two years after he retired from his medical practice in Londonderry and settled on a farm he bought near Merrimack, N.H. Later, from 1784 to 1786, he served in the State Senate. He spent his final years farming and running a ferry—Lutwyche’s (later Thornton’s) Ferry—across the Merrimack River.

Thornton died in 1803 at around the age of 89 while visiting his daughter in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His grave is in Thornton’s Ferry Cemetery, close to where his home in Merrimack was located.

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Born in the 1740s near Farmville, VA, Walton lost his parents at a young age and was raised by an uncle, who trained him as a carpenter. Walton combined a lot of self-directed study with some formal education. In 1769, he relocated to Savannah, GA, studied law with a local attorney, and five years later became a licensed lawyer.

That same year, Walton got involved in politics. Gathering Revolutionaries in Savannah, just like Lyman Hall did in St. John’s Parish—the two Whig strongholds in a mostly apathetic colony—Walton helped organize and played a major role in meetings in Savannah during July and August 1774 and the first provincial congress the following January. However, these meetings, which only a handful of parishes sent representatives to, barely sparked any dissent. The divided delegates, aware of their limited support, didn’t send delegates to the Continental Congress like all the other colonies did, which alienated St. John’s Parish. Other than forming a committee of correspondence, which Walton was appointed to, the conference mostly replaced action with patriotic talk. During this time, Walton combined political activism with romance and got married. She later gave birth to two sons.

By July 1775, when the second provincial congress met and appointed Walton as secretary, the indifference in the Revolutionary ranks had turned into determination. The congress sent four delegates to the Continental Congress to join Hall, who was already acting as an unofficial “delegate” from St. John’s Parish. The following year, the third provincial congress elected Walton, who was now the chairman of the council of safety, as a Delegate (1776–81). In this role, he served on committees that focused on western lands, national finance, and Indian affairs. His only absence occurred in 1778–79 when the military defense of his own state took priority over his congressional responsibilities. As a colonel in the Georgia militia, he was wounded and captured during the siege of Savannah in November-December 1778, marking the start of the British invasion of the South. He was imprisoned until the next September, when he was swapped for a navy captain.

Right after his release, in Augusta, Walton got caught up in a power struggle between two factions of Revolutionaries. His group was frustrated because their conservative rivals had taken advantage of the chaos from the British occupation of Savannah to put their own “governor” in office without a general election. In response, they chose Walton as their “governor” (November 1779-January 1780). In January, the newly elected legislature appointed a Governor, another anti-conservative. Walton went back to the Continental Congress in 1780-81, and then he returned to Georgia.

Walton's career continued to thrive. He held several positions, including chief justice (1783–89) and justice (1790–95 and 1799–1804) of the State Superior Court; delegate to the State constitutional convention (1788); presidential elector (1789); Governor (1789–90); and U.S. Senator (1795–96), completing an unexpired term. In addition, he was elected as a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention (1787), though he didn't attend. A supporter of higher education, he also served as a trustee and founder of Richmond Academy in Augusta and Franklin College (which later became the University of Georgia) in Athens.

About 1790, while serving as Governor, Walton moved his residence from Savannah to Augusta, the capital, where he built the “Meadow Garden” cottage on the northern edge of the city using confiscated Loyalist lands he had acquired. He lived in the cottage for five years before relocating to College Hill, a country estate he built on the western outskirts. He died there in 1804. Initially buried in Rosney Cemetery in Augusta, his remains now rest at the Signers’ Monument in that city.

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Whipple, the oldest of five siblings, was born in 1730 in Kittery, which is now part of Maine. He went to local schools and started sailing while he was still a kid. In his early twenties, he became a captain of his own ship and later likely participated in the slave trade at times. Around 1760, he left the sea and started a trading business in Portsmouth, N.H., with his brother Joseph. In 1767, he married the daughter of a wealthy merchant-sea captain; their only child passed away in infancy.

By the time the Revolution broke out, Whipple had become one of the leading figures in Portsmouth. In 1775, with his wealth firmly established, he stepped away from business to focus on public service. That year, he represented Portsmouth in the provincial assembly in Exeter and served on the New Hampshire council of safety. The next year, he secured positions in the upper house of the State legislature and the Continental Congress. His time in Congress, which was occasionally interrupted by militia duties, continued until 1779. He mainly focused on military, maritime, and financial issues. Strong-minded and independent, he advocated for a more aggressive military approach in the war instead of relying on diplomacy and supported harsh penalties for Loyalists and speculators.

In the fall of 1777, Whipple, a brigadier general in the New Hampshire militia, led four regiments to upper New York State and helped encircle and besiege the British army at Saratoga. He was present on October 17 for the surrender of Gen. John Burgoyne, signed the Convention of Saratoga, which ended the New York campaign, and helped escort the British troops to a winter camp near Boston to wait for their departure to England. In 1778, he led another group of New Hampshire militia into Rhode Island in an attempt to recapture Newport from the British, but they were unsuccessful.

During his final years, Whipple served as a state legislator (1780–84), an associate justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court (1782–85), the financial receiver for Congress in New Hampshire (1782–84), and in 1782 he was the president of a commission that resolved the Wyoming Valley land dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania. In the last few years of his life, he passed away in 1785 at the age of 55 in Portsmouth, where he was buried in Union Cemetery. His wife outlived him.

144

A Congregational pastor's son, Williams was born in 1731 in Lebanon, Connecticut, where he lived his entire life. After graduating from Harvard in 1751, he started studying for the ministry under his father. Four years later, during the French and Indian War (1754–63), he joined a British expedition to Lake George in northeastern New York, which achieved a victory. Back home, he became a merchant. In 1771, he married a daughter of Jonathan Trumbull, the Royal Governor of Connecticut; they had three children.

During his long political career, Williams held numerous local, state, and provincial offices: town clerk (1752–96) and selectman (1760–85); member, clerk, and speaker of the lower house of the colonial legislature (1755–76); state legislator (1781–84); member of the Governor’s council (1784–1803); judge of the Windham County court (1776–1805); and probate judge for the Windham district (1775–1809). He also represented Connecticut at various New England meetings and attended the 1788 convention that ratified the Federal Constitution, which he supported.

145 When the Revolution started, Williams threw his support behind the cause. In addition to writing pamphlets for the press that expressed the colonial perspective, he prepared Revolutionary state papers for Governor Trumbull. Williams also raised funds for and personally contributed to the war effort. Between 1773 and 1776, he held the rank of colonel in the Connecticut militia and served on the provincial council of safety. In Congress (1776–78 and 1783–84), he was on the Board of War and helped draft the Articles of Confederation, although he did not sign them. During the winter of 1780–81, while a French regiment was stationed in Lebanon, he moved out of his house and gave it to the officers.

Williams died at the age of 80 in 1811. His grave is in Trumbull Cemetery, around a mile northeast of town.

Wilson was born in 1741 or 1742 at Carskerdo, near St. Andrews, Scotland, and studied at the universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. He then moved to America, arriving during the Stamp Act protests in 1765. Early the next year, he took a job as a Latin tutor at the College of Philadelphia but quickly left it to study law under John Dickinson.

In 1768, the year after he became a lawyer, Wilson started his practice in Reading, Pa. Two years later, he moved west to the Scotch-Irish community of Carlisle, and the next year he got married. He focused on land law and developed a wide range of clients. Using borrowed funds, he also started investing in land. Somehow, he also managed to teach English literature for many years at the College of Philadelphia.

Wilson also got involved in Revolutionary politics. In 1774, he took over as chairman of the Carlisle committee of correspondence, attended the first provincial assembly, and finished preparing Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament. This pamphlet spread widely in England and America and established Wilson as a Whig leader. It rejected Parliament’s authority over the Colonies, though it didn’t question their loyalty to the Crown, and recommended a147 reorganization of the imperial structure similar to the later British Commonwealth of Nations.

The next year, Wilson was elected to both the provincial assembly and the Continental Congress, where he mainly served on military and Indian affairs committees. In 1776, reflecting his constituents' wishes, he joined the moderates in voting for a 3-week delay in considering Richard Henry Lee’s resolution from June 7. However, on July 1, Wilson went against the majority of the Pennsylvania delegation and voted with John Morton and Benjamin Franklin for independence. On July 2, the three men, representing a majority of the Commonwealth’s Delegates present, voted the same way. Wilson's strong opposition to the republican Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, besides showing a shift to conservatism on his part, led to his removal from Congress the following year. To avoid the backlash from his frontier constituents, he went to Annapolis during the winter of 1777–78 and then moved to Philadelphia.

Wilson confirmed his new political views by aligning himself with aristocratic and conservative republican groups, expanding his business interests, and ramping up his land speculation. He also served as Advocate-General for France in America (1779–83), handling commercial and maritime issues, and legally representing Loyalists and their supporters.

In the fall of 1779, during a time of inflation and food shortages, a mob made up of many militiamen and led by radical constitutionalists planned to attack the republican leadership. Wilson was a main target. He and about 35 of his colleagues locked themselves in his home at Third and Walnut Streets, which became known as “Fort Wilson.” During a short skirmish, several people from both sides were killed or injured. The shock of the violence calmed tempers, and pardons were granted all around, although significant political conflicts over the Commonwealth constitution were still to come.

During 1781, Congress appointed Wilson as one of the directors of the Bank of North America, which had recently been founded by Robert Morris with legal advice from Wilson. In 1782–83, by which time the conservatives had regained some power, he was reelected to Congress, as well as during the period of 1785–87.

Wilson reached the peak of his career during the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787, where he was a key leader in both the debates and the drafting committee. That same year, despite facing strong opposition, he led the push for ratification in148 Pennsylvania, making it the second state to ratify. The new Commonwealth constitution, created between 1789 and 1790 based on the U.S. Constitution, was largely his work and marked the culmination of his 14-year struggle against the 1776 constitution.

For his contributions to creating the Federal Government, even though Wilson hoped to be appointed Chief Justice, in 1789, President Washington appointed him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. That same year, he was selected as the first law professor at the College of Philadelphia. Two years later, he started an official summary of Pennsylvania's laws, a project he never finished, although he continued for a while after the funding ran out.

Wilson, who wrote only a few opinions, didn't achieve the success on the Supreme Court that his skills and experience promised. During those years, he faced a lot of criticism and narrowly avoided impeachment. For one thing, he tried to influence legislation in Pennsylvania that would benefit land speculators. Between 1792 and 1795, he also made significant but poor investments in land in western New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. This didn't stop him from coming up with a grand but doomed plan that involved large amounts of European capital to recruit European settlers to the western lands. Meanwhile, in 1793, as a widower with six children, he remarried; the one son from this marriage died in infancy.

Four years later, to escape arrest for debt, the troubled Wilson moved from Philadelphia to Burlington, N.J. The following year, apparently while on Federal circuit court business, he arrived in Edenton, N.C., in a state of severe mental distress and was taken into the home of James Iredell, a fellow Supreme Court Justice. He died there within a few months. Although initially buried at Hayes Plantation near Edenton, his remains were later moved to the yard of Christ Church in Philadelphia.

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The son of a Calvinist minister, Witherspoon was born in 1723 in the village of Gifford, near Edinburgh. He attended grammar school in the nearby town of Haddington and earned his master of arts (1739) and divinity (1743) degrees from the University of Edinburgh. In 1743, the Haddington Presbytery licensed him to preach. He was ordained two years later at Beith, where he served as a pastor until 1757. He then moved to Paisley, not far from Glasgow. In the meantime, in 1748, he got married; only five of his ten children survived childhood.

Over the years, Witherspoon became the leader of a group of conservative ministers who were in a long battle with some of their colleagues to preserve the "purity" of orthodox Church beliefs. Witherspoon wrote a series of sermons and pamphlets criticizing the opposition and condemning moral decline in Scotland. He also defended the traditional right of the people150 to select their own ministers, a right that church authorities had taken away from them.

In 1768, Witherspoon redirected his focus. He left his position in Paisley and took the presidency of the College of New Jersey, after two college representatives visited him and finally, after two years of effort, convinced his wife. He sailed to America with his family. The college thrived under his leadership. He increased the endowment, introduced new teaching methods, and expanded and revitalized the curriculum. While continuing as a minister and church leader, he mended a significant split in the Presbyterian Church, encouraged its growth, particularly in the Middle Colonies, and collaborated closely with the Congregationalists.

The Revolution intensified Witherspoon’s animosity toward the English, which had started in Scotland. By 1770, his students were openly supporting the patriot cause. In a commencement speech, he advocated for resistance against the Crown, a theme that became central to his sermons and essays. From 1774 to 1776, he represented his county in the New Jersey provincial assemblies and served on local committees of correspondence. In 1776, he played a key role in the movements that resulted in the dismissal and imprisonment of the Royal Governor, after which he was appointed to the Continental Congress.

On July 2, 1776, in a speech to Congress advocating for independence, Witherspoon stated that the Colonies were "not only ready for this action but at risk of suffering for the lack of it." In November, when the British invaded New Jersey, he shut down the College of New Jersey. The British troops took over its main building, Nassau Hall, burned the library, and carried out other acts of destruction. The following year, Witherspoon's son James died at the Battle of Germantown, Pennsylvania.

Witherspoon stayed in Congress until 1782. His main committee assignments were focused on military and foreign affairs. He also took part in the discussions about the Articles of Confederation, helped establish the executive departments, and advocated for financial stability. Meanwhile, in 1779, he moved from the President’s House at Princeton to Tusculum, a country home he had previously built nearby. He left Rev. Samuel S. Smith, his son-in-law and the college vice president, in charge of the nearly defunct institution.

Witherspoon focused most of his efforts during the postwar years on rebuilding the college, which never fully regained its prewar success during his lifetime. Additionally, from 1783 to 1789, he served two terms in the State legislature, attended the New Jersey convention in 1787 that ratified the Federal Constitution, took part in reorganizing the Presbyterian Church, and moderated its first general assembly in 1789. In 1791, at the age of 68, Witherspoon married a 24-year-old widow, who gave birth to two daughters. He was blind in his final two years and passed away in 1794 at the age of 71 at Tusculum. His remains are interred in the Presidents’ Lot at Princeton Cemetery.

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Wolcott was the youngest son in a family of 15. He was the son of Roger Wolcott, a prominent Connecticut politician, and was born in 1726 in Windsor (now South Windsor), Connecticut. In 1747, after graduating at the top of his class from Yale College, he started his military career. As a militia captain during King George’s War (1740–48), he took part in an unsuccessful British expedition against the French in New France. After returning home, he studied medicine for a while with his brother before deciding to pursue a career in law.

In 1751, when Litchfield County was established, Wolcott moved about 30 miles west to the town of Litchfield and immediately began a long career in various county and state positions: county sheriff (1751–71); member of the lower house (1764, 1767–68, and 1770) and upper house (1771–86) of the colonial and state legislatures; and probate (1772–81) and county (1774–78) judge. By 1774, he had achieved the rank of colonel in the militia.

The following spring, the legislature appointed him as a supply officer for the Connecticut troops, and in the summer, the Continental Congress named him a commissioner for Indian affairs in the northern153 department. In that role, he participated in a conference that year with the Iroquois (Six Nations) in Albany, N.Y., which temporarily secured their neutrality in the war. Before the year ended, he also helped settle land disputes between Pennsylvania and Connecticut and between New York and Vermont.

Wolcott served in Congress from 1775 to 1783, except for 1779. In June 1776, he became ill and had to return to Connecticut. He was absent during the vote for independence the following month and at the official signing of the Declaration in August, but he added his signature after returning to Congress in October. Throughout his time in office, Wolcott also spent parts of each year on militia duty, notably serving as a brigadier general in the New York campaigns of 1776–77, which ended with the surrender of General John Burgoyne in October of that year at Saratoga (Schuylerville). In 1779, as a major general, Wolcott defended the Connecticut coastline against raids by William Tryon, the Royal Governor of New York.

Wolcott’s postwar career was diverse. Nationally, he helped negotiate two Indian treaties: the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix, N.Y. (1784), where the Iroquois ceded some of their lands in New York and Pennsylvania to the United States; and another one (1789) with the Wyandottes, who surrendered their land in the Western Reserve, now part of Ohio. At the state level, Wolcott continued his long service in the upper house of the legislature (which ended in 1786); had a lengthy term as Lieutenant Governor (1787–96); participated in the convention (1788) that ratified the U.S. Constitution; and, like his father before him and his son after him, served as Governor (1796–97).

While in that position, Wolcott passed away at the age of 71 in East Windsor. His remains are buried in the East Cemetery in Litchfield.

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Wythe was born in 1726 as the second of three children on his father's plantation along the Back River in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, which is now part of Hampton. He lost his parents when he was young and was raised by his older brother, Thomas. George learned about classical literature from his educated mother before she passed away, and he likely attended a grammar school run by the College of William and Mary for a while.

Wythe's brother later sent him to Prince George County to study law with an uncle. In 1746, at the age of 20, he became a lawyer, moved to Spotsylvania County, and teamed up with a lawyer there. In December 1747, he married his partner's sister, but she passed away the following year. In 1754, Lt. Gov. Robert Dinwiddie appointed him as acting colonial attorney general, a position he held for a few months, which likely required him to spend some time in Williamsburg. The next year, Wythe's brother died, and he inherited his birthplace. However, he decided to live in Williamsburg in the house that his new father-in-law, an architect, designed and built for him and his fiancée, whom he married around 1755. Their only child died in infancy.

At Williamsburg, Wythe dove deeper into the study of the classics and the law, earning accreditation from the colonial Supreme Court. Like his father, he served in the House of Burgesses from the mid-1750s until 1775, initially as a delegate and then as clerk after 1769. During this time, in 1768, he was the mayor of Williamsburg, and the following year, he served on the board of visitors for the College of William and Mary. He also managed to find time between 1762 and 1767 to teach a young Thomas Jefferson about the law. The two began as mentor and student and later became political allies, maintaining a lifelong friendship.

Wythe first showed his Revolutionary ideas in 1764 when Parliament suggested to the Colonies that they might impose a Stamp Tax. By then a seasoned legislator, he wrote a strong protest for the House of Burgesses to send to Parliament, which his fellow lawmakers toned down before it was approved. Wythe was one of the first to articulate the idea of the Colonies having separate nationhood within the British Empire.

Although he was elected to Congress in 1775–76, Wythe didn't have much influence there. He spent a lot of time helping to draft a state constitution and design a state seal, and he wasn't present for the formal signing of the Declaration in August 1776. Additionally, within a few months, Wythe, Jefferson, and Edmund Pendleton began a 3-year project to revise Virginia's legal code. In 1777, Wythe also served as the speaker of the lower house of the legislature.

An appointment as one of the three judges of the newly established Virginia High Court of Chancery came the following year. Serving for 28 years, during which he was the only chancellor for 13 years, Wythe shaped the direction of Virginia law. In addition to these responsibilities, he was also an ex officio member of the State Superior Court.

Wythe's true passion was teaching. In 1779, Jefferson and other officials from the College of William and Mary established the first chair of law at a U.S. institution of higher education and appointed Wythe to that position. There, he trained some of America's earliest college-educated lawyers, including John Marshall and James Monroe. To enhance his lectures, Wythe implemented moot courts and legislatures, where students could apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios. In 1787, he also showcased his love for the classics and literature by offering a free class in Latin, Greek, and English literature to anyone interested. That same year, he attended the U.S. Constitutional Convention, although he played a minor role and did not sign the Constitution. The following year, however, he became one of the Federalist leaders at the Virginia ratifying convention.

In 1791, the year after Wythe stepped down from his teaching position, his chancery responsibilities required him to relocate to Richmond, the state capital. However, he was hesitant to stop teaching and decided to open a private law school. One of his final and most promising students was a teenager named Henry Clay.

In 1806, at the age of nearly 80, Wythe died in Richmond under mysterious circumstances—likely from poison given to him by his favored grandnephew. Showing his lifelong opposition to slavery, Wythe freed his slaves in his will. His grave is located in the yard of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond.

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Over the decades that separate today's America from its early history, many of the buildings honoring those times have been damaged or destroyed. Those connected to the signers of the Declaration of Independence haven't been exempt. The impacts of war, urban development, fire, aging, weather, neglect, and vandalism have led to the loss of all the homes of 21 out of these 56 men and have seriously affected some of the ones that are still standing.

Beyond the factors that harm all historic buildings, there are two specific issues that have hindered the marking and preservation of the homes and sites of the signers. For decades after the Declaration was adopted, these individuals were not treated with the respect they receive today. Additionally, many of them have received only minimal historical recognition because they did not have national reputations beyond being signers.

Yet among the homes and buildings that are still standing, many hold significant importance. Collectively, they provide insight into the lives of the signers and shed light on the events surrounding the creation of the Declaration. A key highlight is Independence National Historical Park in Pennsylvania. This is where the document was written, discussed, approved, and signed. The National160 Park Service manages the park in partnership with the city of Philadelphia and various private organizations. Three residences of signers are also part of the National Park System: Adams National Historic Site in Massachusetts; the Floyd House at Fire Island National Seashore in New York; and the Nelson House, which is part of Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia.

Almost half of the existing homes of the signers are owned by private individuals, many of whom live in them and a few of whom are descendants of the signers. The rest of the homes are owned and maintained by states, cities, and a variety of nonprofit organizations, such as patriotic and civic groups, memorial associations, local historical societies, foundations, universities, churches, and businesses.

Reflecting the hard work of many individuals and organizations mentioned above, a good number of the buildings and homes showcase excellent examples of historic preservation and restoration. Unfortunately, some structures have significantly fallen into disrepair. However, the recent surge in interest in the signers has improved the identification, renovation, and preservation of related sites and buildings.

In addition to preserving sites and buildings, which is the focus of this book, the signers have been honored in various other ways. However, the nature of these commemorations differs significantly from one state to another and from one signer to another. Some have received substantial recognition, while others have barely been acknowledged.

In the forefront of the organizations that have recognized existing homes and buildings, as well as the locations of former structures and graves, or otherwise honored the signers are: Daughters of the American Revolution; Daughters of the Revolution; Colonial Dames of America; National Society of Colonial Dames of America; Sons of the American Revolution; Sons of the Revolution; and the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, Inc., chartered by Congress in 1907.

A significant number of residential sites without any physical remains have been identified. The 20 signers for whom no existing homes have been found are: Samuel Adams, Abraham Clark, William Ellery, Benjamin Franklin, Lyman Hall, John Hart, Francis Lewis, Philip Livingston, Thomas McKean, Lewis Morris, Robert Morris, John Morton, Robert Treat Paine, John Penn, George Read, Caesar Rodney, George Ross, Benjamin Rush, Roger Sherman, and James161 Smith. Another signer, Samuel Chase, is only represented in this volume by a building (Chase-Lloyd House) that he started constructing but never lived in.

Monuments and memorials come in various forms, from simple plaques to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., which is part of the National Park System. Statues of several signers are found in the U.S. Capitol. Special monuments have been built for individuals from two states. The Founders’ Monument in Augusta, Georgia, is dedicated to the three signers from that state (Gwinnett, Hall, and Walton) and includes the burial sites of Hall and Walton. A monument honoring the three signers from North Carolina (Hewes, Hooper, and Penn) is located at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, North Carolina, and contains the tombs of Hooper and Penn.

Described in the following pages are the main buildings connected to the signers of the Declaration. They fall into three categories: National Park Service Areas, National Historic Landmarks, and Other Sites Considered.

The main goal of the National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings is to identify sites that are nationally important but aren't National Park Service Areas. However, no survey of historic places would be complete without including these sites. This is especially true since many were named National Historic Landmarks before joining the National Park System. For more details about a specific area, you can write directly to the park superintendent at the address provided right after the location.

National Historic Landmarks are sites that the Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments has determined meet the standards for national significance in honoring the history of the United States (pp. 270–271). The Secretary of the Interior has declared them eligible for designation as National Historic Landmarks. Final designation happens when the owners apply for this status. They receive certificates and bronze plaques recognizing this distinction.

Other Sites Considered include those locations identified by the Advisory Board as having notable historical value, but without national significance. The list of sites in this category does not162 claim to be exhaustive; it is just a representative sample, limited by space constraints.

Many places in the Other Sites Considered category throughout history are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, maintained by the National Park Service’s Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. The register includes not only sites in the National Park System and National Historic Landmarks but also those of state and local importance, nominated through the proper channels by various states. It is published every two years and distributed by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 20402. The latest volume is The National Register of Historic Places, 1972, priced at $7.80.

163 For the convenience of users of this volume, locations and buildings are listed in alphabetical order by State. The following code shows the categories of sites:

Website Categories

☑  NATIONAL PARK SERVICE AREAS
∆   NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARKS
‎⊗  OTHER SITES CONSIDERED

NOTE: The following descriptions indicate places that are open to the public. Before visiting any of them, you should check with the owners or custodians about the dates and hours of access and any admission fees, which are usually minimal. You should get special permission to visit privately owned sites.

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This simple yet charming farmhouse by Merrick’s Brook was the birthplace and home of Samuel Huntington during his childhood and early adulthood. He lived here from 1731 until around 1760, the year he relocated to Norwich.

The house, built between 1700 and 1722, is surrounded by large trees and has a spacious lawn in front. It’s a big, two-story, clapboard-frame structure with a saltbox design. The gable roof has a steep slope at the back. The exterior windows have projecting cornices above them, and the center door features a rectangular transom. A one-story kitchen wing with a front porch was added early in the 19th century at the northeast end of the house along the main axis.

The floor plan is typical of a central chimney New England house. Behind a short central entrance hall, which features an L-shaped staircase, is a large stone central chimney with three fireplaces. Two of these heat the parlor and dining room, which are accessed from the hall; a massive third one serves the spacious original kitchen, which spans the rear two-thirds of the house behind the dining room and chimney.165 A small bedroom is located behind the parlor next to the original kitchen, nestled between it and the new one-story kitchen addition. Three more bedrooms, one of which has a fully paneled fireplace wall, are found upstairs. Wallpaper has been added to some rooms, but the fireplaces, wainscoting, and wide-board floors remain original.

The privately owned house, which is in good shape and mostly unchanged, has never been renovated, although some modern conveniences have been added. It is not open to the public.

Samuel Huntington built this house between 1783 and 1785 and lived in it until he died in 1796. Since then, the wooden structure has been significantly changed on both the outside and inside, and a large addition has been added at the back.

Originally, the residence was a large, two-story rectangular building with a gable roof, two interior chimneys, tall corner pilasters, and triangular pediments above the ground-floor windows. By the166mid-19th century, however, the building had been remodeled in Greek Revival style, which included adding a two-story portico across the entire front or north side, along with a central two-tiered porch in the middle of this facade. Later in the century, the portico and the two interior chimneys were removed. At some point during the century, a large two-story section was added to the back of the house, and a projecting two-story bay was added on the west side.

The current two-level porch at the entrance is a modern update that looks quite different from the original. It is supported by four large Doric columns, and there's a railing around the second floor. The east entrance has a single-story portico with an elliptical shape and Doric columns. Other modern details include clapboard siding and window sashes.

The central hall, stretching from the entrance all the way through the house and the back addition, has always been the main feature of the layout, which has otherwise been completely altered. Interior walls have either been taken down to create larger spaces or put up to form smaller ones. Stairs are positioned at both the front and back of the hall. Hardly any of the original interior finishes are left.

The house, also called the Governor Huntington House, is in great condition, owned and lived in by a charitable organization, and isn’t open to the public. Huntington’s remains are buried in the nearby Old Burial Ground.

William Williams was born in this house in 1731 and lived here until 1755, when his father provided him with a place to stay elsewhere in Lebanon. Built around 1712 by Rev. Samuel Welles, a Congregational minister, it later became the property of Rev. Solomon Williams, the signer’s father, and is also called the Welles-Williams House. Over the years, it has undergone significant changes.

The rectangular frame house is two stories tall with a gable roof. Shuttered windows on both floors are flanked by louvered shutters. The Greek Revival-style trim around the central door was added around 1830. At the back southwest corner of the house, there’s a one-story ell that includes a kitchen and part of the dining room. A barn has been built at the end of the ell. A newer one-story frame addition extends from the southeast rear corner. The house was recently covered with clapboard.

In recent times, the original large central stone chimney has been replaced with a much smaller brick one, which now serves as a fireplace for the current living room. This change has led to a significant redesign of the typical central chimney floor plan. It used to have two levels consisting of four rooms, but now it's divided into a large living room, dining room, and parlor, along with a bathroom and three bedrooms upstairs. Two of the bedrooms originally had fully paneled walls, but now only one remains paneled.

The house, a private residence that's not open to the public, is in good shape.

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Of the two existing homes of William Williams, this house, where he lived most of his life, is the least changed. His father, Rev. Solomon Williams, bought it in 1748 and seven years later gave it to William, who lived there until his death in 1811.

The house is a two-story, rectangular frame building. A long, 1½-story service wing extends from the center of the back of the house. The original clapboard siding, which was covered with asbestos shingles in the 1930s, has recently been uncovered. The front entrance, designed in the Greek Revival style, was likely built around 1830. Other changes to the main house are limited to lowering the two original interior chimneys on the back side of the gabled roof, adding a brick chimney at the north end, and putting in a one-story bay window in the living room at the south end.

The central hall separates each floor into two large rooms. Downstairs, to the north of the hall, which includes the original staircase, is a parlor with a fireplace wall still covered in the old paneling; to the south of the hall is the living room. Its entrance from the hall has been widened and two columns added. Upstairs are two bedrooms with fully paneled fireplace walls. The six original fireplaces, except for the one in the kitchen, have been sealed, but their mantels are still in place. All the original wide floorboards are intact. The back service wing has a dining room and kitchen on the first floor and four small bedrooms above.

The well-preserved house is now a private residence and isn't open to the public.

Oliver Wolcott built and moved into this house in 1753, about 2 years after he relocated from Windsor to Litchfield, and lived there until he passed away in 1797. Aside from a significant addition at the back, it has been only minimally changed.

The two-story frame building has a gable roof, a large central chimney, and slight overhangs at the gable ends. Attached to the170 south end of the house on the main axis is a small, 1½-story frame wing with a gambrel roof. A one-story porch, added by Wolcott around 1783, extends across this wing. The porch roof is of the coved, or “barrow,” style. The walls of the main house and wing are covered with clapboards, and the windows have louvered shutters. Triangular pediments cap the first-story windows. The center door, topped by a round arch fanlight, is sheltered by a Federal period broken-pediment portico supported by two fluted columns.

Later additions feature small bay windows on either side of the chimney in the south end wall of the south wing; a wide dormer in the west, or front, upper level of the wing; and a two-story, frame, clapboard-covered service wing, added in the 1880s at the northeast corner at the back of the main house, which gave the structure its current L-shape. The service wing, which is not visible from the street, includes the current kitchen as well as staff work areas and bedrooms.

The floor plan of the main house follows a central chimney design. At the back of the short central hall, which features the original L-shaped staircase and divides this part of the house into two sections of rooms, is the central chimney. On the first floor, to the north of the hall is the dining room, and to the south is the parlor. The fireplace walls in both rooms are fully paneled, and the floors have wide planks. Behind the parlor, a hallway leads south to the morning room, or bedroom, in the south wing; and north to the original kitchen, which has a large fireplace. The second story of the main house has four bedrooms, two of which have paneled overmantels, and there is one bedroom located on the second floor of the south wing.

One of Wolcott’s descendants, who bought and renovated the house around 1920, still lives in it today. In great shape, it’s the oldest building still standing in the Litchfield Historic District, a National Historic Landmark mainly focused on colonial architecture. The house isn't open to the public.

Signers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the first two residents of the White House, the official home of our Nation’s171 Presidents since 1800. It is a national landmark that represents the honor and dignity of the highest office in the country and has hosted many historic events and impressive social gatherings. Like the Nation itself, it reflects the influences of successive Presidents. Although it has been rebuilt and modernized, it still keeps the simplicity and charm of its original look.

President George Washington approved the plans for the White House, which were designed by Irish-born James Hoban, the winner of the competition. Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French artist-engineer, placed the mansion in his layout of the Federal City, where it and the Capitol were the first public buildings constructed. The cornerstone was laid on October 13, 1792. Workers used light gray sandstone from the Aquia Creek Quarries in Virginia for the exterior walls. During or shortly after construction, they were apparently painted white. As a result, the building was informally called the “White House” from an early stage, but for many years, it was mostly referred to as the “President’s House” or the “President’s Palace.”

In the Palladian style of architecture, the main facade looks like the Duke of Leinster’s mansion in Dublin. Hoban likely borrowed details for other facades and the interior layout from other contemporary European mansions. He oversaw the initial construction, the rebuilding after the fire set by British forces in 1814, and the construction of the north and south porticoes a few years later. Over time, though, various architects changed Hoban’s original designs, especially Benjamin H. Latrobe during and after the Jefferson administration.

