How many pennsylvanians signed the declaration of independence

After Delaware became the first state in the fledgling Union, he was elected state senator twice and then appointed chief justice of the State of Delaware, a position he held until his death. Born on the family farm in the Delaware Colony, Rodney was never formally educated. Nonetheless, he had a distinguished career that included participation in the Colonial Assembly and the Stamp Act Congress, as well as the Continental Congress.

He later served as president of the state of Delaware and a member of the state assembly. Born in Delaware, Ross passed the bar in Philadelphia at the age of 20, subsequently becoming attorney general for the Pennsylvania community of Carlisle. He was elected to the Continental Congress three times, and in , shortly before his death, was appointed as a judge for the Pennsylvania Court of Admiralty, which heard cases involving maritime law.

Pennsylvanian Rush was a physician and educator, who studied medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland, and spent several years around Europe studying languages, medicine, and science. Back in America, he was appointed surgeon general to an arm of the Continental Army. In his final years, he served dual roles as treasurer of the U. Mint and professor of medical theory and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania. When he died at the age of 68, he was considered the most celebrated physician in the country.

Educated at Oxford University and a member of the English bar, Rutledge was one of the two youngest signers, along with Thomas Lynch Jr. He left the Continental Congress to serve in the Charleston Battalion of Artillery, helping to defend the city against the British.

After the war, he was resolute in pursuing the prosecution of British loyalists, and became governor of South Carolina in A farmer and some sources say shoemaker who became a surveyor and then a lawyer, Sherman entered politics as a member of the Connecticut General Assembly. In , he served on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and later became a forceful advocate for the ratification of the U.

According to James Madison, he delivered separate speeches at the Constitutional Convention, and Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams are all said to have held him in high regard. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Smith moved to Pennsylvania with his family as a pre-teen. He later apprenticed at the law offices of his older brother, passed the Pennsylvania Bar, and set up a business in which he alternated practicing law with surveying.

He was elected to the Continental Congress twice, but the second time he declined the position, citing his advanced age of Said to have been one of the most successful lawyers in the colonies, Stockton became a justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court two years before signing the Declaration of Independence.

During the Revolutionary War, he was captured and jailed for several years under abusive conditions by the British — during which time the British ransacked his estate and burned his extensive library. Stone worked in Thomas Jefferson's law office before starting his own practice, and was also a prosperous landowner. Little is known about his tenure in the Continental Congress, as he gave few speeches there, and no papers relating to his life have been discovered.

Grieving after the death of his wife in , he planned to sail for England, but he died himself in Alexandria while awaiting the arrival of his ship. Born in what is now Northern Ireland, Taylor came to America when he was in his early 20s, becoming an ironmaster — the man in charge of a forge.

Though not known for being particularly active politically, he held several elected positions, including a stint in the Continental Congress. In , he was appointed to take the place of a Pennsylvanian delegate who refused to support the break with Britain. He missed the vote, but arrived in time to sign the Declaration of Independence. The Irish-born Thornton came to America with his parents at the age of three. Educated in Massachusetts, he studied medicine and became a physician in New Hampshire.

After independence was declared, he was tasked with drawing up a plan of government for that new state. This became New Hampshire's first constitution, as well as the first post-independence constitution adopted by any state. He missed the debates over independence at the Continental Congress but arrived in time to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Virginia-born, Walton apprenticed as a carpenter as a young man, then moved to Savannah, Georgia, to study law, being admitted to the Bar in He was an ally of Lachlan McIntosh in his rivalry with another Georgia signer, Button Gwinnett, and was censured for supporting McIntosh in the duel that claimed Gwinnett's life.

He served briefly as governor of Georgia after independence, then became chief justice of the state, followed by another, longer, term as governor. His last political position was as a U.

Born in Maine, Whipple became a seaman, earning the position of ship's master — in effect a captain — at the age of Eight years later, he landed at Portsmouth on the New Hampshire coast and established a business as a merchant. He became politically active and served in the Continental Congress until taking a leave to serve as brigadier general in the New Hampshire Militia during the Revolutionary War.

A Harvard-educated merchant, Williams held the post of town clerk in Lebanon, Connecticut, for 44 years, also serving as selectman and becoming speaker of the house in the colonial legislature. Brought in to replace another Continental Congress member, Oliver Wolcott, who had fallen ill, he arrived too late to vote for independence, but in time to sign the Declaration. Born and educated in Scotland, Wilson emigrated to America in , studying law and being admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar.

In , he wrote a pamphlet arguing that the British Parliament had no legal authority over the colonies. It was influential on members of the Continental Congress, to which he was subsequently elected.

He later served as a director of the Bank of North America, a member of the Constitutional Convention, and an associate justice on the U. Born and educated in Scotland, Witherspoon was brought to America to serve as president of the College of New Jersey — now Princeton University — under the auspices of two other signers, Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush.

Launched as a The conference failed to settle most of the important issues at hand and thus helped set the stage for the On August 2, , with British forces settling into new positions captured from the Germans in the much-contested Ypres Salient on the Western Front of World War I, Germany faces more trouble closer to home, as a mutiny breaks out aboard the German battleship Prinzregent Live TV.

This Day In History. History Vault. World War II. Middle East. As for Benjamin Franklin , the story of his life is better known than the others, thanks in no small part to the thousands of pages he wrote during his lifetime. Much of that writing is free and easy to access online, including his Autobiography.

Take a moment to think about these men and the many nameless who joined their cause. They had everything to lose. The result was the creation of the greatest force for good in world history, the United States of America.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Over the next few weeks it was reprinted in newspapers up and down the Atlantic seaboard. On July 9, New York reversed its earlier instructions to its delegates, permitting them to join the other colonies favoring a formal break with Britain. A few days later, the news reached Philadelphia that the colonies were now unanimously for independence.

This job went to Timothy Matlack, an assistant to the congressional secretary, Charles Thomson. On August 2, , the Congress members affixed their signatures to this parchment inside the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall.

The first and largest signature was that of the president of the Congress, John Hancock of Massachusetts.

The mood in the room was far from jubilant. All were aware of the magnitude of what they were undertaking—an act of high treason against the British Crown that could cost each man his life. Historians believe seven of the 56 signatures on the document were placed there later.

Livingston of New York. The names of the signers were made public in January of , when they were printed on another broadside edition of the Declaration published in Baltimore, Maryland. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.

The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. National Geographic Society. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher.