Every Founding Father Who Signed the Declaration of Independence

On August 2, 1776, fifty-six men gathered in Philadelphia and signed what amounted to a death warrant - their own. By putting their names on the Declaration of Independence, they were committing treason against the most powerful empire on earth. The penalty, had Britain won, was hanging. John Hancock, whose signature was the first and largest, supposedly quipped that the British ministry could now read his name without spectacles. He had amassed one of the largest fortunes in New England. Several others were even wealthier. They had, as Benjamin Franklin grimly joked, to hang together - or hang separately.

What followed for many of them was catastrophic. Richard Stockton of New Jersey was captured, starved, and tortured in prison. William Floyd returned after the war to find his Long Island estate looted and burned. Francis Lewis watched the British ransack his home and imprison his wife. Nine signers died during the war or shortly after from hardships connected to it. Several ended up bankrupt. One died in a duel. One simply vanished at sea.

There were 56 of them in all - lawyers, merchants, doctors, farmers, a printer, a musician. They came from 13 colonies and ranged in age from 26 (Edward Rutledge) to 70 (Benjamin Franklin). Most were born in the colonies, but eight were born in Britain or Ireland. Collectively, they had 320 children. After the signing, they scattered - to battlefields, governor’s mansions, courtrooms, and debtors’ prisons. Two became presidents. Fourteen became governors. One became vice president and gave the English language a new word. And the last of them - Charles Carroll of Maryland - did not die until 1832, long enough to see the nation they’d founded consolidate into something recognizable, though he lived to doubt several of their choices. He was 95.

This is all 56 of them, grouped by colony as they appear on the document, north to south.

Josiah Bartlett

Josiah Bartlett holds a curious distinction: he was the first delegate to vote for independence in the Continental Congress, and the first to sign the Declaration after John Hancock. His name appears at the top of the New Hampshire column, a position that reflected his standing as the colony’s leading patriot and its most respected physician. Born in Amesbury, Massachusetts in 1729, Bartlett trained himself as a doctor and built a practice in Kingston, New Hampshire, where he became known for treating smallpox with a cold-water regimen at a time when most physicians were still hedging their bets with ineffective remedies. He entered colonial politics and made enemies quickly - when he refused to bend to pressure from the Royal Governor, Tories burned his house down. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1775, he was already well acquainted with danger. After the war he returned to New Hampshire, served as a judge, then as governor. He died in 1795, respected and intact, which puts him among the luckier signers. Twelve children survived him.

William Whipple

Before William Whipple was a general and a signer, he was a sea captain who had spent his teens and twenties sailing merchant vessels for profit, accumulating a fortune by his early thirties. He landed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1759, set himself up as a merchant with his brother, and was almost immediately drawn into public life. By 1776 he was representing his colony at the Continental Congress and signing the Declaration. He then left Congress to lead men in battle. As a brigadier general of the New Hampshire Militia, Whipple participated in the crucial Saratoga campaign in 1777, the victory that convinced France to enter the war on the American side. The irony of a former slave trader fighting for liberty was not lost on his contemporaries - nor apparently on Whipple himself, who freed his enslaved manservant Prince Whipple upon embarking for the campaign, reportedly saying it was inconsistent to fight for liberty while holding a man in bondage. After the war, Whipple served as an associate justice of New Hampshire’s Superior Court. He died in 1785, collapsing from his horse while riding the court circuit.

Matthew Thornton

Matthew Thornton arrived too late for the debate over independence, but signed the Declaration all the same. Born in Ireland around 1714, he came to America as a toddler when his parents emigrated, eventually settling in Londonderry, New Hampshire, where he built a successful medical practice and became a pillar of the community. He served in New Hampshire’s legislature and, in a remarkable early test of self-governance, was asked to draft a plan of government for the colony after it dissolved its royal government in 1775. The plan he wrote became the first new state constitution adopted in America after hostilities began. Elected to the Continental Congress later that year, he arrived after the key votes had been taken but added his signature to New Hampshire’s delegation. He was chosen as the first Speaker of the new state’s House of Representatives and served as a justice on the Superior Court. He retired to Newburyport, Massachusetts, where he died in 1803 at the age of 89 - still sharp enough, by accounts, to engage visitors in argument.

John Hancock

John Hancock’s signature is the most famous on the document, so large and ornate that his name has become a synonym for any signature. The story goes that he wrote it big enough for King George to read without spectacles. Hancock was the wealthiest man in New England, an orphan adopted by a rich merchant uncle whose fortune he inherited at 26. He was also, inconveniently for the British, a wildly popular public figure whose ship Liberty had been seized by customs officers in 1768, triggering a riot in Boston Harbor. As President of the Continental Congress, he signed first in the large blank space reserved for that office. He went on to serve as Governor of Massachusetts for five terms and remained a beloved figure until his death in 1793 - though he was criticized for his love of public attention and his expensive tastes. He never seemed to mind. He had excellent taste and knew it.

Samuel Adams

Samuel Adams was perhaps the most dangerous man in British-controlled Boston, which says something given the competition. As a tax collector turned populist agitator, he understood exactly how British revenue policy worked and exactly how to make it intolerable. He was among the first to propose a continental congress, was one of the organizers of the Boston Tea Party, and had spent decades in the Massachusetts legislature building the machinery of resistance. A cousin of John Adams, he was often confused with him by later generations - the two were not brothers, though they were nearly always mentioned together. Adams attended the Continental Congress as an impassioned advocate for independence and signed the Declaration in 1776. He retired in 1781 and returned to Massachusetts, where he served as lieutenant governor and eventually as governor until 1797. He died in 1803, having lived long enough to see most of his program enacted, though he spent his final years worried the republic was becoming too comfortable with wealth and luxury.

