Benjamin Harrison V

Benjamin Harrison V was born in 1726 in Charles City County, Virginia, at the Berkeley plantation, and became a large planter and a longtime member of the House of Burgesses, which he also served as speaker. In the Continental Congress he chaired the committee of the whole during much of the independence debate and signed the Declaration. He later served as governor of Virginia during the last years of the war, when the state was invaded and the government was often on the move. Harrison was among the wealthiest of the Virginia signers and held many people in slavery on his James River estates. He was the father of William Henry Harrison, later the ninth president, and a great-grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third. He died in 1791. His public service was real; so was his dependence on enslaved labor. Both belong in a student's picture of the man.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · George Wythe · Richard Henry Lee · Thomas Jefferson · Thomas Nelson Jr. · Carter Braxton