President and Mrs. John Adams were the first residents, in November 1800 when the Government moved from Philadelphia to Washington. The interior hadn't been finished yet, and Mrs. Adams used the incomplete East Room to dry the family's laundry. During Jefferson’s presidency, the east and west terraces, or 173 pavilions, were constructed. Jefferson, who embraced democratic simplicity in his social life, opened the mansion every morning to everyone who arrived.

During the War of 1812, British forces took over the city and burned the White House, the Capitol, and other government buildings in response to the destruction caused by U.S. troops to public buildings in Canada. By the spring of 1815, only the partially damaged exterior walls and interior brickwork of the White House were left when reconstruction started. In 1817, the newly elected President, James Monroe, was able to move into the building. In 1824, the builders added the south portico; and in 1829, they completed the large north portico over the entrance and driveway. The west wing, which includes the President’s Oval Office, was constructed during the first decade of the 20th century. The east wing was built in 1942.

Over the years, the White House has undergone significant renovations and updates multiple times. However, the original sandstone walls have been preserved. The goal has been to maintain the historical charm while creating a more comfortable home for the President and their family.

Located on the first floor of the main building are the East Room, Green Room, Blue Room, Red Room, State Dining Room, and Family Dining Room. These beautifully furnished rooms are open to the public on a special schedule. The ground and second floors are restricted to the use of the presidential family and their guests. On the ground floor are the Diplomatic Reception Room, Curator’s Office, Vermeil Room, China Room, and Library. The second floor includes the Lincoln Bedroom, Lincoln Sitting Room, Queens’ Bedroom (Rose Guest Room), Treaty Room, Yellow Oval Room, and Empire Guest Room. Neither of the wings, reserved for the President and their staff, are usually open to the public.

The straightforward elegance of the White House is complemented by the natural beauty of its casually yet thoughtfully designed grounds.

In 1795, George Walton built this house on the western edge of Augusta on land that the State of Georgia had granted him in 1787. He lived there until his death in 1804.

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The attractive two-story frame building has weatherboarded and clapboarded walls, a gable roof, and a brick chimney on each end. Notably, there's a two-tiered veranda that spans the entire front facade. Both levels feature a series of rounded arches supported by slender square columns on tall pedestals. The elegant balustrade consists of delicate, sheaf-like balusters. Central double doors are positioned at the front of both stories. The doors are framed by pilasters and sidelights, topped with rounded fanlights. The windows have exterior louvered shutters. A one-story kitchen, added in 1898, extends from the southwest rear corner of the house.

The central hall, featuring a U-shaped staircase, splits the main part of the building into two sets of rooms. The larger front pair comes with fireplaces and has the original mantels styled in the Adam design. At the back of the main hall is a smaller rear hall. The hall walls are plastered, and the walls of the main rooms are covered with wallpaper and wainscoting. The second floor has five bedrooms. The original kitchen used to be in a separate building that no longer exists.

Known today as the Walton-Harper House, since 1885 College175 Hill has been owned by the Harper family, who are descendants of Walton. It has changed little and has never been restored; it remains a private residence and is not open to the public.

About 1790, Governor George Walton moved from Savannah to Augusta, which was then the capital. During that time, he built Meadow Garden cottage at the northern edge of the city, on Loyalist lands that had been seized and were in his possession. He lived there until 1795, the year he built and moved into a larger house, College Hill, just west of Augusta. He transferred Meadow Garden under trusteeship to Thomas Watkins, who later passed it on to George Walton, Jr. Over the years, it has been expanded and changed in various ways.

Meadow Garden was originally a simple 1½-story cottage made of wood, built over a high brick basement. The gable roof had two front dormers and a central chimney inside. Windows were positioned in the gable ends. The entrance door and hall were located on the western side of the south facade, which had176 three sections. Two rooms on the first floor were accessed from the east side of the hall, and the basement had two more finished rooms.

Sometime after 1800, the house was expanded and turned into a central hall layout with a significant three-bay extension to the west of the side hall, which became the central hall. The gable roof of the original building was extended over the new section, which also included an interior chimney. Around 1903, a single dormer was added to the extension. The two first-floor rooms in the addition, which doesn’t have a cellar, are about two steps lower than the two in the original structure. The second floor of the current house has four bedrooms. A one-story porch, likely not original, spans the front, or south, side. Its Doric columns sit on square pedestals and are connected by a light balustrade. Around 1903, a one-story kitchen was added to the rear northwest corner of the house.

Many interior features are still preserved, but the plaster walls are covered with wallpaper. The southwest room, or library, which is part of the 1800 addition and was restored in 1969, has a beautiful late Georgian mantel and overmantel. The building is now topped with modern roofing materials.

The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution acquired the house in 1900, and the next year opened it to visitors. In 1960, the National Society gave it to the State Society. It is now run as a historic house museum by the Augusta Chapter. A caretaker's residence is on the property.

The original part of this building, which is now an eight-bedroom house and the main structure on St. Catherines Island, may have been built by Button Gwinnett in 1765 when he bought the island, where he lived until his death in 1777 in Savannah. In 1929, the island's owner did a major remodel of the gable-roofed building. He kept its basic shape and preserved many of its features, including mantels, the stair rail, and wide-board, hand-pegged floors. He also added a 1½-story wing at the back, at a right angle on one side, which more than doubled the floor space. The original front section of the house, also 1½ stories tall, was made of “tabby,” a mix of lime from burned oyster shells, sand, shells, and water. The wing is made of frame with a stucco finish. Both parts of the residence now have roofs made of Ludowici tile and feature dormers, interior chimneys, and shuttered exterior windows.

Other tabby structures on the island include seven guest cottages and about twelve slave quarters, all likely dating back to the early 19th century. Many of them are in ruins, but some are in decent shape. Additionally, there are four current employee residences, along with several barns and maintenance buildings. You can still see the boundaries of old cotton and tobacco fields, as well as numerous Indian burial mounds. Of particular interest is the undisturbed site of the Mission of Santa Catalina (1566-ca. 1684), a Spanish mission, located between Persimmon Point and Wamassee Head. None of the buildings are left, but potsherds and other surface debris are abundant.

When this book was being published, the National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings was conducting another study of Tabby Cottage to figure out how authentic it really is in connection to Gwinnett. St. Catherines Island, which is privately owned and not open to the public, has already been designated as a National Historic Landmark due to its links to Spanish exploration and settlement.

William Whipple, a signer from New Hampshire, was originally from Kittery, which is now in Maine but was part of Massachusetts back then. Born in this house in 1730, he likely lived there until, like many local boys, he went to sea. Around 1760, he left his life as a sailor and moved to Portsmouth, N.H.

This beautiful framed house, the only one still standing linked to a signer in Maine, sits in a charming spot on a small cove by the Piscataqua River. The two-story building has been significantly changed and expanded over the years, but it remains in great condition and is built on the original foundations. It's been painted red since at least 1873.178

In its current form, the house is in the Georgian style with a central hall layout. The exterior walls are made of clapboard. On the front, or east, side, a round arch window on the second floor sits above a pedimented main door. The rear ell is a 20th-century addition. A slight overhang on the south end of the house suggests that it may have once been a garrison house, with the upper floor extending over the first. This section of the house was made from hemlock, with square dovetailing at the corners. At some later date, the building was expanded, and in the mid-19th century, the exterior was completely renovated.

The house originally had a center chimney layout. In the 19th century, the central chimney was taken out, and a center hall with a staircase was added, along with two small interior chimneys with fireplaces, one on each side of the hall. On the first floor, to the south of the hall, is the bedroom where Whipple was born; to the north, there's a large parlor. The original kitchen is located in the back, or west, of the center hall and parlor.

Privately occupied, the house isn’t open to the public.

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Charles Carroll III of Carrollton was born in 1737 at this townhouse, which his father likely built around 1735. When he was about 11, young Carroll went to Europe for his education and didn’t return to Maryland until 1765. After that, he mostly lived at Doughoregan Manor but used his birthplace, which he inherited from his father, whenever he was in Annapolis. In 1804, when he retired from public life, he closed it up. In 1870, one of his granddaughters transferred the house and property to the Redemptionist Fathers of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, which had been built between 1858 and 1860 on nearby land also donated by the Carroll family.

Carroll Mansion is a brick rectangular building built in Flemish bond, standing 2½ stories tall above a basement. Belt courses outline the first- and second-floor levels on the north and south sides. The windows are topped with segmental arches. Two large chimneys rise through the slate-covered gable roof, positioned where the original gable ends might have been. Five gabled dormers stick out from the south side of the roof, and four from the north. A wooden cornice with180 dentils and modillions runs along the sides and up the ends of the gables.

Exterior changes include adding a one-story basement at the east, or current rear, side of the house and a one-story porch and entrance at the west end. The front entrance, likely from the early to mid-19th century, features a rectangular transom and sidelights. The original entrance was seemingly located in the middle of the north side of the house, where a passageway built in 1858 now connects it to St. Mary’s Church.

Interior changes have nearly wiped out the original floor plan. A stair hall takes up a central space on the north side, and the stairs seem to be original. Only two main rooms still have some of their original features. A large room on the south side of the first floor, now used as a chapel, has walls paneled in plaster and a plaster cornice. Another room at the east end has a plaster cornice, a ceiling divided by triple panels, and a wooden mantelpiece.

The building, in decent shape, is used as a home by the Redemptionist Fathers and isn't open to the public. It's part of the Colonial Annapolis Historic District.

In 1765, Charles Carroll returned to Maryland after finishing his education in Europe and built this house near the mouth of the Monocacy River along Tuscarora Creek on a 10,000-acre property he got from his father. Young Carroll didn't spend much time at Carrollton Manor. Shortly after he built it, his father passed away, and he chose to spend his time at Doughoregan Manor, the family home in Howard County.

The rectangular manor is made of local limestone. It stands 2½ stories high above an elevated basement. There are two chimneys on the west end of the gable roof and one chimney on the east end. A later one-story addition extends from the east end. The central door, covered by a one-story porch on the north side, features a rectangular transom above and sidelights on both sides, likely from the Greek Revival period. The two triple windows on the first story at the back of the house also date from that time. A one-story porch that used to stretch across that side has been removed.

The house has four rooms on each floor. To the east of the front entrance is a stair hall and a big dining room; to the west are a library and a living room. Large double doors connect the living room and the dining room. The second floor has four bedrooms; the attic has four more.

Upon Carroll’s death, his descendants inherited the manor. In 1968, an aluminum company purchased the property and constructed large office and plant buildings along with a spur railroad track to the west of the house. It remains in excellent condition, although it has never been restored, and is currently used as a company residence, not open to visitors. A nearby chapel, built by Carroll, is still in use as a parish church.

Although Samuel Chase started building this house in 1769 when he was a young lawyer, he never lived in it because he sold it unfinished in 1771 to Edward Lloyd IV, a wealthy planter and politician from Maryland. Lloyd immediately hired architect William Buckland, who had just arrived in Annapolis, to continue construction, which was completed 3 years later with the help of local architect William Noke.

The building is one of the first three-story Georgian townhouses built in the American Colonies and is considered one of the best examples of its kind in the United States. It's a major attraction in the Colonial Annapolis Historic District. The house has three full stories above a high basement. Two large interior chimneys extend from the broad, low, hip-on-hip roof. The brick walls are arranged in Flemish bond and decorated with belt courses of rubbed brick on the second and third floors. An ornate cornice enhances the roofline. On the front, or east, facade, the central axis features a tall, protruding pavilion and entrance, an arched window on the third floor, and a decorative pediment topped with a small bull’s-eye window.

Of particular note is the entranceway, designed in a Palladian style. The three-section layout was rarely seen in Georgian houses before the Revolution. The door is topped by a fanlight and flanked by two sidelights. The three openings are framed by two engaged Ionic columns and two Ionic pilasters that support an entablature, which forms an open pediment over the door. The triple windows on the second floor above the entrance and the arched windows in the center of the three on the third floor are also unusual.

The sides of the house don't have any standout architectural features, but at the back, a large Palladian window set in a brick arch beautifies and brightens the interior stair landing. The only changes made to the exterior are a three-story wooden screened porch and a steel fire escape that are located on the south side of the building near the west corner.

The layout is typical of a center hall style house, featuring four rooms on each floor, with side halls separating the front and back rooms. The surprisingly spacious center hall is highlighted by a stunning staircase and a pair of freestanding Ionic columns supporting a complete entablature. On the first floor, you'll find a parlor, a large dining room, a sitting room, and a breakfast room, which has seen only minor changes. A small back stairway is next to the breakfast room. The decorative plaster ceilings and doorways are exceptional. The dining room, the most elaborate space, includes an imported Italian mantelpiece that is richly adorned. The second floor is also beautifully decorated.

The Lloyd family owned the house until 1847, when Chase’s descendants took over. In 1888, one of them donated it to the Protestant Episcopal Church to be used as a home for elderly women. It’s in great shape and well-kept. The first floor is open to visitors and features some items that belonged to the Lloyds or the later Chase owners. The upper two floors are used for the women’s home.

This was the winter home of Charles Carroll of Carrollton during his later years and the place where he died in 1832. Christopher Deshon, a merchant from Baltimore, built it in 1811–12 and sold it to Richard Caton, who was married to Carroll’s youngest daughter, Mary, in 1818. Carroll spent his winters there with the couple until he passed away. The rest of the time, he lived at Doughoregan Manor in Howard County.

The Deshon-Caton-Carroll House, a great example of Classic Revival architecture, is built with brick laid in Flemish bond. It184 stands 3½ stories tall. Six pedimented dormers—three on the south (front) and three on the north sides—along with a central chimney and two end chimneys break through the low gable roof. A belt course made of sandstone runs along the second-floor line, and a dentil cornice at roof level extends across the north and south sides. Recessed rectangular wood panels are placed between the second- and third-story windows on the south and west sides. A large semicircular window is found in the west gable of the attic story. The main entrance features a wide-paneled center door, which is sheltered by an Ionic marble portico topped with an iron railing.

The central hall layout includes four large rooms, two on each side of the hallway on the first three floors. The front entrance leads into a stair hall, where an elegant spiral staircase rises through an open space across all three stories. The first floor has a counting room for business, a family dining room, a breakfast room, and a study. The second floor, which was mainly for recreation and formal entertaining, features a large parlor, a formal dining room, a music room, and a library. The third floor is dedicated to bedrooms, while the attic used to have slave quarters.

The house stayed in the Caton family until 1856. In the last part of that century, a furniture store took over the first floor, and the owner turned the upper floors into apartments. In 1914, the city of Baltimore bought the building, and three years later converted it into the “Carroll Vocational School.” From around 1930 until 1956, the building acted as a recreation center. After that, it faced the risk of being demolished, but the Charles Carroll American Heritage Association, Inc. stepped in to save it. In 1963, the mayor of Baltimore decided the residence should be preserved. After its restoration and renovation in 1967, it became part of the Municipal Museum, a nonprofit organization. This group manages it today as a historic house museum.

Charles Carroll III of Carrollton preferred this manor, the family’s ancestral home, over his other residences. He lived there for most of the time from 1766 to 1832 instead of at Carrollton Manor or his townhouse in Annapolis. In 1717, Charles Carroll I acquired the 10,000 acres that originally made up the estate. His son, Charles II, likely built the main part of the mansion about ten years later. In the 1760s, Charles III inherited it. In the 1830s, after his death in 1832, it was significantly enlarged. It is still owned and occupied by the Carroll family.

Much has changed over the years; Doughoregan Manor is now a distinct architectural complex made up of buildings connected into one long structure, about 300 feet long. The original manor was a Georgian, one-and-a-half-story, brick building with a gambrel roof and two pairs of end chimneys. A kitchen, servants’ quarters, and a chapel, both likely one-story and built of brick around 1780, were located separately from the house, on the south and north sides, respectively.

In the 1830s, Charles Carroll V undertook a major expansion in the Greek Revival style, transforming the manor into its current five-part layout. He raised the main house to two stories and replaced the gable roof with a flat deck, which was bordered by a railing and topped with an octagonal cupola. At the front (east) center door, he added a one-story portico supported by four Doric columns. At the back of the residence, he attached another portico, on top of which he built an additional room. Along both sides of the rear portico, he constructed a covered, one-story veranda with iron columns that ran the length of the main house. The heights of the kitchen-servants' quarters and the chapel were increased, and they were connected to the main house by two-story wings topped with unifying wooden walkways.