Robert Treat Paine

Robert Treat Paine was famous at the Continental Congress for objecting to things. Benjamin Rush, who sat near him, called him the “Objection Maker” - noting that Paine seldom proposed anything but opposed nearly every measure that others brought forward. This may sound like obstruction, but Rush’s tone suggests grudging respect for a man who made the Congress think harder. Paine was born in Boston in 1731 and was expected by his family to enter the ministry. He tried theology, then went to sea for a few years to build his strength, then settled on the law. He was the associate prosecuting attorney in the trials of British soldiers after the Boston Massacre - the same trials in which John Adams defended the soldiers. He served in Congress through the debates leading to independence, signed the Declaration, and then served for twenty years as Massachusetts Attorney General. A seat on the state Supreme Court followed. He died in 1814 at age 83, one of the last surviving signers at that point, still capable of raising an objection.

John Adams

John Adams nominated George Washington for commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. He seconded Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence. He championed Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration and defended the draft when it came under attack on the Congress floor. He was, he later said, a colossus in debate - and he was right, which made it all the more galling that Jefferson got the credit for the document Adams had fought so hard to pass. Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1735, graduated Harvard at 20, and became one of the most prominent lawyers in the colony. He went to France as a diplomat, helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, served as the first vice president, and was elected the second president in 1796. His term was contentious, particularly his conflicts with Jefferson. Adams died on July 4, 1826, within hours of Jefferson - the 50th anniversary of independence. His final words, reportedly, were “Thomas Jefferson survives.” He was wrong. Jefferson had died hours earlier.

Elbridge Gerry

Elbridge Gerry signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, refused to sign the Constitution in 1787, served as governor of Massachusetts in 1810 and 1811, and gave the English language the word “gerrymander” - all while managing a successful merchant business. The redistricting that produced his namesake term was not subtle: a political cartoon showed his redrawn district map, which resembled a salamander, with the caption “The Gerrymander.” He was vice president of the United States under James Madison when he died in office in 1814 at age 70. Born in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1744, Gerry graduated Harvard and was drawn early into the patriot movement. At the Constitutional Convention he argued that the new document lacked a bill of rights, which is why he refused to sign it - a position that seems prescient now, though it made him unpopular at the time. He had a talent for principled inconvenience.

Stephen Hopkins

Stephen Hopkins was 69 when he signed the Declaration, making him one of the oldest signers and the only one with a physical disability widely noted at the time. Hopkins suffered from palsy, and his hand shook as he signed. “My hand trembles, but my heart does not,” he reportedly said. It is the kind of line that may be too perfect to be entirely true, but Hopkins’s record suggests the sentiment was genuine. Born in Providence in 1707, he was self-educated and became a merchant, judge, and speaker of the Rhode Island Assembly. He had been writing and speaking against British tyranny for twenty years before the Revolution made it fashionable. He attended the first Continental Congress in 1774 and stayed on through 1778 before returning to serve in the Rhode Island Legislature. He died in 1785 at 78, having spent the better part of six decades in public service.

William Ellery

William Ellery spent the morning of August 2, 1776 - the day most delegates signed the engrossed parchment - positioning himself where he could watch the faces of the men coming forward to sign. He wanted to see if any flinched. None did, though he recorded the scene with the careful attention of a man who understood what he was witnessing. Ellery was born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1727, graduated Harvard at 15, and spent years searching for the right career before discovering law in his forties. He was sent to Congress in 1776 to replace Samuel Ward, who had died of smallpox. The British later burned his house in Newport. After the war he became a vocal abolitionist and was appointed customs collector for Newport, a post he held until his death in 1820 at age 92. He was the second longest-lived signer, outlasted only by Charles Carroll.

Roger Sherman

Roger Sherman is the only person in American history to have signed all four of the nation’s founding documents: the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. He began life as a shoemaker in Newton, Massachusetts in 1721 and educated himself with borrowed books and the help of a sympathetic local minister. He became a surveyor, then a lawyer, then a judge, then a congressman. He served 138 speeches - by Madison’s count - at the Constitutional Convention, more than almost anyone. He was “stern, taciturn, spare with his words,” as Jefferson described him, but never hesitant to stand for his principles. He championed the small states at the Constitutional Convention, helping craft the Connecticut Compromise that gave large states proportional representation in the House while giving every state equal votes in the Senate. He died of typhoid in 1793 at 72, still serving as a U.S. senator from Connecticut. A self-taught shoemaker who helped build a republic.

Samuel Huntington

Samuel Huntington taught himself the law from borrowed books, passed the Connecticut bar at 23, and spent the next four decades in virtually continuous public service. He was King’s attorney, justice of the peace, member of the state assembly, judge of the Superior Court, President of the Continental Congress, lieutenant governor, and then governor of Connecticut - a position he held until his death in 1796. His tenure as President of Congress from 1779 to 1781 covered the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, the first formal governing compact of the United States, and his signature on that document appears alongside his name on the Declaration. Huntington was considered a moderate who leaned toward the upper-class sensibilities of his time, but he threw in with the Sons of Liberty in 1774 and never looked back. Connecticut reelected him as governor every year until he died in office at 64.

