Lyman Hall

Lyman Hall was born in 1724 in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduated from Yale, and was first trained for the Congregational ministry before he turned to medicine. He moved south, practiced as a physician, and settled in St. John's Parish, Georgia, a community with New England roots that was earlier than much of the colony in supporting the patriot cause. He was sent to the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, and after the British overran Georgia spent a time as a refugee in the north. He returned after the war, was elected governor of Georgia in 1783, and supported the founding of a state college, a step toward what became the University of Georgia. Hall died in 1790. His path from minister to physician to governor is unusual among the signers, and his faith and his professional skill both belonged to the way he served a new and thinly settled state.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Button Gwinnett · George Walton