Inside the main part of the mansion, a central hall with oak-paneled walls runs from the front to the back. The main staircase is situated in a small side hall next to the front of the main hall. On one side of the main hall, built in 1727, are the library and a large parlor; on the other side are a small parlor and the dining room. The second-floor bedrooms, updated in the 1830s, were completely renovated and redecorated around 1915. The chapel, renovated in the 1830s and again after the Civil War, is well-maintained and still serves as a parish church. It is one of the few remaining private chapels in the United States from the 18th century. The grave of Charles Carroll III is located next to the altar.

The estate, covering 2,800 acres, and the mansion are well kept. They aren't open to the public.

In 1771, Thomas Stone built this plantation house near the bustling riverport town of Port Tobacco, Md. He lived there during his most politically active years, and upon his death in 1787, he was buried in the nearby family graveyard.

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A Georgian building made of brick and timber, Habre-de-Venture includes five sections: a central house linked to two wings by two covered passageways, or “hyphens.” The hyphens and wings extend southward to create a semicircle. The main building is a 1½-story structure sitting on a raised basement. It features a dormered gambrel roof with external end chimneys on either side. The brick walls are arranged in Flemish bond with glazed headers. There are center doors and full-length, one-story porches at both the front and back of the house.

A central hallway, with stairs along its west wall, separates the main area into dining and living rooms. In 1928, the Baltimore Museum of Art took out the intricate hand-carved paneling in the living room; it was later replaced with a replica. The fireplace wall in the dining room sticks out into the room, and the flue bends back to the wall and extends up to the ceiling.

To the west of the main house is the kitchen wing, a low, two-story structure with a gable roof, brick ends, and framed sides. Its second story, added around 1820, has two bedrooms. The connecting hyphen, originally a one-story gabled roof that housed a breakfast room, was raised to 1½ stories with the addition of a gambrel roof and dormers to create bathrooms for the main house's second floor. The east wing, a low, 1½-story gambrel-roofed frame building with one room on each floor, served as Stone’s law office. A one-story gabled brick hyphen connects it to the main house.

188 Other than the changes mentioned above, Habre-de-Venture has barely changed over the years. It’s in great shape and has been carefully restored; it now functions as a private home and isn’t open to the public.

William Paca, a young lawyer who had just gotten married, built this townhouse between 1763 and 1765 as his main home and lived there until 1780. A few months after his second wife passed away, he sold the house and moved to Wye Plantation, a country estate in Queen Anne's County that he had bought around 1760.

The Paca House is a large, five-part Georgian building, now part of the Colonial Annapolis Historic District. Two brick wings (kitchen and office) are positioned at right angles to the main part of the central house, connected by brick passageways, or hyphens. The central unit is a gable-roofed brick structure with 2½ stories above an elevated basement. The front facade features all-header bond, while the ends are in Flemish bond. The window arches, made of rubbed brick, are flat. A small, one-story frame porch, which has a pediment and is styled in a modified Roman Doric way, leads to the central entrance.

Large brick chimneys rise from both ends of the main house, with smaller ones on the wings. There are three gabled dormers at the front of the main roof and two at the back. The 1½-story wings also have gable roofs. The west wing and both hyphens had been raised to two stories in the 19th century but were recently brought back down to their original height.

On each side of the central hallway in the main house, there are two rooms. The interior has changed significantly over the years, and only parts of the original wood and plaster finish are left in the central hall, the stair hall behind it, and the parlor. The main staircase features the original Chinese Chippendale railing.

In 1899, the Paca House became the Carvel Hall Hotel, which was expanded in 1906 with rear additions that completely concealed the back of the original house. In 1964, when the structure was at risk of demolition, Historic Annapolis, Inc. purchased the Paca House section. The following year, the State of Maryland acquired the entire property. Between 1967 and 1969, it demolished the 1906 hotel additions and restored the gardens. Currently, the Maryland Historical Trust, a public agency, holds the title to the house, but Historic Annapolis, Inc. maintains all responsibilities and rights of ownership and administration. When this volume was published, the residence was undergoing a major restoration project and was not open to the public. Historic Annapolis, Inc. plans to use it as a guesthouse for visiting dignitaries, although the first floor will be available for visitors.

Thomas Stone bought this Georgian home in 1783 and lived there until his death four years later while he was in Annapolis, although he kept his main residence at Habre-de-Venture in Charles County. The Peggy Stewart House was built sometime between 1761 and 1764 by Thomas Rutland. From 1772 to 1779, it was owned by Anthony Stewart, a merchant from Annapolis. In 1774, Revolutionaries forced him to burn his ship, the Peggy Stewart, when he tried to unload a cargo of tea that he had already paid taxes on. Five years later, he fled to England.

Over the years, the rectangular brick house has been significantly changed on both the outside and inside. Its 2½ stories sit on an elevated basement. During a major renovation in 1894, the gable roof was replaced with the current hip roof, which features a cutoff deck and balustrade, and the chimneys were reconstructed in their present form. There are two gabled dormers on the front of the roof and one on each side. Central pavilions at the ends of the house have triangular pediments with round windows in the center. The chimneys extend through the front corners of the pediments. A191 wooden box cornice with a frieze board below wraps around the eaves. A large wing at the back is a later addition.

The front of the house is made of all-header bond, while the sides are in English bond. The basement and first-floor windows have curved tops, but the second-floor windows are flat. The sills are made of stone, and there are louvered shutters on the first and second floors. The front entrance, protected by a small wooden porch with a triangular broken pediment, features a paneled door topped by a rectangular glass transom.

In 1837, the house had 12 rooms, eight of which had fireplaces. The original part of the house, not including the rear addition, features a center hall floor plan. The stairs are against the east wall, and beyond that is a large living room. A parlor and dining room are located to the west of the hall. Five bedrooms are on the upper floor. The interior of the house has been extensively remodeled recently. Only one fireplace, in the southeast front room on the second floor, still has its original mantel.

The Peggy Stewart House, also called the Rutland-Peggy Stewart House and the Rutland-Stewart-Stone House, is privately owned and isn’t open to the public. It’s part of the Colonial Annapolis Historic District.

This was the original home of the Adams family and the birthplace of John Adams. While it may not be architecturally striking, it is historically significant as the place where John Adams grew up. It is next to the John Quincy Adams Birthplace.

The original house, a typical New England saltbox design made of wood with a large central chimney, was likely built around 1681. It had two lower rooms and two upper ones. Over the years, many changes were made. The back lean-to, constructed at some unspecified time in the 18th century, added two downstairs rooms and two small upper rooms, divided by a large attic.

In 1720, John Adams' father, "Deacon" John Adams, bought the house where young John was born in 1735. He lived there until his wedding in 1764. He and his new wife moved into a house next door that he inherited from his father in 1761, which six years later would become the birthplace of his son, John Quincy. In 1774, John purchased his childhood home from his brother. His public duties and legal work often kept him away. By 1783, when he and his family were in Europe, tenants were living in both the John Adams Birthplace and the John Quincy Adams Birthplace. In 1788, when John Adams sailed back home, he settled at “Peacefield,” or the “Old House,” now known as Adams National Historic Site, in another part of Quincy. In 1803, he sold both birthplaces to his son John Quincy.

The John Adams Birthplace stayed in the Adams family's ownership until 1940, when they transferred it to the city of Quincy. In 1896, they allowed the Adams Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, to restore the house, which opened to the public the following year. When the Adams Chapter disbanded in 1950, the Quincy Historical Society took over its management. The house is in great condition and is still owned by the city, remaining open to the public.

This frame structure was John Adams' home and law office during the War for Independence and the birthplace of his son John Quincy. In 1744, “Deacon” John Adams purchased the residence, the oldest part of which may date back to 1663. In 1761, he passed it down to young John. When John got married three years later, he moved in from his nearby birthplace to better fit his library and set up a law office. John Quincy was born in the house in 1767.

Shortly after that, John’s expanding law practice and involvement in public affairs made it easier for him to live in Boston most of the time, but his wife and son stayed in their Quincy home until after the War for Independence. By 1783, when the family was in Europe, tenants were living there. After returning to the United States in 1788, John Adams moved to “Peacefield,” or the “Old House,” which is now the Adams National Historic Site. In 1803, John Quincy bought both birthplaces from his father, and from 1805 to 1807, he lived in his own birthplace.

The John Quincy Adams Birthplace is well preserved. Like the John Adams Birthplace, it features the classic New England saltbox design, originally made up of two upper and two lower rooms arranged around a large central chimney, and has undergone significant changes. John Adams added a lean-to with two rooms at the back to serve as a new kitchen while he used the original kitchen as a law office-library.

In 1897, the Quincy Historical Society, with the help of the Adams heirs, restored and opened the John Quincy Adams Birthplace to the public. In 1940, the Adams family handed it over to the city of Quincy. Managed by the Quincy Historical Society, it is open to the public.

Featuring the Adams Mansion, this site is a tribute to four generations of the notable Adams family, who lived here from 1788 until 1927.

John Adams (1735–1826), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, diplomat, the first Vice President, and the second President,194 established a legacy of men who excelled in politics and intellectual pursuits. His son, John Quincy (1767–1848), gained recognition as a diplomat, U.S. Congressman, Secretary of State, and sixth President. Charles Francis Adams (1807–86), John Quincy’s son, became a U.S. Congressman, diplomat, and author. His four sons—John Quincy II (1833–94), Charles Francis, Jr. (1835–1915), Henry (1838–1918), and Brooks (1848–1927)—made significant contributions in politics, literature, and history.

The Adams Mansion, named “Peacefield” by John Adams but also known as the Vassall-Adams House and later referred to by the Adams family as the “Old House,” was cherished by them all. In 1730–31, Maj. Leonard Vassall, a wealthy West Indian sugar planter who had moved to Massachusetts about eight years earlier, built the oldest part of the house. This section, which makes up the front western part of the current residence, was a 2½-story frame structure in Georgian style with clapboard walls and a gambrel roof. The first floor had two rooms divided by a central stair hall; the second floor had two bedrooms and a center hall; and the dormered attic featured three smaller rooms. The kitchen and servants’ quarters were in a separate building.

John Adams, while still serving as Minister to Great Britain, purchased the house in September 1787 from Vassall’s grandson, Leonard Vassall Borland, and moved in the following year. At that time, he apparently added a 2½-story kitchen and staff quarters to the back, or northwest, corner of the main building. In 1800, towards the end of his presidency, he expanded the residence195 by adding a large, 2½-story, L-shaped wing made of wood at the east end. It was built in the same Georgian style as the original house and included a second entry hall and staircase on the first floor, along with the “Long Room” to the east of the hall. Adams’ spacious study-library was situated on the second floor.

Other additions were made in the 19th century. In 1836, John Quincy Adams built a passage along the back, or north, side of the building that connected the two rear service wings. In 1869, Charles Francis expanded the kitchen wing by 30 feet to create more living space for servants; the following year, a separate stone library was added that overlooked the garden; and in 1873, the stone stable was built. Brooks constructed the current entrance gates in 1906.

After stepping down from the presidency in 1801, John Adams lived in the house year-round until he passed away in 1826. After that, until Brooks’ death in 1927, other family members either lived there full time or spent their summers there. The furnishings, which each generation added to, show the lasting presence of life in the home and the preferences of the Adams family.

In 1946, the Adams Memorial Society gave the property to the Federal Government. Covering nearly 5 acres, it features a well-kept house, library, garden, and stables. It is open for visits from spring to fall.

This impressive 18th-century mansion, also known as the Oliver-Gerry-Lowell House, was home to three important figures in American history: Andrew Oliver, the royal Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts (1771–74); Elbridge Gerry, a politician, diplomat, Governor of the Commonwealth, signer of the Declaration, U.S. Representative, and Vice President; and James Russell Lowell, an author, poet, teacher, and statesman.

In 1767, Andrew Oliver, who was the royal secretary of Massachusetts, built the structure. A former stamp tax collector and a staunch Tory, he stirred up the anger of the Whigs, who attacked his home at least once. He died in 1774 while holding the position of royal Lieutenant Governor. At some point during the War for Independence, Oliver’s estate, including the mansion, was taken over.

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In 1787, Elbridge Gerry, who had retired from his business in Marblehead, Mass., the year before, moved to Cambridge and bought the estate. He lived there for the remainder of his long career in public service. In March 1813, he took the oath of office as Vice President in his home. Due to significant debts, when he passed away in Washington, D.C., in 1814, his Cambridge residence was his only property.

The mansion was also the birthplace and lifelong home of James Russell Lowell (1819–91), one of the most notable writers of his time, as well as a prominent U.S. diplomat. Except for the years 1877–85, when he served as Minister to Spain and Great Britain, he lived at his birthplace, which he called “Elmwood.”

Elmwood is a large, square-frame building in Georgian style with brick-lined walls and two interior chimneys. The windows on the first and second floors have decorative cornices above them. A prominent cornice runs above the shortened third-story windows, which is typical in three-story Georgian homes. A balustrade surrounds the low-pitched hip roof. However, the most eye-catching feature of the exterior is the entrance, which is flanked by Tuscan pilasters that support a classic entablature decorated with a frieze. A large window sits on the entablature's parapet motif, flanked by Ionic pilasters and topped with a triangular pediment.197

A single-story porch with a railed roof deck on the north side of the house, along with a terrace on the south side, are later additions. At the rear, in the northwest corner, there's a two-story service wing; in the rear, at the southwest corner, is a one-story wing. Both are made of frame construction. The main section has three floors, each divided into two rooms on either side of a central hall. Parts of the interior have been changed and updated.

Donated to Harvard University in 1962 and now serving as the presidential residence, Elmwood is not open to the public. The house and grounds are in excellent condition.

Elbridge Gerry was born in this frame house and lived there until 1787, when he moved to Cambridge, Mass. His father, Thomas, built it around 1730, and it stayed in the Gerry family's possession until 1820.

Architectural evidence strongly suggests that the L-shaped building was originally a two-story Georgian structure. Around 1820, the two stories were likely raised, and a third was built underneath. Since then, changes have been minimal. The original interior finish of the first story is entirely 19th century, and the original paneling on the walls of the second story is clearly 18th century.

198 Today, the outside is covered with clapboard. The long arm of the ell faces north toward the street. A central hall divides the first floor of the long arm into two rooms, the east and west parlors, both featuring 19th-century mantels, fireplaces, and arched alcoves on either side. The west parlor opens into the short arm of the ell, which extends southward to the back and includes the dining room. Attached to the back of the short arm is a small service wing with an L-shaped, one-story kitchen. A one-story open veranda wraps around the east and south sides of the long side of the ell, and a small porch sits on the west side of the dining room. The second floor has three bedrooms, all showcasing the original 18th-century paneling on the fireplace walls. The third floor consists of four bedrooms.

The house and garden, privately owned and not accessible to the public, are kept in great condition.

The only remaining home linked to John Hancock, this was his childhood house. In 1744, after his father passed away in Quincy, the 7-year-old moved into this house with his grandfather, 199 Rev. John Hancock. In 1750, the boy joined his uncle, Thomas Hancock, a wealthy Boston merchant who adopted him.

By the time of the Revolution, Rev. Jonas Clarke, who was related by marriage to the Hancocks, lived in the house that had been built as a parsonage by Rev. John Hancock. Clarke encouraged Revolutionaries to use his home as a meeting place and safe haven. On the evening of April 18, 1775, patriot leaders Hancock and Samuel Adams were visiting. Around midnight, after everyone had gone to bed, Paul Revere and later William Dawes, warning the countryside about the approaching British troops, rode up and informed the household. A few hours later, Hancock and Adams escaped north to Burlington, Mass. They then moved from place to place, staying away from Boston, until they headed to Philadelphia to attend the Continental Congress, which would meet the following month.

The Hancock-Clarke House has two frame sections built by Rev. John Hancock at different times. The original section, constructed in 1698, currently serves as the small rear ell, which is 1½ stories tall and has a gambrel roof. There’s a living room-kitchen and a tiny study on the first floor, along with two low-ceiling bedrooms on the second floor. The front or main section of the house, which is 2½ stories high, was built in 1734 and funded by Thomas Hancock for his father. It features a large central chimney and includes a short center hall with two rooms on each of the two floors.

In 1896, when the building was about to be demolished, the Lexington Historical Society bought it and relocated it from across the street to its current spot. In 1902, the society built a brick addition at the back with a fireproof vault to safeguard its more valuable items. Restored to look like it did in the 18th century and well maintained, the Hancock-Clarke House is open to the public and serves as the society's headquarters. Recently, the society acquired the original site of the house, where the foundations can still be seen.