William Williams

William Williams arrived at the Continental Congress too late to vote for independence - he was replacing Oliver Wolcott, who had fallen seriously ill - but he signed the Declaration and served on the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation. Born in Lebanon, Connecticut in 1731, he graduated Harvard in 1751, studied theology with his father, served in the French and Indian War, and then returned home to become a merchant and town clerk - a post he held for 44 years. He was also a selectman for 25 years, served in the legislature for nearly 40 years, and sat as a county court judge. When exactly he found time for all of this is unclear. Williams was a deeply religious Congregationalist who saw the American cause as God’s work. His wife was the daughter of Jonathan Trumbull, governor of Connecticut, which gave him useful family connections. He died in 1811 at 80.

Oliver Wolcott

Oliver Wolcott was the youngest of 14 children of Royal Governor Roger Wolcott, which put him in an interesting position when the colonies rose against royal authority. He chose the colonial side without apparent anguish. Before graduating Yale he had already raised and commanded a volunteer militia company for the French and Indian War. After the signing - which he missed due to illness, and for which he signed the parchment later - he served as Brigadier General of the Connecticut forces, then as Indian Affairs Commissioner, then as Lieutenant Governor, and eventually as Governor of Connecticut after Samuel Huntington’s death. It was also on his property in Litchfield that the lead statue of King George III, pulled down from its pedestal in New York, was melted down and cast into 42,000 musket balls. He died in office in 1797 at 71, on his birthday.

William Floyd

William Floyd’s family had been in New York since 1654, which by colonial standards made them practically ancient. By the time of the Revolution he owned substantial land on Long Island and was prominent enough to be elected to the first Continental Congress in 1774. He served through 1776, signed the Declaration, and then watched as the British overran Long Island and occupied his estate for seven years. His family fled to Connecticut and lived as refugees while the British used Mastic Plantation as a headquarters, destroying crops and property. When peace came, Floyd returned to find a ruined farm. He sold up, acquired new land on the Mohawk River, and started again. He served in the first Congress under the new Constitution from 1789 to 1791, voted for Washington’s reelection, and eventually retired to farming, which had been his first love. He died in 1821 at 86, the oldest surviving New York signer.

Philip Livingston

Philip Livingston graduated Yale in 1737, built one of the largest mercantile fortunes in New York City, and died suddenly in York, Pennsylvania in 1778 while attending the Continental Congress - which was meeting there because the British had occupied Philadelphia. He did not live to see independence secured. Born in Albany in 1716, Livingston was a success at everything he tried: merchant, alderman, philanthropist, and politician. He funded the founding of what became Columbia University, supported a chair of divinity at Yale, and helped establish New York’s first hospital. At the Albany Convention in 1754 he sat alongside Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island as delegates considered Franklin’s early plan of union. He came to the Continental Congress in 1776 strongly in favor of the Declaration, and served in the new state senate before his death. He was one of nine children in his family - a New York dynasty that would produce politicians, lawyers, and diplomats for generations.

Francis Lewis

Francis Lewis’s biography reads like a series of misfortunes survived by sheer persistence. Born in Wales in 1713, he came to New York in 1734 to set up a merchant business. In 1756 he was taken prisoner by the French while serving as a British mercantile agent in the Seven Years’ War and shipped to France. He returned to America and entered politics. In 1776 he signed the Declaration. The British response was to seize his Long Island estate and imprison his wife, reportedly in conditions so harsh that she died from the mistreatment not long after her release. Lewis lost everything. He retired from Congress in 1779 and lived modestly in New York until 1802. He was 89 when he died - one of the longest-lived signers - though the last two decades were quiet ones, stripped of the wealth and property he had spent a lifetime building.

Lewis Morris

Lewis Morris inherited vast land holdings in what is now the Bronx and graduated Yale in 1746. He was one of the wealthier New Yorkers who chose the patriot side despite the fact that most of his social circle were loyalists. He convinced local politicians to send delegates to the reconstituted colonial legislature in 1775, was himself appointed to the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration after serving on committees for New York’s defense, Indian affairs, and provisioning of colonial forces. The Revolution cost him heavily. The British destroyed his estate at Morrisania and drove off his livestock. He spent years after the war simply trying to rebuild his farm. His brother Gouverneur Morris - who did not sign the Declaration but helped draft the Constitution - was perhaps more prominent in the historical record, but Lewis paid a steeper personal price for independence. He died in 1798 at 71.

Richard Stockton

Richard Stockton was the only signer of the Declaration who later recanted his signature - at least under duress. A Princeton-educated lawyer with the largest legal practice in the colonies, Stockton was captured by the British in November 1776 while returning from an inspection tour of the northern army. He was taken first to Perth Amboy and then to Provost Prison in New York, where he was intentionally starved and subjected to freezing cold. After nearly five weeks, he was released on parole, his health broken. His estate, Morven, had been occupied by Cornwallis; his library, one of the finest in America, was burned. He reopened his law practice to survive. Two years later he developed cancer of the lip that spread to his throat and he died in 1781 at 50, in constant pain. He is remembered more for what he suffered than for any recantation - which, given the circumstances, most historians treat with considerable sympathy.

John Witherspoon

John Witherspoon was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence, and also the president of what is now Princeton University. Born in Scotland in 1723, he was a Presbyterian minister of such distinction that a group of prominent Americans, including Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, spent considerable effort convincing him to come to New Jersey in 1768. The sticking point was his wife’s terror of crossing the Atlantic. She eventually relented. Witherspoon transformed the College of New Jersey into a first-rate institution and became a celebrated public intellectual. At the Continental Congress, when a hesitant member suggested the country was not yet ripe for independence, Witherspoon replied it was “not only ripe for the measure, but in danger of rotting for the want of it.” He served on more than a hundred congressional committees, evacuated the college when British forces approached, and spent the years after the war rebuilding it. He went blind in his last years and died in 1794 at 71.

