George Walton

George Walton was born about 1741 in Cumberland County, Virginia, is said to have been apprenticed to a carpenter, and then studied law after moving to Georgia. He became a leading attorney in Savannah, sat in the provincial congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. In December 1778, at the capture of Savannah, he was wounded and taken prisoner; he was later exchanged. After the war he served as governor of Georgia, as chief justice of the state, and briefly as a United States senator. He was a central figure in Georgia's fierce postwar factions, the same quarrels that had already cost Button Gwinnett his life, and his reputation among contemporaries was mixed. Walton died in 1804. His rise from modest beginnings, his wound at Savannah, and his long, contentious career in state office together make a full, unsentimental picture of a frontier signer.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Button Gwinnett · Lyman Hall