This is the only existing structure closely linked to Josiah Bartlett. He built it in 1774, after a fire destroyed his earlier home on the same site, and lived in it until his death in 1795.

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The rectangular house is made of clapboard and has two stories. Two interior chimneys rise through the gabled roof. The windows are framed with exterior louvered shutters. Many of the house's current features are from the mid-19th century when it was remodeled in the Greek Revival style. These features include the large corner pilasters, cornices above the first-floor windows, the center door with a cornice, sidelights, and pilasters, and the one-story porch at the south end of the building. An additional two-story frame section was added at the southwest corner, giving the building its current L-shape. This section has a summer kitchen and workroom on the first floor and four bedrooms on the second.

Center halls split the rooms on both floors of the main house into pairs. The downstairs hall is divided into two sections, each with a stairway against the north wall. To the south of the hall on the first floor are the living room and the dining room, which was originally the kitchen. These rooms feature the original chimneys and fireplaces. North of the hall is a parlor, with a bedroom behind it. Around 1860, the chimney for these rooms and the fireplace in the parlor were rebuilt, and two closets that flanked the parlor fireplace201 were turned into the current arched alcoves. The second floor has four bedrooms, two on each side of the central hall. The original wide floorboards are still in place throughout the home.

The house, in great shape, is still owned by the Bartlett descendants and isn't open to the public. It has never been restored, but is furnished with some original Bartlett items, including a medical table and instruments.

An outstanding example of a late Georgian mansion, this impressive three-story building was the longtime home of William Whipple. Ship carpenters built it in 1763 for John Moffatt, a sea captain and wealthy merchant. He gave it the following year as a wedding gift to his son, Samuel, who was a merchant-shipowner. In 1768,202 after Samuel went bankrupt and fled to the West Indies to escape his creditors, Captain Moffatt got it back and lived in it for the rest of his life. Whipple and his wife, Catherine, Moffatt’s daughter, moved into the house the same year as the captain. Whipple lived there until his death in 1785; his wife and apparently his father-in-law also survived him.

The square, clapboard building sits on a slight hill overlooking old Portsmouth Harbor. Key features of the detailed exterior include white corner quoins and intricately topped first- and second-floor windows. The smaller third-story windows sit right below the unique cornice. The side windows, like those on the third floor at the front, don’t have pediments. The rear windows on the first two stories have flat arches with elongated keystones. The hip roof, flanked by three end chimneys, is trimmed off to create a flat deck, or captain’s walk, which is surrounded by a stylish balustrade with urn finials. A delicate fence with large decorative posts, also topped by urn finials, runs across the front of the house, which is accessed by a flight of granite steps leading up to the portico-covered entrance. Near the front northeast corner of the house is the countinghouse, or office (1810), a small square building with a hip roof.

The inside of the house is just as lavishly decorated as the outside. The standout room on the first floor is the surprisingly spacious entrance hall, one of the best in New England. Its carved cornice is beautiful, and the walls are covered with rare imported French wallpaper from the early 19th century. The elegant and finely carved staircase is illuminated by a round-headed window in the side wall above the landing. With the exception of the simple details in the drawing room, the other first-floor rooms—like the dining room and pantry—are ornate. There are four bedrooms on the second floor, and five more rooms on the third. Three of the second-floor bedrooms have beautifully carved overmantels.

The carefully restored house and grounds were owned by the Ladd family, descendants of the Moffatts by marriage, until 1969. From 1913 until 1969, they rented the house to the Colonial Dames of America, who kept it open for public viewing. In 1969, the Colonial Dames gained full ownership of the property. The first two floors of the house are furnished with period furniture, and the third floor is not accessible.

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Matthew Thornton lived in this house, which has changed a lot since then, during most of his medical and political career. He probably bought it in 1740, the year he moved from Worcester, Mass., to what is now Derry Village (then part of Londonderry) to start his medical practice. He lived there until around 1780, when he retired as a doctor and moved to a farm near Merrimack, N.H.

The gable roof of the two-story frame building, designed in the saltbox style, slopes steeply toward the back, or north side, creating a one-story lean-to. Two interior chimneys are located behind the peak of the roof. The exterior, updated in the Greek Revival style likely in the mid-19th century, features large pilasters at the front corners and a one-story porch above the center door. The clapboarding is a replacement for the original. All windows, including those in the gable ends, have exterior louvered shutters, and flat cornices are placed above the first-floor windows. A one-story frame service ell, extending from the northwest corner and giving the house its current L-shape, includes the updated kitchen and what were once servants' workrooms.

204 Inside the house, a central hallway splits the rooms into two sets and is divided into two sections, each with its own staircase on the east wall. To the east of the hallway are the living room and a modern laundry room; to the west are the dining room and the current family room. The two chimneys, built between the pairs of rooms to provide four fireplaces—one for each room—were rebuilt on a smaller scale in the early 19th century for use with Franklin stoves. As a result, none of the original fireplaces and mantels remain, but a 19th-century mantel can still be found in the dining room. The fireplace opposite in the family room, however, is modern. Features from the 18th century include the framing and wide floorboards, which are visible in all rooms except the family room, where they are covered. The second floor has three bedrooms.

The Thornton House, in decent shape, is used as a private home and is not open to the public. Its current owner hopes to restore it.

Owned by the Hopkinson family for several generations, this house was the home of signer Francis Hopkinson from 1774 until his death in 1791. It was built in 1750 by merchant John Imlay (Emley), who used part of it as a store. Before 1768, Joseph Borden, a prominent New Jersey citizen, acquired it. Hopkinson married his daughter in Philadelphia in 1768, and after serving as customs collector in New Castle, Del. (1772–74), he moved to Bordentown and lived with his father-in-law.

Upon Hopkinson’s death, his oldest son, Joseph (1770–1842), inherited the house. He became well-known as a composer, lawyer, judge, and politician. Some of his notable guests included Irish poet Thomas Moore, Thomas Paine, and Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother. The Hopkinson family kept ownership of the property until 1915; since then, it has been owned by the Wells family.

The Hopkinson House is an L-shaped, brick and frame building with a gambrel roof and dormers. The main 2½-story part is made of brick. The front door is topped by a rectangular transom, with sidelights on either side, and has a segmental hood over it. A central205 hall, split into two sections by a wide folding door with an arched fanlight above, divides the first floor into two large rooms: the living room and library. These spaces are currently used by the Bordentown Chamber of Commerce as an office and museum, which is open to the public. The front part of the central hall acts as an entrance hall, while the back section serves as the stair hall. A narrow hall runs from the stair hall south across the back of the main house. The second and third floors, each having four bedrooms, are used as apartments.

A two-story brick extension reaches out from the northeast corner of the main building. The dining room on the first floor and the two bedrooms on the second floor make up an apartment unit. Connected to this extension at the back of the brick section is a two-story frame wing that used to hold the kitchen and the servant’s bedroom.

The outside of the house, aside from the metal roof, looks mostly the same. Inside, there are plastered walls, wide floorboards, and 19th-century mantels. A lot of the original woodwork and trim seems to have been replaced, but the basic layout hasn’t changed much. The house is in good shape.

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Maybury Hill, built around 1725, was the birthplace and childhood home of North Carolina signer Joseph Hewes. His father rented it from 1730 until 1755.

The house is a great example of Georgian architecture. It was originally a small, two-story stone building with a gabled roof. Not far away, at the northeast corner, was a separate kitchen building. In 1735, after a fire, the main house was rebuilt. In 1753, a major expansion was added to the north side, connecting it to the kitchen building. This created an L-shaped, two-story structure with a gabled roof and three chimneys at the ends. The only significant change since then happened around 1900, when the fieldstone exterior walls were covered in concrete.

Flat brick arches sit above the windows. The second-story windows have exterior louvered shutters, while the first-floor ones feature paneled shutters. Today, the house has a center hall floor plan. To the south of the hall is the large parlor, which dates back to 1725. To the north are the dining and living rooms, added in 1753. Both have paneled walls, shell cabinets, and exposed ceiling beams. The kitchen, also from 1725, is still in the northeast corner of the building. The dining room fireplace is covered with tile. There are four bedrooms upstairs. All the floors are made of wide boards.

Little-altered Maybury Hill was renovated in 1920 and is still in excellent condition. As a private residence, it is not open to visitors.

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Morven was the birthplace and lifelong home of Richard Stockton (1730–81). In the summer of 1783, it also served as the official residence of his brother-in-law Elias Boudinot, President of the Continental Congress, which was meeting in Princeton at that time. That same year, many Revolutionary leaders gathered at the mansion to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of the War for Independence.

Between 1701 and 1709, Stockton’s grandfather, also named Richard, constructed the earliest part of Morven. It developed in several phases until around 1775, when its exterior looked similar to how it appears today. The fires in 1776, caused by the British during the War for Independence, and in 1821 required significant repairs, so the interior is from the late 18th or early 19th century.

A large Georgian brick mansion, Morven has three parts: a main central section that’s two stories with a raised basement, and two lower, attached two-story wings. The front of the main section, while it has an early Georgian style, was changed in the 19th century with the addition of a wide, one-story Greek Revival porch. A central hall splits the section into a spacious dining room and the Gold Room. The fireplace walls in both rooms are fully paneled. The central hall connects with a stair hall that runs along the back of the main part of the house and links to the two wings. On the first floor of the east wing, there are two large family rooms: the Red Room and the library. This wing was partially burned208 by the British. The west service wing includes the kitchen. The only recent update, from 1945–54, was the addition of a solarium, or Green Room, at the back of the main section; a one-story porch was enclosed to create the new room.

Morven stayed with the Stockton family until 1945, when Governor and Mrs. Walter E. Edge bought it. Nine years later, they gave it to the State of New Jersey. Since then, it has been the official residence of the Governor. It is not open to the public.

From 1756 to 1879, this house served as the official residence of the president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University, since 1896). In 1768, when John Witherspoon moved from Scotland to America to take on the presidency, he lived here. During his time there, he represented New Jersey in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1779, he relocated to his nearby farm, Tusculum. From then until 1794, his son-in-law Samuel S. Smith, who was the vice president of the college, lived in the President’s House. From 1879 to 1968, it was the home of the Dean of the Faculty and was referred to as the “Dean’s House.” Since 1968, it has been called the Maclean House and has been used by the Princeton Alumni Council.

209 The Georgian building was designed and built in 1756 by Robert Smith, a master carpenter from Philadelphia. It has changed only slightly over the years, both inside and out. Originally, it was a two-story brick structure, rectangular in shape, with a gable roof. A one-story polygonal bay extends westward from the rear southwest corner. Near that corner, a two-story service wing made of brick and stone runs southward. Above the windows on the main facade are flat stone winged arches with keystones. A fanlight sits above the center door, topped by a triangular pediment. The exterior has kept its original look and layout, except that small double dormers were added later in the center of the front and rear roofs to create a third level. Additions in 1868 included a wide one-story frame porch at the front of the house and a one-story frame polygonal bay on the east side near the northeast front corner.

The center door opens into a main hall that runs through the house to the back stairs on the east wall. To the east of the hall are a library and a study. The fireplace wall in the library is completely paneled. To the west of the hall are a parlor and a dining room. The second floor of the main house has four bedrooms; the third floor has three more rooms. Two bedrooms are located on the second floor of the service wing. In great shape, the house is open to the public.

John Witherspoon lived here from 1779 until he passed away in 1794. In 1773, while he was president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), he bought some farmland near Princeton and built Tusculum. For a number of years, he rented out the house and farm, but in 1779, he moved from the President’s House to Tusculum.

The two-story Georgian building made of fieldstone, featuring a gabled roof and two pairs of end chimneys, initially had only one extension: a lower, two-story stone and frame wing added to the west end of the house along its main axis. The first-story windows of both sections have exterior paneled shutters, while the second-story windows have louvered shutters.210 In later years, two more wings, both frame and two stories high, were added to the east and west ends of the structure. Designed in the same style as the rest of the house, they do not significantly change the original look of the front elevation.

The stairway is situated in an extension at the back of the center hall along the east wall. To the east of the hall are the living room and study; to the west is a large dining room that takes up the entire west half of the main house. There are four bedrooms upstairs. The finishes in two of them date back to around 1825. The original service wing on the west side includes a kitchen on the first floor and two bedrooms on the second.

Tusculum has never experienced any major changes and is in great shape. The current owner bought it in 1924. With his oversight, a Philadelphia company restored it to its 18th-century look. The main updates included taking down the 19th-century porches at the front (or south side) and removing a dividing wall in the dining room. The building still functions as a private home and is not open to visitors.

This farmhouse, which was built on a large estate the Floyd family acquired in 1718, was where William Floyd was born in 1734 and where he lived for most of his life—although he and his family had to leave it between 1776 and 1783 and escape to Middletown, Conn. During that time, British troops and Loyalists caused significant damage to the estate. In 1803, Floyd gave the house to his son Nicoll and moved to what is now Westernville, N.Y.

The oldest part of the large Georgian building, which was expanded several times on its west side during the 18th century, dates back to around 1724. The building now has a two-story main section and three wings. The main entrance, accessed through a Dutch door, opens into a central hall. To the west of the hall, there’s a parlor, and behind that is an office; to the east, there’s a dining room, with a gunroom and pantry located next to each other behind it. Notable features on the first floor include exposed ceiling beams and wide floorboards. The second floor has seven bedrooms.

Extending from the back of the central hall is a two-story north service wing, likely added around 1900. A 1½-story east service wing, featuring a dormered gable roof, dates back to the 18th century. At the back, or to the north, of this wing is a third service wing, also 1½ stories high. It housed the original kitchen and was once at the west end of the main house. Aside from this relocation and the addition of the north wing, the main house and east wing remain largely unchanged from their 18th-century look. The overall structure is in good shape and is filled with many original pieces that belonged to the Floyd family.

212 In 1965, the Floyd family donated 613 acres of the estate to the U.S. Government to include it in Fire Island National Seashore, but they kept the use and occupancy rights to 43 acres and the house for 25 years. Therefore, the residence won't be open to the public until 1990.

William Floyd lived in this house from 1803 until he died in 1821. In 1784, he started buying frontier land near what is now Rome in western New York, and three years later, the State granted him 10,240 acres in the same area. During the summers, he visited and developed his land. In 1803, nearly 70 years old, he transferred his home in what is now Mastic, Long Island, NY, to his son Nicoll and moved the rest of his family to what is now Westernville, where he built this farmhouse. He spent the rest of his life farming and improving his wilderness land.

Constructed with a frame, the Georgian-style house features a large, two-story main section with a gable roof and a shorter, two-story service wing attached to the west side. A center door, flanked by a pair of small windows, leads into a central hall that runs through the house to another door on the north side. The stairs are positioned against the west wall of the hall. To the east of the hall are two spacious parlors with cupboards and paneled fireplace walls. To the west of the hall is a dining room, followed by a study. The rooms have plastered walls and ceilings and wide floorboards. Four bedrooms are situated on the second floor, and the attic isn't finished. The service wing, which includes the kitchen, is located to the west of the dining room.

The structure, unchanged except for metal roofs and modern plumbing, is in great condition. It stayed in the hands of Floyd's descendants until 1956. Now still privately owned, it is not open to the public.

Early in 1798, suffering from intense mental distress due to increasing debts caused by poor land investments, James Wilson, likely during a trip to North Carolina for Federal circuit court matters, sought solace in this house. It belonged to his friend and fellow U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Iredell. A few months later, Wilson passed away there.

214 The mostly unchanged Iredell House is a large L-shaped building. It's made of wood and has two stories with a gabled roof. Two-story porches stretch across the front, or south side, and the back of the long part of the structure. The building was built in three phases. The oldest part, the current short east side of the ell, was constructed in 1759 by John Wilkins, with its narrow gabled end facing the street. In 1776, Joseph Whedbee expanded the structure by adding the two easternmost sections of the current five-bay long side to the west. In 1810, Iredell’s widow extended the long side by three bays to its current size and added the porches.

The original part of the house includes a living room and another room on the first floor, along with two bedrooms on the second floor. The first floor of the 1776 section has a dining room, while the second floor features a large bedroom. These two sections are set up as a historic house museum and are open to the public. The remaining part of the long arm, built in 1810, is used as the caretaker’s quarters. The State owns and manages the residence.

The Nash-Hooper House is the only existing residence linked to William Hooper and the only remaining home of a signatory in the state. It was built in 1772 by Francis Nash, who eventually became a brigadier general in the Continental Army and lost his life in the War for Independence. In 1782, after the British forced Hooper into hiding and destroyed his estate, Finian, near Wilmington, he moved to Hillsborough, where his family had taken refuge. He bought the Nash-Hooper House and lived there until his death in 1790. Later, from 1869 to 1875, it was home to William A. Graham, a former Governor of North Carolina.