Francis Hopkinson

Francis Hopkinson was the first scholar and first graduate of what became the University of Pennsylvania, a lawyer, a federal judge, a poet, a satirist, and an accomplished harpsichordist. He also claimed to have designed the American flag - though the evidence is disputed enough that historians have never settled the question. His satirical pamphlet “The Battle of the Kegs,” mocking British soldiers’ panic over floating mines in the Delaware River, was popular reading in the Continental Army camps. Born in Philadelphia in 1737, he studied law and continued his education in England before returning to a successful legal career. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1776, he signed the Declaration and later became a federal district judge. He died very suddenly of a massive epileptic seizure in 1791 at 53. Washington had appointed him to the bench the year before.

John Hart

John Hart was a farmer, and the farm was everything. Born around 1711 near Hopewell, New Jersey, he built and inherited a prosperous homestead and became a trusted member of his community - justice of the peace, assembly member, judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He was not a man of great education or philosophical inclination. He simply showed up when needed. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1776, he signed the Declaration and then, in November of that year, watched the British sweep through New Jersey. His wife died on October 8. When British forces arrived, Hart fled into the woods, hiding in farmhouses and forests for weeks while soldiers looted his property. He was reelected to Congress during this time and served on the Committee of Safety. He got home eventually and tried to rebuild. On June 22, 1778, Washington asked to camp his army of 12,000 men on Hart’s fields - during the growing season. Hart said yes. He died the following year at about 68, without having recovered his former prosperity.

Abraham Clark

Abraham Clark’s father decided the boy was too frail for farm work - his constitution was poor and he had a gift for mathematics - so he was tutored in surveying and the law instead. Clark became known in New Jersey for representing poor farmers in land disputes, often at minimal or no charge, which made him popular with a class of people not typically well-served by lawyers. He served as High Sheriff of Essex County, clerk of the provincial assembly, and was elected to the Continental Congress in 1776. During the war two of his sons were captured by the British and held in particularly harsh conditions on the prison ship Jersey - conditions that were not improved until Clark agreed to temporarily stop advocating for their transfer. He refused, and they eventually survived. He served in Congress intermittently through the Revolution, declined to attend the Constitutional Convention in 1787 for health reasons, but remained active in New Jersey politics until his death in 1794.

Caesar Rodney

Caesar Rodney rode eighty miles through the night to cast the deciding vote for independence. That ride - through rain and stormy weather, with Rodney already suffering from asthma and a cancerous growth on his face that was slowly killing him - has become one of the defining images of the American founding. Delaware’s delegation was deadlocked: George Read opposed independence, Thomas McKean was for it. Without Rodney, they could not vote. Rodney received word on July 1, 1776, and rode through the night to arrive in time. Delaware voted for independence. Rodney was born near Dover in 1728, served as High Sheriff of Kent County at 22, and spent the rest of his life in public office. He was both President of Delaware and Major General of the Delaware Militia during the war, leading a colony that consistently met or exceeded its troop quotas for Washington’s army. The cancer on his face went untreated. He died in 1784 at 55.

George Read

George Read voted against independence at the Continental Congress. He thought Lee’s resolution was too hasty. When it passed anyway, he set his reservations aside and signed the Declaration - putting his name on a document he had just voted against, which required a certain personal honesty. Born in Maryland in 1733, Read was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar at 20 and built a formidable legal reputation in Delaware. When the British captured Delaware’s governor in 1777, Read stepped in as acting governor and led the state through the crisis - raising money, troops, and supplies. He later served as a state senator and was appointed Chief Justice of Delaware, a post he held until his death in 1798. He opposed the Articles of Confederation as too weak and was an early advocate for a stronger federal government, which put him ahead of most of his colleagues. His pragmatism outran his ideology.

Thomas McKean

Thomas McKean may have held more simultaneous offices than any other man in American history. While attending the Continental Congress, he was simultaneously President of Delaware, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and colonel in the New Jersey militia. He had been admitted to the Delaware bar before age 21, served in the Delaware Assembly for seventeen consecutive years, attended the Stamp Act Congress, and was eventually elected Governor of Pennsylvania - a post he held for nine years. He was also the last signer to add his name to the Declaration, possibly not until 1777. During the war his family moved five times to avoid British capture. Born in Pennsylvania in 1734, he served three states in official capacity over a career spanning six decades. Political enemies tried to impeach him during his governorship and failed to prove any wrongdoing. He died in 1817 at 83, still argumentative, still in possession of his faculties.

Robert Morris

Robert Morris personally financed the American Revolution - or at least kept it from dying. When Washington’s army was in desperate straits at Trenton in December 1776, Morris loaned $10,000 of his own money to the government. The troops were provisioned. They crossed the Delaware and won the battle that turned the war. Morris had been born in England in 1734, came to the Chesapeake as a child, and built one of the great mercantile fortunes in Philadelphia. His firm was the largest importer in the colonies, which meant the Stamp Act hit him directly - and converted him to the patriot cause. In 1781 he devised the plan for the Bank of North America, the first national bank, which put the war effort on a sustainable financial footing. Washington later offered him the Treasury, which he declined, suggesting Alexander Hamilton instead. After the war, land speculation destroyed everything he had. He died in 1806 in relative poverty, the man who had funded a revolution unable to pay his own bills.

