BY SIGNING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE THE FIFTY-SIX AMERICANS PLEDGED THEIR LIVES THEIR FORTUNES AND THEIR SACRED HONOR.
IT WAS NO IDLE PLEDGE ---
NINE SIGNERS DIED OF WOUNDS DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR FIVE WERE CAPTURED OR IMPRISONED, WIVES AND CHILDREN WERE KILLED, JAILED, MISTREATED OR LEFT PENNILESS.
TWELVE SIGNERS' HOUSES WERE BURNED TO THE GROUND.
SEVENTEEN LOST EVERYTHING THEY OWNED.
NO SIGNER DEFECTED - THEIR HONOR LIKE THEIR NATION REMAINED INTACT.
THE FIFTY-SIX men who affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Independence were, for the most part, a young, vigorous, and hardy lot. Only seven were over sixty; eighteen were still in their thirties; and three in their twenties. Not one wore a beard or mustache.
Considering the average life span of their time, most of these patriots lived to a remarkable age. Three lived to be over ninety. Ten died in their eighties. If George Wythe had not been poisoned by a grandnephew impatient for his inheritance, the distinguished old scholar would have exceeded his eighty years.
Maryland's Charles Carroll outlived by six years the last of the other Signers. On the Fourth of July, 1828, he spaded the first earth for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which would unite the East with the West. Carroll died in 1832, at the age of ninety-five.
Only two of the Signers were bachelors. Sixteen married twice. Records indicate that at least two, and possibly as many as six, were childless. But the remaining Signers fathered close to 325 children! Carter Braxton of Virginia compensated for several small families by having eighteen. William Ellery of Rhode Island had seventeen children; Roger Sherman of Connecticut had fifteen.
The Signers were men devoted to their belief in a Creator who had fashioned them in His image and likeness. That meant, they stoutly contended, that they were to be free rather than enslaved. Since the Church of England prevailed in the colonies, considerably more than half of the fifty-six expressed their religious faith in Episcopalian worship. Charles Carroll was Roman Catholic; the others were Congregational, Presbyterian, Quaker, or Baptist. Ten Signers were preachers' sons.
New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett, 1729-1795 [47]
Matthew Thornton, 1714(?)-1803 [62]
William Whipple, 1730-1785 [46]
Massachusetts
John Adams, 1735-1826 [41]
Samuel Adams, 1722-1803 [54]
Elbridge Gerry, 1744-1814 [32]
John Hancock, 1737-1793 [39]
Robert Treat Paine, 173I-1814 [45]
Rhode Island
William Ellery, 1727-1820 [49]
Stephen Hopkins, 1707-1785 [69]
Connecticut
Samuel Huntington, 1731-1796
Roger Sherman, 1721-1793
William Williams, 1731-1811
Oliver Wolcott, 1726-1797
New York
William Floyd, 1734-1821
Francis Lewis, I713-1803
Philip Livingston, 1716-1778
Lewis Morris, 1726-1798
New Jersey
Abraham Clark, 1726-1794
John Hart, I711(?)-1779
Francis Hopkinson, 1737-1791
Richard Stockton, 1730-1781
John Witherspoon, 1723-1794
Maryland
Charles Carroll, 1737-1832
Samuel Chase, 174I-I811
William Paca, 1740-1799
Thomas Stone, 1743-1787
Delaware
Thomas McKean, 1734-1817 [42]
George Read, 1733-1798 [43]
Caesar Rodney, 1728-1784 [48]
Pennsylvania
George Clymer, 1739-1813
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790
Robert Morris, 1734-1806
John Morton, 1724(?)-1777
George Ross, 1730-1779
Benjamin Rush, 1745(?)-1813
James Smith, 1719(?)-1806
George Taylor, 1716-1781
James Wilson, 1742-1798
Virginia
Carter Braxton, 1736-1797
Benjamin Harrison, 1726(?)-1791
Thomas Jefferson, I743-1826
Francis Lightfoot Lee, 1734-1797
Richard Henry Lee, 1732-1794
Thomas Nelson, Jr., 1738-1789
George Wythe, 1726-1806
North Carolina
Joseph Hewes, 1730-1779
William Hooper, 1742-1790
John Penn, 1741 (?)-1788
South Carolina
'Thomas Heyward, Jr., 1746-1809
Thomas Lynch, Jr., 1749-1779
Arthur Middleton, 1742-1787
Edward Rutledge, 1749-1800
Georgia
Button Gwinnett, 1735 (?)-1777 [41]
Lyman Hall, 1724(2)-1790 [52]
George Walton, I741 (?)-1804 [35]
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