The original part of the rectangular two-story house was built with a braced oak frame held together by pegs and pins. It sits on shale foundations above an elevated basement, which includes two rooms and a central hall. The roof is gabled, with a chimney at each end. A one-story frame "sitting room" (later the dining room) wing, added in 1819 on a log base, extends from the back, or north, side of the house and gives it its current L-shape.215 Weatherboard siding covers both sides of the wing and the front of the main section. All the windows have exterior louvered shutters. The one-story porch spanning the front of the house dates from the late 19th century. A detached kitchen, built in 1819 just east of the house next to the storeroom and dining room in the north wing, was torn down in 1908. At some point between 1939 and 1959, the dining room in the north wing was turned into the current kitchen, and bathrooms were added to the house.

The main house has a center hall that’s split into two sections by an archway near the back. To the west of the hall, there’s a big library and a small study or bedroom; to the east, there’s a spacious parlor and in the back corner, a narrow stair hall, with the stairs positioned against the north wall. Three bedrooms are on the second floor, and the attic isn’t finished. Most of the main house features wide exposed floorboards. An original pine mantel is still in the dining room.

Although the minimally changed Nash-Hooper House is structurally sound, it has never been restored, and extensive painting and plastering216 will be needed to bring it back to good condition. It is privately owned and not open to the public.

Hooper was buried to the east of his house in the garden. That part of the garden was later incorporated into the town cemetery, behind the Presbyterian Church. In 1894, Hooper’s remains were moved to Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, N.C., although his original gravestone is still in the Hillsborough cemetery.

This park in the historic part of Philadelphia is not only a top site linked to the signers of the Declaration of Independence, but it also commemorates other significant aspects217 of the nation’s founding and early growth, along with many important national events. These include the meetings of the First and Second Continental Congresses, the adoption and signing of the Declaration that created the United States, and the efforts of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that established it. As historian Carl Van Doren said: “Because of the Declaration of Independence, [Independence Hall] is a shrine honored wherever the rights of man are recognized. Because of the Constitution, it is a shrine valued wherever the principles of self-government on a federal scale are upheld.”

Independence Hall was originally the State House for the Province of Pennsylvania. In 1729, the provincial assembly allocated funds for the building, which was designed by lawyer Andrew Hamilton. Three years later, construction started under the supervision of master carpenter Edmund Wooley. In 1736, the assembly moved into the statehouse, which wasn't fully completed until 1756.

As American opposition to British colonial policies grew, Philadelphia became a hub for organized protest. In 1774, the First Continental Congress met in the newly completed Carpenters’ Hall, which the Carpenters’ Company of Philadelphia had started building four years earlier. In 1775, the Second Continental Congress took over the east room on the ground floor of the statehouse from the Pennsylvania Assembly and shifted from protest to resistance. Warfare had already begun in Massachusetts. Congress established an Army and appointed George Washington as commander in chief. However, the final break with the Crown hadn’t happened yet; it wouldn't be until a year later that independence would be declared.

On July 2, 1776, Congress approved Richard Henry Lee’s resolution from June 7 suggesting independence. The Delegates then focused on Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration, which was submitted on June 28. After some changes, it was officially adopted on July 4. Four days later, in Independence Square, the document was read publicly for the first time to the people of Philadelphia. In a formal event on August 2, about 50 of the 56 signers added their signatures to the Declaration; the others reportedly did so later.

Long, tough years of war followed. In the late autumn and winter of 1776–77, the British threatened Philadelphia, prompting Congress to move to Baltimore. Once again in the fall of 1777, it relocated, this time to York, Pa. During the British occupation of Philadelphia that winter and the following spring, the redcoats used Independence Hall as a barracks and a hospital for American prisoners. In the summer of 1778, the government returned. On November 3, 1781, Congress officially received the news of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown. Independence was practically secured.

Earlier that same year, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union had gone into effect. Under the Confederation, Congress stayed in Philadelphia until 1783, and later met in other cities. In 1787, the Constitutional Convention also held its highly secret sessions in Independence Hall, in the same chamber where the Declaration had been adopted.

About the same time that Philadelphia became the second Capital (1790–1800) under the Constitution, after the Government moved from New York City, Independence Hall gained three new neighbors in Independence Square: City Hall (1791) to the east; County Court House (1789) to the west; and American Philosophical Society Hall to the southeast. Starting in 1790, Congress met in the County Court House (later known as Congress Hall). The next year, after meeting for a few days in Independence Hall, the U.S. Supreme Court relocated to City Hall. In 1793, George Washington was inaugurated for his second term as President in Congress Hall, and 4 years later, President Adams also took his oath of office there.

In 1799, the State government left Independence Hall and moved to Lancaster. The following year, the Federal Government relocated to Washington, D.C. Philadelphia then used City Hall and Congress Hall, while various tenants occupied Independence Hall until the city took ownership of it in 1818. For instance, from 1802 to 1827, artist Charles Willson Peale ran a museum there. He and his son painted many of the signers and heroes of the War for Independence. These portraits are the core of the park’s current collection, which is displayed in the Second Bank of the United States Building; there is a special room dedicated to the signers.

Independence Hall is an impressive, symmetrical 2½-story red brick building that has been carefully restored. It's widely regarded as the most beautiful 18th-century public building in Georgian style in the United States. The tall belltower, rebuilt in 1828 by architect William Strickland to match the original design, stands out on the south side. Smaller two-story, hip-roofed brick wings, built in 1736 and 1739 and restored in 1897–98—one of which functions as a park information center—are linked to the main building by arcades.

The main point of interest inside Independence Hall is the Assembly Room, the one on the eastern side of the first floor. Probably no other room in the United States has witnessed such political courage and wisdom. In this room, members of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention created and signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The room is about 40 feet square and 20 feet high. Twin segmental-arched fireplaces on the east wall flank the speaker’s platform. Massive fluted pillars set on pedestals decorate the paneled east wall. The other three walls are plastered. A heavy Roman Doric entablature surrounds the plaster ceiling. The furniture arrangement from the time of the Continental Congress has been recreated. The only original pieces are the “Rising Sun” chair and the silver inkstand with quill box and shaker used by the signers of the Declaration and the Constitution.

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221 The other large room on the ground floor, where the U.S. Supreme Court met for a few days in 1791 and again in August 1796, served as the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and later as a venue for other state and local courts. The panelled walls are adorned with large fluted columns in the Roman Doric style. The central hall between this room and the Assembly Room is richly decorated with columns and entablature in the Roman Doric style, fully detailed. On the second floor, there are the Long Room, the Governor’s Council Chamber, and the Committee Room. These are furnished to showcase the activities of the Pennsylvania legislature and government before 1775.

The Liberty Bell, an international symbol of freedom, is showcased in the tower stair hall at the south end of the first floor. [When this volume was published, there were plans to move the bell soon to a newly built belltower as part of the park visitor center, located 2 blocks from Independence Hall.] The 2,080-pound bell gets its name from the “Proclaim Liberty” inscription engraved on it to celebrate the 50th anniversary of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges (1701). In 1750, the Pennsylvania assembly approved the construction of the Independence Hall belltower, and the following year ordered a bell from England. When it arrived in 1752, it cracked during testing and was recast twice by local craftsmen. As the official statehouse bell, it was rung for public events. In 1777, before the British took over Philadelphia, the Government temporarily moved it to Allentown, PA. Traditionally, the bell cracked again in 1835 while ringing in memory of Chief Justice John Marshall. The exteriors of City Hall and Congress Hall have changed little since the 1790s, when many of the signers served in Government. The interior of Congress Hall has been restored and furnished to reflect its use as the meeting place of Congress in the 1790s. Exhibits in City Hall detail the activities of the U.S. Supreme Court during that same period and depict life in Philadelphia during the late 18th century. Carpenters’ Hall, located a block east of Independence Square, is still owned and operated by the Carpenters’ Company of Philadelphia. The hall commemorates the First Continental Congress and has architectural significance.

The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin and the oldest learned society in the United States, still has its headquarters in Philosophical Hall. Its notable membership once included 15 of the signers. The society's collections also include furniture and documents linked to them.

222 Between 1789 and 1791, the Library Company of Philadelphia (established in 1731), one of the first public libraries in the United States, built Library Hall, located across from Independence Square at the corner of Library and Fifth Streets. Among its members were 11 signers of the Declaration of Independence, including the company's founder, Franklin. Library Hall, which was rebuilt by the American Philosophical Society, now functions as its library. The Library Company is based elsewhere in the city.

In addition to the buildings mentioned earlier, several locations related to the signers have also been discovered within the park. Many of them have been marked. Some now have newer buildings on them. In a few cases, the National Park Service has excavated and reinforced the foundations. One of the most notable sites is the Jacob Graff, Jr., House, which is two blocks from Independence Hall at the southwest corner of Seventh and Market Streets. Jefferson lived on the second floor of the 3½-story brick house when he wrote the Declaration in June 1776. His rented space included a bedroom and a parlor. He probably did a lot of his writing at a portable writing desk he designed himself. In 1791, the Graff House was also the home of signer James Wilson. It was torn down in 1883.

Other sites include the house (1766–90) and other buildings connected to Franklin, located at Franklin Court in the block south of Market Street between Third and Fourth Streets; two neighboring homes (1785–90 and 1790–95) of Robert Morris, on the southeast corner of Market and Sixth Streets, one of which served as the unofficial Presidential Mansion (1790–1800), where John Adams lived (1797–1800) while he was President; Clarke Hall, on the southwest corner of Chestnut and Third Streets, the home of Samuel Huntington (1779–81) and Thomas McKean (1781); Benjamin Rush’s residence (1791–93), on the northwest corner of Walnut and Third Streets; the James Wilson house (“Fort Wilson”) (1778–90), on the southwest corner of the same intersection; and City Tavern, near Walnut and Second Streets, a meeting spot for members of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, along with other government officials.

In relation to the U.S. Bicentennial celebration, the National Park Service intends to rebuild the Graff House and the City Tavern.

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224 The graves and tombs of seven signers are also found in the park. Five (Franklin, Hewes, Hopkinson, Ross, and Rush) are in Christ Church Burial Ground, located at the southeast corner of Fifth and Arch Streets; while two (Wilson and Robert Morris) are in the yard of Christ Church, on Second Street between Church and Filbert Streets. The graves of Hewes and Ross are unmarked. A rose garden, dedicated in January 1971 to honor the signers of the Declaration by the Daughters of the American Revolution, is situated in a plot between Walnut and Locust and Fourth and Fifth Streets.

Buildings and sites in the park that are mainly of interest in other historical themes besides those covered in this volume include: the First Bank of the United States; the Second Bank of the United States (Old Custom House); New Hall (Marine Corps Museum); the Pemberton House (Army-Navy Museum); the Philadelphia (Merchants’) Exchange; the Bishop White House; the Deshler-Morris House in Germantown; the Todd House; St. George’s Church; St. Joseph’s Church; St. Mary’s Church; Mikveh Israel Cemetery; and the Gloria Dei (Old Swede’s) Church National Historic Site.

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226 The structures and features of the 22-acre Independence National Historical Park, most of which are accessible to the public, include those owned by the city of Philadelphia but managed by the National Park Service. They include Independence Hall, Congress Hall, City Hall, and Independence Square. Recently, to improve the area’s atmosphere, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has developed Independence Mall in the three blocks directly north of Independence Hall. Federally owned buildings include the First and Second Banks of the United States; the Deshler-Morris House, managed by the Germantown Historical Society; Todd House; Bishop White House; New Hall; Pemberton House; and the Philadelphia Exchange.

Among the privately owned buildings that have cooperative agreements with the National Park Service are Carpenters' Hall and Christ Church, both of which are National Historic Landmarks. The American Philosophical Society owns Philosophical Hall, another Landmark and the only privately owned building in the square, and also manages Library Hall, which is on federally owned land.

In 1948, based on the recommendation of the Philadelphia National Shrines Park Commission, Congress established Independence National Historical Park. This legislation outlined the Federal Government's responsibility in honoring existing historic sites and buildings, as well as in acquiring and managing additional ones. The whole effort is overseen by an advisory commission made up of prominent citizens. Numerous individuals, along with private and civic organizations, have played a significant role in preserving and enhancing the park.

This house, built by William Parsons in 1757, was rented by George Taylor during the last year of his life and was where he passed away in February 1781. With his health declining and his iron business struggling, he had moved there the previous April from Greenwich Township, N.J.

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The house, a small two-story Georgian building made of fieldstone, has a steep gabled roof and a pent roof that extends across the front at the second floor. There's a single chimney on the north side wall. The front door has a rectangular transom above it; the center door, on the south side, is covered by a hood. An addition to the house, likely built in 1780, is no longer there.

A single large room with stairs and a fireplace on the north wall makes up the first floor. The walls are plastered, and the joists are supported by heavy, exposed beams. Bedrooms are on the second floor and in the attic. Restored around 1906, the building is in great condition and is owned by the George Taylor Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, which uses it as a meeting place. It’s not usually open to visitors.

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Meeting place for medical and political leaders, this townhouse was home to three notable doctors and was frequented by some of the signers and other key government officials. It was built around 1750 by Dr. William Shippen, Sr. (1712–1802). A leading medical figure of his time, he also served in the Continental Congress and contributed to Philadelphia’s cultural scene. His son, Dr. William Shippen, Jr. (1736–1808), gained recognition as both a teacher and a practitioner, helped establish the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and from 1777 to 1781 managed medical services in the Continental Army. He and his father apparently shared the home for part of their careers. Like the Shippens, Dr. Caspar Wistar (1761–1818), who purchased the house in 1798, was well-respected in medical and intellectual circles.

Various signers and other delegates of the Continental Congress visited the home. Richard Henry Lee, who was the brother-in-law of young Shippen, stayed there. Francis Lightfoot and Arthur Lee probably stopped by often. From time to time, John Adams and John Witherspoon would drop in. Other notable visitors later included George Washington while he was presiding over the Constitutional Convention (1787); Benjamin Rush, before his disagreement with Shippen Jr. about medical issues in the Continental Army; Robert R. Livingston, who had been on the Declaration drafting committee in the 1780s; John Adams when he was Vice President; and Jefferson when he was Secretary of State.

The outside of the house is in good shape, but the inside has been significantly changed. It’s a 3½-story building in the colonial Philadelphia architectural style, made from Flemish bond red bricks with black headers. The windows have shutters. A standout feature is the high gable on the Fourth Street side and the brick parapet walls on the roof connecting the two end chimneys, one on each side near the peak of the roof. There’s a garden along the Locust Street side at the original back of the house, which is now accessed from that side instead of Fourth Street. The building is owned and occupied by an insurance company, which has created a passageway between it and the neighboring Cadwalader House to the south. Access to both buildings is restricted to the company’s customers.

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Summerseat was built in the 1770s by Thomas Barclay, a merchant from Philadelphia. In 1806, George Clymer bought it and lived there until he died in 1813. It’s a two-story, brick and stone Georgian building with an elevated basement. The roof has a gabled design and is covered in slate. The front wall, or east facade, is made of brick; the side walls, likely also brick, are covered with cement; the back wall is made of fieldstone. The first and second-story front windows have flat arches made of gauged brick, while the rear windows on both levels and all the basement windows have segmental arches, also made of gauged brick. Solid exterior shutters line the first and second-story windows.

A rectangular transom and triangular pediment sit above the front center door. Central halls split the four rooms on each floor into pairs. Each room has a fireplace. The stairs, located at the back of the hall along the south wall, are lit by a large window above the landing. The walls, floors, and some of the woodwork seem to be original. Restored in 1931 and renovated four years later, the house is owned by the Morrisville School District and is used for educational purposes. It is open to the public only on a limited basis.

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In 1768, George Taylor hired carpenters from Philadelphia to construct this stone house on the east bank of the Lehigh River, about 15 miles west of Easton, at what is now Catasauqua. The building was situated on a 331-acre piece of land called the “Manor of Chawton,” which he had purchased the year before. In 1771, he rented out most of the manor as farmland, and five years later, he sold the house and land to Philadelphia merchant John Benezet.

The rectangular house is in the Georgian style and has two stories above an elevated basement. The thick walls are made of stone masonry rubble covered with a whitish, slaked-lime stucco. Flat arches of gauged brick sit above the windows. The first-floor windows have solid-panel shutters on the outside, while the second-floor windows have louvered shutters. A heavy, overhanging cornice runs around the truncated hip roof. The brick chimneys at both ends are arranged symmetrically. A two-story stone kitchen wing, dating back to around 1800, connects to the house at the south end.