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Rush was the most celebrated physician in America, the professor of chemistry who wrote the first American chemistry textbook, a founder of the American Philosophical Society, an abolitionist, and - by the accounts of his colleagues in Congress - a terrible gossip and a man supremely confident of opinions that were not always sound. His great innovation in medicine was aggressive bloodletting, which he applied to nearly every ailment with an enthusiasm that outlasted the evidence. John Adams wrote sharp things about him. So did Benjamin Franklin. But Rush also reconciled Adams and Jefferson, who had stopped speaking, by encouraging them to write to each other in their old age. He served as Surgeon General of the Middle Department of the Continental Army and was appointed Treasurer of the U.S. Mint. He signed the Declaration at 30, one of the younger signers, and died in 1813 at 67 as the most famous doctor in the country, whatever his fellow founders thought of him.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was 70 when he signed the Declaration, the oldest signer by a comfortable margin. He had been, by that point, the most famous American in the world for thirty years. He had proved that lightning was electricity. He had invented the lightning rod, bifocals, and the glass armonica. He had served as colonial agent for Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts in London. He had testified before Parliament about the Stamp Act. He had founded the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, and the institution that became the University of Pennsylvania. He was celebrated in every court in Europe. When Jefferson drafted the Declaration, Franklin made a few corrections. When it was finished, Franklin quipped that they must all hang together or hang separately. He then went to France and secured the alliance that won the war. He came home in 1785, helped draft the Constitution in 1787, and died in 1790 at 84, still writing petitions against slavery. He never finished his autobiography.

John Morton

John Morton was the Pennsylvanian whose vote broke the deadlock. Pennsylvania’s delegation was split - three for independence, three against. Morton was the deciding vote. He had been a moderate who had suggested the colonies seek to remain within the British Empire with greater autonomy. When he cast his vote for independence in July 1776, former friends stopped speaking to him. His health was already failing; he died in April 1777, the first of the Pennsylvania signers to die and one of the first signers to die at all. Before his death, he reportedly said that those who had abandoned him would soon see that he had done right. Born in Ridley, Pennsylvania around 1724, Morton had been a justice of the peace, high sheriff, presiding judge, and associate justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court - a parallel career in law and politics that made his single vote for independence his defining act. He was 53 when he died.

George Clymer

George Clymer was orphaned young and raised by a wealthy uncle who gave him a good education and a position in his counting room. He became a merchant, a patriot partisan, and a member of the Philadelphia Committee of Safety. At the Continental Congress he worked alongside Robert Morris to strengthen Washington’s authority and improve the provisioning of the Continental Army - unglamorous committee work that kept the war effort functioning. He was elected to Congress in 1776, signed the Declaration, and served on the Board of War and Treasury Board. After the war he returned to Congress under the new Constitution, served as a revenue officer during the Whiskey Rebellion, and undertook a diplomatic mission to the Cherokee nation in 1796. In retirement he became first president of the Philadelphia Bank and first president of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. He died in 1813 at 73, an example of the builder-type among the founders - less famous than the orators, but indispensable.

James Smith

James Smith was born in Ireland around 1719, emigrated with his family to Pennsylvania as a child, and spent most of his adult life as a lawyer in York - a frontier town when he first arrived, more settled by the time he helped organize a volunteer militia company in the 1760s. The company elected him captain. He wrote an essay in 1774 proposing a boycott of British goods and a general colonial congress - an early articulation of what would become the Continental Congress - and distributed it at the provincial assembly. He was appointed to the Continental Congress in 1775, signed the Declaration in 1776, and retired from Congress in 1777 after two years. Little of his life is documented with any precision because a fire destroyed his office and all his papers shortly before he died in 1806 at about 87. He was one of the longer-lived signers, and one of the least remembered.

George Taylor

George Taylor came to America as a young man from Ireland and worked as an ironmaster - a laborer and eventually a superintendent at ironworks in Pennsylvania and Bucks County. Iron was his life’s work. He was also briefly a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was appointed to replace a Pennsylvania delegate who refused to support independence, arrived too late to vote, but signed the Declaration. He served Congress through 1777 and was elected to the new Supreme Council of his state, but served only six weeks before illness intervened. There is no record of any public service afterward. He died in 1781 at about 65, having spent his most significant moment on the national stage as a stand-in for someone else’s principles - and having made the most of it by signing his name.

James Wilson

James Wilson was born in Scotland in 1742, came to America in 1766, and became one of the foremost constitutional lawyers in the country. He wrote a pamphlet in 1774 arguing that Parliament had no authority to legislate for the colonies - an argument later cited as anticipating the Declaration. At the Continental Congress he was in a bind: Pennsylvania was divided on independence, and he refused to vote against his constituents’ wishes. He secured a three-week delay, consulted back home, and ultimately voted for independence. He attended the Constitutional Convention and gave 168 speeches by Madison’s count. Washington appointed him to the first Supreme Court. Then his life unraveled. He speculated aggressively in land, borrowed heavily, and accumulated enormous debts. He was arrested for debt while still serving as an Associate Justice. He fled to North Carolina in 1798, still on the run from creditors, and died there that year at 55 - a Supreme Court justice hiding from debt collectors.

George Ross

George Ross spent twelve years as Crown Prosecutor for Carlisle before switching sides and becoming a revolutionary. He was born in 1730 in Delaware, the son of a minister, and trained as a lawyer at his older brother’s office in Philadelphia. As Crown Prosecutor - essentially the royal attorney general - he was by definition a government man. Elected to the provincial legislature in 1768, he came to understand the conflict between colonial assemblies and Parliament at first hand and chose the colonial side. He attended the Continental Congress in 1774 and again in 1776, when he also served as a colonel in the Continental Army and as vice president of Pennsylvania’s first constitutional convention. He undertook negotiations with the Northwestern Indians on behalf of his colony. In March 1779 he was appointed to the Pennsylvania Court of Admiralty. He died in that office four months later at 49, one of the younger signers and one of the shorter-serving.

