Carter Braxton

Carter Braxton was born in 1736 at Newington, in King and Queen County, Virginia, educated at the College of William and Mary, and became a wealthy planter and merchant with shipping interests. He sat in the House of Burgesses and, after the death of Peyton Randolph, was sent to the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. He had been more cautious than some of his Virginia colleagues about a final break, but he accepted the decision of Congress. The war disrupted his shipping and commercial affairs, and he spent his later years in reduced circumstances compared with his former wealth. Popular lists of the signers' sufferings have sometimes turned those losses into ruin; the documentary record supports serious damage, not a fairy-tale of complete destitution. Braxton was a large slaveholder. He continued to serve in the Virginia legislature and died in 1797.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Thomas Jefferson · Benjamin Harrison V · Thomas Nelson Jr. · Richard Henry Lee