At the center of the front, or west, facade, a set of marble pyramid steps leads up to a double door, above which are a rectangular transom and triangular pediment. The central hall, which extends toward the back of the house towards the stairway, is divided by an archway with fluted pilasters. To the north of the hall are the living room and parlor; to the south, the dining room and a reception or service room. Notable features in the dining room, parlor, and living room231 include the elegantly designed door pediments and fully paneled fireplace walls. The other walls in these rooms have paneled wainscoting and intricately detailed chair rails. The fireplace paneling and mantel in the dining room are from the 19th century and represent the Greek Revival style, but the rest of the first-floor paneling and mantels are original, as are the wide pine floorboards and iron hardware.

The second floor has four bedrooms and two small dressing rooms. The fireplace paneling in the two bedrooms at the front of the house is nearly as detailed as that on the first floor. A 1½-story brick summer kitchen, located at the back of the house, was built around 1850.

The slightly modified Taylor House, purchased in 1945 by the Lehigh County Historical Society and renovated in 1966–68, is in great shape and is open to the public.

Stephen Hopkins bought this house in 1742 and lived in it until he passed away in 1785. It’s the only remaining building closely linked to him. The oldest part, the lower level of the current southwest rear section, dates back to around 1707, when the small home had two rooms on the first floor and an attic. Once he purchased the place, Hopkins expanded and remodeled it into its current L-shaped, two-story design.

The Georgian building, featuring a gabled roof and two chimneys, is covered with clapboard. The first-story windows are adorned with cornices. In 1928, during a significant restoration, a reconstructed door with a triangular pediment and pilasters typical of the 18th century was added in place of one of the four windows on the current front elevation. This door, the only major change to the house, became the main entrance. It replaced a door on the west side that leads into the original kitchen, which is still there.

The central hall, which has the main staircase along the east wall, separates the front of the house into two rooms: the study and the parlor. The built-in bookcases in the parlor, set into the paneling above the fireplace, are quite unique. The paneling around the fireplaces in the study and ell is more straightforward. A hallway connects the parlor to the southwest ell,232, which includes the original kitchen and a small bedroom in the southeast corner. There are five bedrooms upstairs, two of which have fireplaces. The interior of the house, including the stairs, woodwork, floors, and fireplaces, mostly retains its original style. The beautiful garden was designed by a descendant of Stephen Hopkins, the late Alden Hopkins, who was a well-known landscape architect.

The Governor Hopkins House, initially located at the northeast corner of Hopkins and South Main Streets, was moved east in 1804 to the north side of Hopkins Street, about halfway up. In 1927, to make space for a new courthouse, the building was relocated again along the same street to its current location, and it was restored the following year. Since then, the State of Rhode Island has owned the house and taken care of the exterior and grounds. The Society of Colonial Dames in the State of Rhode Island manages the interior as a historic house museum.

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From 1778 to 1794, this townhouse was the main home of Thomas Heyward, Jr. During this time, he also spent a lot of time at White Hall, his country estate near his father's place, about 25 miles northeast of Savannah. In 1780–81, he was imprisoned by the British in St. Augustine. In 1770, his father, Daniel, a rice planter, bought the lot and a two-story house on it. Within two years, he likely tore it down and built the current one. Thomas inherited it in 1777 and moved in the next year, after finishing his time in the Continental Congress. In 1780, when the British captured Charleston, they took him prisoner and forced his family to escape from the townhouse. For a week in 1791, the city rented it for President Washington's use while he was visiting Charleston during his tour of the Southern States. Three years later, Heyward sold the property and retired to White Hall.

A slightly modified Georgian building, this residence is a fantastic example of a Charleston “double house.” The layout follows the typical Georgian center hall style, featuring four rooms on each floor. Two interior chimneys provide for two fireplaces arranged back to back on every floor. The rooms on the first floor are straightforward, while those on the second are more elaborate for entertaining. The downstairs hall, separated by an arch in the middle, leads to a back door. A Palladian window illuminates the staircase, which is found at the rear of the hall along the north wall.

The large drawing room on the second floor, the most ornate room in the house, has paneled walls, pedimented doors, interior paneled shutters, a detailed ceiling cornice, and a stunning fireplace with a beautifully carved mantel. Besides the drawing room, the second floor also has a smaller parlor and two bedrooms, each with a paneled fireplace wall. There are four more rooms on both the first and third floors. Aside from a remodel in 1929 of one front room and the front of the hall on the first floor, the building is mostly original.

The brick house is square and three stories tall. The hipped roof has a single front dormer and is decorated with a narrow, denticulated cornice. Brick flat arches top the windows. The upper windows have louvered shutters, while the first-floor windows have paneled shutters. The center entrance, which is a reconstruction, features a door with a fan light above it, topped by a pediment and flanked by Roman Doric columns. A back courtyard includes a brick kitchen-laundry with slave quarters above, a carriage house, wood and tool sheds, a restroom, and a garden.

After Heyward's ownership, the house changed hands several times until it was saved from being demolished in 1929 by the Charleston Museum. After being restored and furnished with period pieces, it opened to the public. A collection of china that once belonged to Heyward is on display, along with portraits of the Heyward family.

Erected by his father in the 1740s, this house on the north bank of the North Santee River was the birthplace in 1749 and the childhood home of Thomas Lynch, Jr. He lived there until his father sold it in 1763, the year before young Lynch went to Europe to235continue his education. It’s the only remaining residence closely associated with him.

The 2½-story frame house sits on a brick foundation, which is coated with scored tabby. Two front dormers and two interior chimneys stick out from the hip roof. A wide, two-story porch, or piazza, with square columns spans the front of the building. The frame, made of black cypress, uses mortise-and-tenon construction, and the walls are covered with clapboard. Exterior paneled shutters are positioned next to the windows on both the first and second floors. Aside from the current metal roof and the screening on the front porch, the outside of the building hasn’t changed much.

The central hall setup splits four rooms into pairs on the first two floors. All the rooms have fireplaces. Throughout the space, the mantels, wainscoting, cornice mold, and heart pine floors are original and well-crafted. The full cellar is made of brick and divided into separate rooms. There are two one-story cypress shingled outbuildings, located to the northeast and northwest of the main house, which probably used to be kitchens. Around 1948, when the house had become rundown and the grounds were overgrown, the current owner bought the property, restored the garden, and236 repaired the house. It’s in great condition, privately occupied, but open to the public part of the week.

This mansion, of which only the south wing remains today, was the birthplace and lifelong home of Arthur Middleton (1742–87). Around 1738, his grandfather built a 3½-story brick house on this site. About three years later, Arthur’s father started designing the surrounding gardens that have since gained international recognition as Middleton Place Gardens. More than 100 enslaved people worked for a decade to finish the 45 acres of gardens and 16 acres of lawn. In 1755, the mansion was expanded with the addition of two two-story brick wings on the north and south sides of the original building, which served as a library-conservatory and guest quarters, respectively.

During the War for Independence, British troops raided the house and ransacked the plantation. In 1865, as Union soldiers drew near during the Civil War, the enslaved people set the mansion on fire, leaving only the walls standing. In 1868, William Middleton put a roof on the south wing, the least damaged part of the three, and moved back in. In 1886, an earthquake caused the crumbling walls of the north wing and central section to collapse.

237 In the 1930s, the two-story brick south wing was updated and expanded. The main additions, both two-story brick and designed in an 18th-century style, included a service wing along the main axis at the south end, and a right-angled entrance wing on the west side, which features a vestibule and stairway, topped with a stepped and curvilinear gable roof that matches those on the ends of the original south wing. A third addition in the 1930s was a one-story brick porch on the east side, facing the river. All the brickwork is done in Flemish bond, the shutters are paneled, and there's a louvered circular window adorning the gable end of the new entrance wing. There are three interior chimneys. The first floor of the original south wing has a parlor, dining room, and living room, while three bedrooms are located on the second floor. The interior finish dates back to the mid-19th century, but many of the furnishings are original 18th-century pieces from Middleton.

To the east and north of the current house and the ruins of the central block and north wing are the well-known gardens, which have been expanded and improved over the years. They stretch from the Ashley River and the twin butterfly lakes at their base, extending westward toward the residence and beyond in broad terraces. To the northwest of the house, in another 18th-century formal garden, is the family graveyard, which includes the mausoleum of Arthur Middleton.

The estate covers 7,000 acres and is still owned by the descendants of Middleton. They live in the south wing, which is not accessible to the public, unlike the gardens. According to current plans, about 110 acres, including the gardens, burial plot, plantation house, and restored outbuildings, will be given to a nonprofit organization that will preserve them and keep them open to the public.

The home of Edward Rutledge in his later years, this building is the only one that can be linked to him. Unfortunately, we can't pinpoint the construction date or the exact years he lived here, but he was definitely residing here in 1787.

The large, rectangular, clapboard-frame building is two stories tall over a basement. The roof is hipped. A two-level porch, supported by columns, stretches across the west side and wraps around the south, or rear, side of the house. A central pediment with a circular window highlights the main roof and is “supported” by consoles. Exterior louvered shutters are on either side of the corniced windows. The center doorway, which used to have a cornice, now features a triangular pediment. A small, two-story clapboard addition was added to the front of the east end along the main axis in the late 19th century; it is the only significant exterior change. Behind it, there is a two-story porch.

A central hallway runs about halfway through the house. On one side, there are two rooms with fireplaces; on the other side, there's a front stair hall featuring a curved staircase. Behind this is a large room that's only accessible from the entrance hall. The kitchen, which may have been added later, is in a wing that extends from the back of the house at the southeast corner. The interior woodwork seems to be from the 1880s, and partition walls have since divided the large original rooms into smaller ones.

The Rutledge House, now called the Carter-May House, is currently a Roman Catholic home for elderly women. Parts of the first floor can be visited upon request. There's a large garden at the back of the building.

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In terms of historical significance, this impressive mansion stands out among the James River plantations. It was the birthplace and lifelong home of Benjamin Harrison V (1726–91), who signed the Declaration of Independence and served as Governor of Virginia for three terms, as well as the birthplace and childhood home of his son, William Henry (1773–1841), who became the ninth President of the United States and the grandfather of Benjamin (1833–1901), the 23rd President. William Henry likely wrote his inaugural address in 1841 at Berkeley, in the room where he was born.

Benjamin Harrison IV, the signer’s father, built the structure in 1726. In 1781, British troops led by Benedict Arnold raided the plantation but didn’t seriously damage the mansion. In the 1790s, one of the Harrisons, probably Benjamin VI, made some architectural changes and redecorated the interior in the Adam style. By the time of the Civil War, the plantation was known as Harrison's Landing. In 1862, it served as a supply base and camp for the Union Army of the Potomac after their retreat from the Battle of Malvern Hill, VA, which concluded the Peninsular Campaign. Gen. George B.240 McClellan used the mansion as his headquarters. While staying nearby, Gen. Daniel Butterfield composed the famous bugle call “Taps.”

The early Georgian mansion has been updated a bit over the years, but it still keeps a lot of the original structure and character. It stands 2½ stories high and features a dormered, gable roof with two tall interior ridge chimneys and unique pedimented gable ends, including a cornice with modillions. The brick walls are laid in Flemish bond. Gauged brick is used for the flat window arches, the belt course, and door pediments. The wide-paneled central doors on the north and south sides, with pediments made of gauged brick, are newer reconstructions. Two separate, two-story brick outbuildings, located slightly south of the house on the river side, were built in the 1840s to replace similar structures that were put up sometime before 1800.

The center hall plan has been slightly changed. The hall splits the four rooms on the first floor into pairs. A small staircase in the northwest corner was likely added around 1800. Most of the interior finish clearly shows the Adam changes from the 1790s.

By 1915, the mansion was in bad shape. Later owners have rebuilt and restored it to look like it did in the 18th century. This included taking off a 19th-century porch on all four sides, replacing the window sashes and outer door frames, and reconstructing the main staircase. The upper floors are now a private home, but visitors can check out the basement and the first floor. The unmarked grave of signer Benjamin Harrison is in the family cemetery, a quarter mile southeast of the plantation house.

In 1758, while Carter Braxton was visiting England, his brother George likely built this impressive plantation home for him on a high bluff overlooking the Pamunkey River. When he returned in 1760, Carter moved in and lived there until 1767. He then relocated to a new home, Chericoke, a few miles to the northwest.

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The outside is original, but around 1800, a fire destroyed the inside. The current 18th-century style woodwork is a 20th-century reconstruction. The Georgian brick structure, laid in Flemish bond, is U-shaped. Two wings extend to the north, or back, of the central section. The large building is two stories tall and features a hip roof with four tall chimneys. Side doors are centered in each wing, and there are also central doors at the front and back of the main house. The door on the front, or river, side, with a gauged brick triangular pediment, is a reconstruction.

The flat window arches are made of slanted brick. The second floor features a prominent layer of carefully finished brick, four bricks high and without any molds. Two old, separate brick buildings, standing 1½ stories tall, are on either side of the mansion. The one on the east might date back to 1719; the one on the west has a renovated kitchen. A rebuilt smokehouse and dairy sit on their original, evenly positioned foundations.

An off-center hallway extends northward from the front entrance, halfway through the main arm of the U, and intersects with a lateral hallway that runs east to west along the length of the main mansion. Each end of this long cross hallway has a stairway set against the242 south wall. The southeast corner of the house features a large parlor, the southwest corner has a smaller living room, and each of the north wings contains one large room. There are four bedrooms upstairs, which follow the same general layout as the ground floor.

The beautifully restored house and well-kept estate, which now spans about 3,000 acres, are in fantastic shape but are privately owned and not open to the public.

Menokin, completed in 1769 by Col. John Tayloe of nearby Mount Airy as a wedding gift for his daughter and her husband, Francis Lightfoot Lee, was the home where they spent most of their lives and the one Lee loved the most. He passed away there in 1797.

This late Georgian house, which resembles Mount Airy in many ways but is much smaller, was probably built by the same architect-builder, likely John Ariss. The outside has the characteristics of a large mansion, even though the actual size is quite modest.

243 The house, made of local brown sandstone, is two stories tall with a hip-on-hip roof and two large interior chimneys. Its outside walls are covered in plaster. The stone details—corners, belt courses, and the trim around windows and doors—are intricate. Two stone belt courses, one at the second floor level and the other at the sill level of the upper windows, horizontally divide the main, or north, facade. The upper course is missing on the other three sides. No longer present are two two-story, gable-roofed, detached, symmetrical service buildings, a kitchen to the east and an office to the west, which used to be in the forecourt at right angles to the main house. They definitely added to the impression of the mansion’s large size.

A central hallway runs halfway through the first floor, which includes a dining room, living room, kitchen, and bedroom. There are four bedrooms on the second floor, grouped in pairs by a central hallway.

Unoccupied for many years, Menokin is in bad shape. The roof and walls on the southeast side have fallen down. The yard and grounds, part of a 590-acre farm, are overgrown with plants and small trees. The owner has taken out and stored the original interior paneling. A lot of reconstruction would be needed to bring the building back to its original state. It is not open to the public.

“Monticello,” which means “Little Mountain” in Italian, is a lasting tribute to the brilliance and versatility of Thomas Jefferson, who personally designed and oversaw the construction of this magnificent mansion. He lived there for many years during his long life, and his spirit endures in its architectural beauty and the clever innovations he incorporated into it; he is also buried nearby. Nestled among lovely gardens and lawns on a hillside, the residence overlooks Charlottesville, the University of Virginia—which Jefferson founded and designed some of its buildings—and the lush rolling hills of the surrounding countryside. Especially after he retired from public life in 1809 until he passed away at 83 on July 4, 1826, prominent figures of his time made pilgrimages to Monticello. Even today, it attracts visitors from all walks of life—everyone who admires Jefferson’s character and achievements.

In 1757, Jefferson's father died and left him the property, which was 2,750 acres. Eleven years later, he started leveling the hilltop. To make it accessible, he built paths, which he called roundabouts, on its slopes at four different levels; remnants of these are still visible today. In 1770, fire destroyed Jefferson's modest home, his birthplace Shadwell, and he moved to Monticello, where he had already started building a mansion. The first section he finished was the small southwest pavilion, which Jefferson used as a bachelor’s quarters until January 1772, when he brought his bride, Martha Wayles Skelton, to share it with him. It is still called “Honeymoon Cottage.”