Samuel Chase

Samuel Chase had a long career in law and on the bench, and in his later years became the only Supreme Court justice ever to face an impeachment trial in the Senate. The Senate acquitted him in 1805, and the precedent that judges cannot be removed for unpopular opinions has held ever since. Chase was born in Maryland in 1741, received a classical education in Baltimore, and studied law before being elected to represent Maryland at the Continental Congress in 1774. He served there until 1778, signed the Declaration, and later became Chief Justice of Maryland before President Washington appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1796. He served in that role until his death in 1811. His style on the bench was combative and often partisan, which was what prompted the impeachment effort. He was the kind of judge whose rulings you might not like but whose independence you would come to appreciate.

William Paca

William Paca’s path to the law was unusually thorough. He was tutored in the classics at home before attending Philadelphia College at 15, graduated at 18 with a master’s degree, studied law in Annapolis, and then trained at the Inner Temple in London before being admitted to the Maryland Bar. He was a leader in the patriot movement long before the revolution became inevitable, writing against a poll-tax imposed by the royal governor and organizing resistance in the legislature. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1774, he served until 1779, when he was appointed chief justice of Maryland. He became governor in 1782 and later served as a federal district judge from 1789 until his death in 1799. His estate, Wye Hall, became the basis for what is now a National Historic Landmark in Maryland. He died at 58, having occupied virtually every significant legal and political office his state offered.

Thomas Stone

Thomas Stone was one of the quieter presences at the Continental Congress - he spoke rarely, served competently, and left almost no record of his inner life because no letters or personal papers have ever been found. Born in Charles County, Maryland in 1743, he studied law under Thomas Johnson and built a prosperous practice in Frederick. He was elected to Congress in 1775, voted for independence in 1776, and served on the committee that framed the Articles of Confederation. He was elected to Congress again in 1783 and served as chairman. In 1787 he was elected to attend the Constitutional Convention but declined because his wife was gravely ill. She died that year, and Stone, by all accounts, never recovered from the grief. He decided to travel to England, probably seeking distraction. He died in Alexandria while waiting for his ship, aged 44. Whatever else he thought or felt about the revolution he had signed his name to went with him.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Charles Carroll lived to be 95 and was the last surviving signer of the Declaration - outlasting the next survivor by more than a decade. He was born in Annapolis in 1737 into a wealthy Roman Catholic family and was packed off to France at age eight for his education, which he pursued at Jesuit schools, the College of Louis the Grande, and eventually the law courts of Paris and London. He was 28 when he returned to Maryland, educated far beyond any of his contemporaries. He threw in with the radical cause immediately, engaging in anonymous newspaper debates about taxation and colonial rights. Maryland was initially reluctant - it did not send delegates to the first Continental Congress. Carroll was elected to represent the state on July 4, 1776, arrived too late to vote, and signed the Declaration. He served in the Continental Congress, the Maryland Senate, and the first federal Congress. He retired from public life in 1800 and died in 1832. He had outlived not just all his fellow signers but most of the second generation of American statesmen as well.

George Wythe

George Wythe was murdered at 80 by a nephew who wanted his money. The nephew put arsenic in the coffee. He also poisoned two others in the household - an enslaved woman died, Wythe lingered for two weeks and then died on June 8, 1806 - because Wythe had planned to leave part of his estate to his freed slaves, and the nephew wanted a larger inheritance. Wythe had already freed all his slaves and provided for their support, an act of quiet abolition at a time when most Virginia gentlemen considered the institution untouchable. Before that end, he had been the foremost lawyer in Virginia, the first professor of law in America, and the teacher of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Henry Clay, and James Monroe. He graduated no one, having never obtained a degree himself - his mother died when he was a teenager, leaving him to seek his own way. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775, voted for independence, and spent his remaining three decades on the Virginia bench. He is the most important founder most people have never heard of.

Richard Henry Lee

Richard Henry Lee moved the resolution that made independence official. On June 7, 1776, he rose in Congress and proposed that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” The motion was seconded by John Adams. The Declaration followed. Lee was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia in 1732 to an aristocratic family and educated at a private school in Yorkshire, England. He returned to Virginia in 1751 and was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1757, where he established a reputation for oratory that would serve the patriot cause well. He served in Congress through the war, was selected as President of Congress in 1783, and opposed the new federal Constitution on the grounds that it gave too much power to the central government. He was nonetheless elected the first senator from Virginia and served until illness forced his retirement to Chantilly, where he died in 1794. His brother Francis Lightfoot Lee also signed the Declaration - one of two pairs of brothers among the signers.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson asked to be remembered for two things: as the author of the Declaration of Independence and as the founder of the University of Virginia. Not as president. Not as the drafter of Virginia’s religious freedom statute, though he counted that among his proudest achievements. Not as the man who doubled the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase. The Declaration was what he most wanted attached to his name, and it has been. He was born in Albemarle County, Virginia in 1743, studied under George Wythe, and was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775 as an alternate. When the committee to draft a declaration was formed, the committee chose Jefferson to write it - Adams later said he pushed for Jefferson because he himself was too obnoxious and too suspected, while Jefferson was a Virginian and a fine writer. The Congress made changes Jefferson resented, particularly the removal of the passage condemning the slave trade. Jefferson owned more than 600 enslaved people over his lifetime. He wrote that all men are created equal. Both of these things are true of the same man, and American history has been trying to hold both thoughts together ever since. He died on July 4, 1826.