The first Monticello, which looked completely different from the current one, was probably finished in 1775. Made of brick with stone trim, it had a central two-story section with a peaked roof running from front to back and one-story gabled wings that were positioned perpendicular to the main block. The main architectural feature was the two-story portico, with Doric columns below and Ionic columns above. Small polygonal bays extended from the ends of the wings. Jefferson made245 numerous alterations and major changes after the War for Independence. The current two-wing structure, built between 1793 and 1809, includes the rooms of the original house at the back. It also shows a change in architectural style in the United States from Georgian to Roman Revival—both styles are represented. Jefferson played a significant role in initiating the Roman Revival.

The mansion has 2½ stories above a basement and includes 35 rooms. The standout feature is the central dome above an octagonal room. The house is mostly filled with Jefferson's belongings, including a replica of the small portable desk he likely used to write the Declaration of Independence. Some of the innovative features in the home are a 7-day calendar clock and a dumbwaiter. One room has one of the first parquet floors in the United States. The upper levels, which can only be reached by narrow staircases, are not open to the public.

Before Jefferson built Monticello, every plantation had a set of small outbuildings like the laundry, smokehouse, dairy, stable, weaving house, schoolhouse, and kitchen. Jefferson aimed to make these as unobtrusive as possible and improve the efficiency of the facilities by creating two series of rooms for these functions under the outer sides of two long L-shaped terraces extending from the house. Below the south terrace, beyond the angle of the ell, are the kitchen, the cook’s room, servants’ rooms, a room for smoking meat, and the dairy. At the end of this terrace is “Honeymoon Cottage.” On the far side of the north terrace are the stables, carriage house, icehouse, and laundry. Jefferson utilized the small building at the end of this terrace, next to which is the paddock, as an office. An underground passageway—containing storage rooms for wine, beer, cider, and rum—connects the basement of the main house with the series of service rooms along the outer sides of the ells. Jefferson is buried in the family graveyard, which is next to the road leading from the house.

Upon Jefferson’s death in 1826, his daughter Martha inherited Monticello, but she quickly had to sell it to the first of a series of private owners. In 1923, the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation purchased the estate, opened it to the public the following year, and has owned it ever since.

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Francis Lightfoot Lee lived in this beautiful mansion for a brief period in 1769, while its owner, his new father-in-law, Col. John Tayloe, finished constructing Menokin nearby as a home for him and his wife.

Mount Airy, which is perched on a ridge overlooking the Rappahannock Valley, is one of the finest late Georgian mansions built in America. Constructed between 1758 and 1762, it's attributed to the famous Virginia architect John Ariss and is considered his best work. It was the first home in the English Colonies to fully implement a complete five-part Palladian villa design: a main house connected to two outbuildings by quartered passageways that partially surround a front courtyard. The large main section, which stands over an elevated basement, along with the two outbuildings, are two stories high and made of dark brown sandstone with light-colored limestone trim. The one-story passageways curve from the main house to the outbuildings and create a semicircular courtyard on the north, or entrance, side.

Prominent features of the main building include the central projecting pavilions at the front and back made of rough limestone, both featuring loggias, three windows on the second floor, and topped with triangular pediments; a limestone belt course; rough corner quoins; and two pairs of interior chimneys close to the ridge of the hip roof, which was 247 rebuilt after a fire in 1844 and might have replaced a hip-on-hip roof. The four square piers embellishing the front loggia are covered with Roman Doric pilasters. The rear loggia has three round arches topped with heavy, defined, voussoired keystones.

The two side buildings have sloped roofs and central chimneys, and their corner stones match those of the main house. The connecting pathways, also made of stone, are topped with shed roofs hidden from view in the front. Where they connect with the main house, which sits on a raised basement, they are stepped up to provide access to the first floor.

Fire destroyed what were likely beautiful wooden interiors in 1844, but the original floor plan was kept in the rebuild. A stunning central hall runs through the house between the front and back loggias. Full-height windows are on either side of both main entrance doors. The elliptical staircase in the front northwest corner room, which also has a pantry, is from the 19th century, but the original stairs may have been in the current cross hall between the two eastern drawing rooms, which is lit by the central arch of a Palladian window on the east end wall. In the southwest corner, there is a large dining room.

Mount Airy, in good shape, is still used as a home by the Tayloe descendants and isn’t open to the public. Francis Lightfoot Lee is buried with his wife in the Tayloe family cemetery, which is about 300 yards northwest of the mansion.

Thomas Nelson, Jr., might have been born in this house in 1738, lived in it full time from 1767 until 1781, and probably stayed there occasionally during the next 8 years before he died. During that time, he was living in semi-retirement at his Hanover County estate, Offley Hoo.

The likely builder, between 1732 and 1741, was Thomas (“Scotch Tom”) Nelson, Sr., the signer’s grandfather. Thomas Jr.’s father, William, lived in the house until about 1738, the year he got married, when he moved to his own place across the street.248 Thomas Jr. could have been born at either location. After “Scotch Tom” passed away in 1745, his widow continued living there. When she died in 1766, Thomas Jr., who had apparently lived with his father since his marriage 4 years earlier, inherited her home and moved in the following year.

According to family tradition, the Nelson House was the second headquarters of General Charles Cornwallis during the siege of Yorktown (September-October 1781), and with Nelson’s permission, American artillery fired at and hit the house. Historical records suggest that both British and French military personnel likely used it, but their identities can’t be determined for sure. The southeast side of the house does show signs of damage from cannon fire. The Marquis de Lafayette, who revisited the United States in 1824–25, stayed there when he attended the anniversary celebration of the Battle of Yorktown the previous year, where he had played a significant role.

The Nelson House is an impressive example of early Georgian architecture, although the four dormers on the south and five on the north added in the 1920s take away from the original design. It features a broad gabled roof with pedimented ends and two large interior chimneys, along with a strongly dentiled cornice. The Flemish bond brickwork includes a gauged belt course, a water table, and flat window arches with segmental soffits. The corner quoins, as well as the window sills, lintels, and their tall keystones, are made of stone. The quoins and two levels of tall windows give the house a strong vertical look. The door in the center of the north side has simple gauged and molded brick piers topped by a brick pediment. The off-center door on the south facade, enclosed in a vestibule, disrupts the symmetry. A more elaborate door on the west side is modern, replacing an original untrimmed service opening.

On one side of the off-center hall are two small rooms, with a lobby and service stairs in between; on the opposite side of the hall are two larger rooms, separated by a tiny one, likely a pantry. The general layout is repeated upstairs, where there are four bedrooms. Most of the original interior woodwork, showcased by the first-floor wall-to-ceiling paneling, is still intact. From a decorative perspective, the most notable room is the northeast drawing room. All the fireplaces in the house seem to be reconstructions, as are the balusters and handrails of the stairs.

The house stayed with the Nelson family until 1914. In 1920–21, its owners renovated and restored it and renamed it York Hall. In 1968, the National Park Service took ownership. When this book was published, a major research and restoration project was underway in preparation for opening the building to the public.

In 1806–19, Thomas Jefferson designed and built this architecturally significant octagonal house on his 4,000-acre Bedford County plantation as a summer home and retreat. He stayed there occasionally until his death in 1826.

The plantation became Jefferson's property when he married Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772. For many years, whenever he visited to oversee its management, he lived in a two-room cottage, the only place to stay. In June 1781, right after stepping down as governor and narrowly escaping capture with a group of legislators during a British raid on Charlottesville, he temporarily moved his family to the cottage. Before the month was over, a horse threw him off and injured him. While he was recovering, he wrote Notes on the State of Virginia, a study of social and political life in 18th-century Virginia. From 1806 to 1819, he built Poplar Forest, finishing it around the time he retired from public office. When too many visitors came to Monticello or he felt like getting away, he stayed at his retreat for a month or two, usually twice a year. As the years went by, he improved the structure.

In 1845, a fire wiped out the roof and interior, leaving just the four chimneys, the brick walls, and possibly the portico columns. That same year, the current plain roof, which is octagonal and hipped like the original, along with dormers, was added. Before the fire, there was a skylight and a deck with a railing at the edge of the roof, featuring a Tuscan cornice below that wrapped around the building. The one-story brick structure sits on a high basement. Due to the sloping ground at the back, the building is two stories high there. The front and back of the house each have one- and two-story tetrastyle Tuscan porticoes. The front one has a pediment, while the back one, which doesn’t have a pediment, is built over a one-story arcade.

The original interior layout hasn't changed. Four long octagonal rooms are arranged symmetrically around the current dining room, a square central space that used to be lit from above by the central skylight, which wasn't replaced in 1845. There are no aboveground signs left of 251 a flat-roofed office wing mentioned by Jefferson, but the kitchen and smokehouse are still there.

Poplar Forest, in good shape, is a private home and is not open to the public.

This architecturally impressive mansion along the Potomac River was the ancestral home of the Lee family. It was the birthplace and childhood home of two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee, as well as their three notable brothers, Arthur, William, and Thomas Ludwell. A later resident was Col. Henry “Lighthorse Harry,” a hero of the War for Independence. His son, Robert E., a Confederate leader during the Civil War, was born in the house in 1807.

Thomas Lee—planter, merchant, shipowner, and politician—built the mansion between 1725 and 1730 on his 16,000-acre plantation. After his death in 1750, the home was passed down to his oldest son, Philip Ludwell. During that time, Richard Henry was born there in 1732, followed by Francis Lightfoot two years later. They lived there until 1757 and 1758, respectively, when they moved to their own estates. In 1782, Philip Ludwell’s oldest daughter, Matilda, who was married to “Lighthorse Harry,” her cousin, inherited the mansion. She died in 1790, and three years later, her husband remarried. One of his sons from that marriage was Robert E. Lee, who lived in the house for only 3 or 4 years before his parents moved to Alexandria.

Stratford Hall is a stunning and unique example of an H-shaped home, showcasing the shift from 17th-century William and Mary architecture to early Georgian style. The mansion stands one story above an elevated basement and features a hip roof. The difference in color and size between the Flemish bond brickwork in the basement and the upper story softens the bold appearance of the house. In the central connecting arm, the stone steps leading up to the north and south entrances narrow as they rise to the main floor. These steps, flanked by heavy balustrades, were speculative reconstructions added in 1929. Twin sets of four large chimney stacks sit at the center of the east and west wings. The stacks are linked by arches and include balustraded roof decks, providing the Lees a view of navigation on the Potomac River.

“Lighthorse Harry” Lee made many updates. By 1800, he had changed or replaced the exterior stairs and remodeled most of the interior trim, except for the great hall in the central block, to the Adam style. The layout is unusual for colonial homes. Each of the two wings has four rooms, separated by a central hallway on the main floor. The central block connects the fully paneled great hall, or salon—one of the most formal and impressive rooms from the early Georgian period in the English Colonies. The basement has service rooms and some bedrooms; the main floor has living areas and bedrooms. In the dining room of the east wing, there's a service alcove, which is common in Virginia mansions. The 18th-century staircase was taken out during the 1929 restoration. The only way to go between floors now is a small staircase in the east wing.

The mansion sits in the middle of a square garden, with a service building at each corner of the square. On either side of the entrance courtyard are the kitchen and library, both 1½-story brick buildings featuring jerkin-head roofs. At the back corners are a school and an office, topped with hip roofs. Outside the square, there are balanced brick buildings: a stable on one side and a smokehouse on the other. Seven of the 12 original structures that were still standing in 1929 have been restored. They offer a great glimpse into plantation life253 in the 18th century. Further away from the house, near the wharf on the river, is the reconstructed mill.

In 1929, the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation, Inc. acquired the mansion and 1,100 acres. In addition to rebuilding the exterior stairs, the foundation restored the library and library closet in the west wing, along with the dining room and service alcove in the east wing, to reflect their 18th-century style. The east and west corridors, the parlor in the west wing, Robert E. Lee’s birthplace room, and an adjoining bedroom in the east wing were preserved to look like they did around 1800. The formal garden, located just east of the mansion, has also been restored. Today, the foundation operates Stratford Hall as a historic house museum.

Tuckahoe, located by the James River, was Thomas Jefferson's childhood home for 7 years and where he got his early education. The mansion, outbuildings, and the gardens and land around it represent a remarkable example of a Southern colonial plantation. 254

The land where Tuckahoe is located was patented in 1695 by William Randolph. His son Thomas inherited the plantation and built the north wing of the mansion around 1712. Between 1730 and 1745, William Randolph II expanded the residence to its current size. When Randolph passed away in 1745, Peter Jefferson moved his family, including 2-year-old Thomas, from Shadwell to Tuckahoe to keep a promise he had made to Randolph, who was his wife’s cousin, to be the guardian of his son, Thomas Mann Randolph. In 1752, the Jeffersons moved back to Shadwell.

Like Stratford Hall, this house is an exceptional and rare example of an H-shaped structure in early Georgian style in the Colonies. It features a large, two-story frame design with brick nogging and weatherboarded exterior walls, except for the two solid brick ends of the south wing. Two long gabled wings connect through a broad central block. Tall, slender chimneys emphasize the narrow gable ends and the overall verticality of the structure, which is further highlighted by the tall brick foundations. The chimneys in the frame ends of the north wing project outward, while those in the south brick ends are flush with the walls. The second-floor level is defined by a wooden belt course, and the roofline is marked by a modillioned cornice.

The main doorways on the north and south sides have low porches with square posts that hold up gable roofs. The south porch is reached by a long set of stone steps that are wide but don’t have a railing; the north porch is close to the ground. The doors in the center block, on the east and west sides, are protected by pedimented hoods. All four exterior doors, one in each wing and two in the central block, are original, as well as the weatherboarding and sash.

On the first floor of each wing, there are two rooms separated by a central hallway. The north wing has two sitting rooms, while the south wing has a dining room and a “children’s” room. The central connecting area features one large room, or salon. The second floor follows the same layout as the first floor, but the original five bedrooms have been revamped, with the one in the central area updated and divided into several rooms.

The interior decoration and trim, crafted with exceptional skill, are impressively intact and in great condition. All the walls are covered255 with simple paneling. The original wide floorboards are preserved throughout the building. The hall stairways, especially the one on the north side, featuring intricately turned and spiraled balusters, are excellent examples of early Georgian style. The mantels in the house date back to the 19th century, but the marble fireplace in the west bedroom of the north wing is original.

East of the mansion is a small, one-room brick schoolhouse that Jefferson attended, along with beautiful boxwood gardens. A short distance to the west of the main house is a plantation street, featuring a group of eight early 18th-century buildings, all in great shape and mostly unchanged. These include a kitchen, tobacco house, three slave quarters, smokehouse, and barn.

Since Tuckahoe left the Randolph family in 1830, it has had a series of owners. It remains a private home and is not open to the public.

This house in Colonial Williamsburg is a great example of a Georgian brick house. It was home to George Wythe from around 1755 until 1791, covering some of his busiest years in politics and law. His father-in-law, the famous Virginia architect Richard Taliaferro, designed and built it for him and his second wife around 1755. When Taliaferro passed away two decades later, Wythe inherited the house and lived in it until 1791, when he moved to Richmond. A decade earlier, the house had been used as General George Washington’s headquarters before the siege of Yorktown.

The main features of the little-changed early Georgian building are its elegant lines and quality brickwork in Flemish bond. It stands two stories tall above a basement and has a hip roof with two internal chimneys. The smaller windows on the upper floor give the impression that the relatively small house is actually larger than it is. The straightforward facade is enhanced mainly by the broad muntins and wide frames of the windows, along with a beautifully paneled double door that has a rectangular256 transom. The flat window arches are made of gauged brick. The windows, doors, and corners of the house feature rubbed dressings, and a cornice with modillions adorns the eaves.

Each floor has four rooms divided into pairs by a central hallway. Chimneys between each pair provide fireplaces for all eight rooms. The attractive but simple staircase features the only detailed woodwork. Plaster dadoes are present in every room, with chair rails on plasterboard and single molded cornices. The first floor includes a study, parlor, student room, and dining room; the second floor has four bedrooms. The existing mantels have been replaced. The furnishings are from the late 18th century or earlier and showcase American craftsmanship. Behind the house is a formal garden, and along the north side are the kitchen, smokehouse, laundry, lumberhouse, and stable.

In 1926, when Bruton Parish bought the house, it was in bad shape. By 1931, the parish had fixed it up and used it as a parish house for six years. Colonial Williamsburg then took it over, and in 1939–40, they did more restoration work. Today, the building is one of the main attractions at Colonial Williamsburg and is part of the Williamsburg Historic District, a National Historic Landmark.