Benjamin Harrison

Benjamin Harrison had one of his ancestors’ liabilities and one notable advantage: he was the father of one president and the great-grandfather of another. His son William Henry Harrison became the ninth president. His great-grandson Benjamin Harrison became the twenty-third. The man himself was born in Berkeley, Virginia in 1726, attended William and Mary College but had to leave when his father and two sisters were killed by a lightning strike. He was elected to the House of Burgesses at 38 and was among those who refused the Governor’s bribe to vote against the Stamp Act resolutions. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1774, he was part of the delegation that went to Cambridge the following year to plan with Washington. He returned to Virginia in 1777 and was elected Governor in 1782. He suffered from gout in his final years and died in 1791 at 65. His son became president 41 years later, on the strength of a legend about the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Francis Lightfoot Lee was the quieter brother. Richard Henry Lee moved the resolution for independence and earned a permanent place in the historical record. Francis Lightfoot Lee served in the Continental Congress from 1775 to 1779, worked on numerous committees, signed both the Declaration and the Articles of Confederation, and then retired to his plantation in Richmond County, Virginia, where he served briefly in the state senate and then largely disappeared from public life. He was born at Westmoreland, Virginia in 1734 and educated at home by a private tutor. He was a noted radical in the Virginia House of Burgesses, siding with Patrick Henry against the Stamp Act and calling for a general colonial congress in 1774. He and his wife had no children. He died in 1797 at 62, not long after his wife. The brothers were unusually close; those who knew the family said Francis Lightfoot’s death broke Richard Henry’s spirit. Richard Henry died the same year, a few months later.

Carter Braxton

Carter Braxton had 18 children. He also, over the course of the Revolution, lost nearly his entire fortune - partly to the British, partly through the bad luck of sponsoring shipping ventures that failed, and partly through a ten-thousand-pound sterling loan he made to the revolutionary government that was never repaid. Born in 1736 to a wealthy family in Virginia, he attended William and Mary College, married at 19, lost his wife two years later, went to England for two years to recover, and came back to a long career in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He was not an enthusiast for complete independence - his arguments in 1776 favored a more cautious path - but when the vote came he signed. He served in Congress until 1777, returned to Virginia, and watched his finances deteriorate over the next decade. By 1786 he was forced to sell his inherited estate and move to modest quarters in Richmond. He died in 1797 at 61, his 18 children left to make their own way.

Thomas Nelson Jr.

Thomas Nelson Jr. was born to one of the wealthiest families in Virginia, educated at Eton and Cambridge, and came home to Yorktown in 1761 as a polished English gentleman. By 1776 he was commanding the Virginia Militia and signing the Declaration of Independence. By 1781 he had been elected Governor of Virginia - succeeding Thomas Jefferson, who had stepped down under pressure - and was simultaneously serving as commander-in-chief of the state’s military forces. The Battle of Yorktown, which ended the war, was fought literally in his backyard. When his own house was occupied by British troops and Cornwallis possibly using it as a headquarters, Nelson reportedly ordered his artillery to fire on it anyway. The house still stands in Yorktown; the cannonball holes are still visible. The war cost him his health and his fortune, much of which he spent on provisioning troops from his own pocket. He died in 1789 at 50, his debts unpaid and his health destroyed, having given everything he had.

William Hooper

William Hooper was born in Boston in 1742, graduated Harvard in 1760, and then moved to North Carolina in 1767 - as far from his Massachusetts roots as he could manage. He had studied law under James Otis, one of the firebrands of colonial resistance, yet Hooper was initially a loyalist who had participated in the suppression of the Regulator movement, a rural uprising against colonial authorities in North Carolina. He shifted to the patriot side by 1774 and attended the Continental Congress that year, signing the Declaration in 1776 before resigning and returning home. During the war his family was forced to relocate several times as British forces advanced through the Carolinas. He was appointed to the federal bench in 1789 but retired a year later due to failing health. He died in October 1790 at 48, having traveled a longer ideological distance than most signers to get to his signature.

Joseph Hewes

Joseph Hewes was, by the account of his fellow delegates, the hardest-working man in the Continental Congress. Born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1730, he built a shipping empire in Wilmington, North Carolina, became one of the wealthiest men in the region, and was elected to the provincial assembly in 1766. When he arrived at Congress he became the leading expert on maritime affairs and served as de facto secretary of the naval committee - arguably making him the founding administrator of what became the U.S. Navy. He worked incessantly. He also never married; his fiancee had died young, and he never sought another partner. He signed the Declaration in 1776, placed his own ships at the Continental government’s disposal, and kept serving until illness overtook him in 1779. He died in Philadelphia in October of that year at 49, still in service, worn out from the work.

John Penn

John Penn’s father died when he was 18, leaving him with a rudimentary schooling, a country lawyer’s income, and access to the library of his relative Edmund Pendleton - one of the better law libraries in Virginia. He taught himself with those books, was licensed to practice law in Virginia at 22, and moved to North Carolina in 1774 to try his luck in a colony with less competition. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775 and served until 1777, participating in committee work without much recorded distinction. He returned in 1779, was appointed to the Board of War, and served until 1780 before his health declined enough that he declined a subsequent judicial appointment. He retired to his law practice in North Carolina and died in 1788 at 47 - one of the shorter-lived signers. He left no large body of correspondence or recorded speeches. He showed up when called, voted for independence, and went home.

Edward Rutledge

Edward Rutledge was 26 when he signed the Declaration, making him - by precisely three months over Thomas Lynch Jr. - the youngest signer in the room. He had graduated Oxford, studied at the Middle Temple in London, and returned to South Carolina with credentials impressive enough to get him elected to Congress almost immediately. He served through 1776, left to help defend his colony, returned in 1779 to fill a vacancy, and was then captured when the British took Charleston in 1780. He was held prisoner for more than a year. After the war he served in the South Carolina legislature for more than a decade, was elected to the state senate, voted as an elector in 1796 for Thomas Jefferson despite his Federalist allegiances, and was elected governor in 1798. He barely completed his term - his health was failing rapidly - and died in January 1800 at 50. His brother John Rutledge had a parallel and arguably more prominent career, but did not sign the Declaration.

Thomas Heyward Jr.

Thomas Heyward Jr. was born in 1746 in St. Luke’s Parish, South Carolina, the son of a wealthy planter, and educated in English law before returning to a legal career in South Carolina. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775 and signed the Declaration the following year. In 1778 he returned to South Carolina to serve as a judge. He was commanding a militia force during the siege of Charleston in 1780 when he was captured by the British. He was held prisoner for a period before being released and resuming his judgeship. He served on the South Carolina bench until 1798, a career spanning two decades, before retiring to his plantation. He died in 1809 at 62. The British had occupied his Beaufort County plantation during the war and damaged it significantly, but unlike some signers he was able to recover financially. He was one of the more prosperous survivors of the South Carolina delegation.

Thomas Lynch Jr.

Thomas Lynch Jr. signed the Declaration at 26 and was dead by 30, though the exact circumstances are uncertain. Born in Winyah, South Carolina in 1749, he received an education at Cambridge, read law in London, and returned to South Carolina in 1772, where he immediately engaged in revolutionary politics. He was commissioned a company commander in the South Carolina regiment in 1775. Soon after signing the Declaration, he fell seriously ill - the nature of the illness is unclear - and was forced to retire from Congress. At the close of 1779 he and his wife boarded a ship for the West Indies, hoping the warmer climate would restore his health. The ship disappeared. No record exists of what happened to them. Lynch was the son of a delegate who had suffered a stroke before the signing and could not serve; the younger Lynch had attended Congress partly to assist his father. His was perhaps the briefest and most mysterious life among all 56.

Arthur Middleton

Arthur Middleton was born in Charleston in 1742 to one of the most powerful families in South Carolina, educated at Cambridge, and returned to his state with the instincts of a radical. He served on Charleston’s Council of Safety in 1775 and was elected to the Continental Congress in 1776. The British captured him when they took Charleston in 1780 and held him prisoner for more than a year at St. Augustine, Florida. He was exchanged in 1781 and returned to the legislature. The Revolution had cost him most of his fortune - his properties were extensively damaged. He died on January 1, 1787 at 44, one of the younger deaths among the signers. His father Henry Middleton had been President of the Continental Congress before him; Arthur’s son Henry would later serve in the same body. Three generations of Middletons in federal service, though Arthur’s generation paid the highest price.

Button Gwinnett

Button Gwinnett has the most valuable signature in the world. Because he died young and rarely wrote letters, fewer than 50 examples of his signature are known to exist, and they sell at auction for more than those of any other historical figure. He was born in England around 1735, came to Georgia in 1765, acquired a large tract of land on St. Catharine’s Island, and failed rather thoroughly as a planter and businessman. He made up for it in revolutionary politics. He and Lachlan McIntosh, a military commander and political rival, had been feuding for years when Gwinnett became president of the Georgia Council of Safety in early 1777. An abortive invasion of Florida - thwarted by McIntosh - and subsequent legislative maneuvering led to Gwinnett and McIntosh calling each other out. They met in a duel outside Savannah on May 16, 1777. Both were wounded. McIntosh recovered. Gwinnett died three days later at about 42, less than a year after signing the Declaration. His rare signature now fetches upward of a million dollars.

Lyman Hall

Lyman Hall was a Connecticut man who came to Georgia by a long route: he had studied medicine at Yale, practiced in South Carolina, and only settled in Georgia in the 1760s when he bought land and established a plantation. He remained a physician. He earned the unflattering attention of Georgia’s Royal Governor when he became one of the colony’s leading patriots and was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775 - initially just representing St. John’s Parish, which had voted independently while the rest of Georgia remained cautious. He was reelected through 1780, though he returned to his state in 1777 when conditions there demanded it. The British burned his plantation and accused him of high treason. He fled - first to Charleston, then reportedly to Connecticut - and returned in 1782 to reclaim his lands. He was elected to the Georgia legislature in 1783, elevated to governor, and served a year in that office before returning to private life. He died in 1790 at 66, having contributed a physician’s steady temperament to some of the most turbulent years in American history.

George Walton

George Walton was born in Virginia in 1741, orphaned young, apprenticed to a carpenter uncle who tried to prevent him from studying, and arrived in Savannah in 1769 to teach himself the law with borrowed books. He was admitted to the bar in 1774 and was deeply embedded in Georgia’s patriot movement almost immediately. At the formation of the Georgia provincial Congress he was elected secretary and then president of the Council of Safety. He signed the Declaration in 1776. He was commissioned a colonel in the Georgia Militia in 1778, was wounded in battle, and taken prisoner. After his exchange in 1779 he was elected governor for two months before being removed in a political dispute. His career was marked throughout by fierce factional battles - he was allied with Lachlan McIntosh in a long struggle against Button Gwinnett’s faction for control of Georgia’s patriot movement. He served as Chief Justice of Georgia, twice as governor, briefly as a U.S. senator, and as a superior court judge. He died in 1804 at about 63, having crammed an extraordinary amount of political activity into a single life.