Signers of the Declaration
Short lives of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, grouped by the colony they represented.
The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. Most of the 56 delegates who signed the engrossed parchment did so on 2 August, and a few added their names later. They are grouped here by colony, from New Hampshire south to Georgia. John Hancock, who signed first as president of Congress, is listed with Massachusetts, the colony he represented.
These short lives are written for students. They record each man's work in Congress, what he did afterward, and—where the record is clear—the costs he bore. Popular lists of the signers' sufferings often exaggerate or invent misfortunes; we stay with documented facts. Many of the signers, especially in the South, held people in slavery even as they subscribed to the words "all men are created equal." That contradiction belongs in the story, not outside it.
Read the Declaration itself in The Founding Documents, which also includes the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett
New Hampshire physician and signer who later served as the state's chief justice and governor.
William Whipple
New Hampshire merchant and signer who later served as a brigadier general in the Saratoga campaign.
Matthew Thornton
Irish-born New Hampshire physician who took his seat in Congress late in 1776 and still signed the Declaration.
Massachusetts
John Hancock
President of the Continental Congress whose large signature on the Declaration became the most famous on the document.
Samuel Adams
Boston patriot and Congregationalist organizer who steered Massachusetts toward independence and signed the Declaration.
John Adams
Leader of the independence debate in Congress and later the second President.
Robert Treat Paine
Massachusetts lawyer who signed the Declaration and later served as the state's attorney general and a justice of its supreme court.
Elbridge Gerry
Massachusetts signer who later refused to sign the Constitution without a bill of rights and died as vice president.
Rhode Island
Stephen Hopkins
Longtime Rhode Island governor, the second-oldest signer, whose hand shook as he wrote his name on the Declaration.
William Ellery
Rhode Island lawyer and merchant who signed the Declaration and later served as a customs collector in Newport.
Connecticut
Roger Sherman
Connecticut shoemaker-turned-lawyer who signed the Declaration and the Constitution and served on the committee that drafted the Declaration.
Samuel Huntington
Connecticut lawyer who signed the Declaration and later served as president of Congress and governor of his state.
William Williams
Connecticut merchant who signed the Declaration after taking his seat in Congress in the summer of 1776.
Oliver Wolcott
Connecticut lawyer and militia commander who signed the Declaration and later became governor of the state.
New York
William Floyd
Long Island landowner who signed the Declaration; his family fled when the British occupied his estate.
Philip Livingston
New York merchant and philanthropist who signed the Declaration and died the next year while Congress sat at York, Pennsylvania.
Francis Lewis
Welsh-born New York merchant who signed the Declaration; the British destroyed his home and imprisoned his wife.
Lewis Morris
Lord of the manor of Morrisania who signed the Declaration; his Westchester estate was badly damaged in the war.
New Jersey
Richard Stockton
New Jersey lawyer who signed the Declaration, was captured by Loyalists, and died in broken health in 1781.
John Witherspoon
Scottish Presbyterian minister, president of the College of New Jersey, and the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration.
Francis Hopkinson
New Jersey lawyer, musician and satirist who signed the Declaration and later designed several early American emblems.
John Hart
Hunterdon County landowner and speaker of the New Jersey Assembly who signed the Declaration and was driven from his farm in 1776.
Abraham Clark
New Jersey surveyor and 'poor man's counselor' who signed the Declaration; two of his sons were captured while serving in the army.
Pennsylvania
Robert Morris
English-born Philadelphia merchant who signed the Declaration and the Constitution and later went to debtors' prison after failed land speculation.
Benjamin Rush
Philadelphia physician who signed the Declaration and wrote on medicine, education and the abolition of slavery.
Benjamin Franklin
Oldest signer of the Declaration; printer, scientist and diplomat who also signed the Constitution.
John Morton
Pennsylvania farmer whose vote helped carry his divided delegation for independence; he died the next year.
George Clymer
Philadelphia merchant who took his seat after 4 July, signed the Declaration, and later signed the Constitution.
James Smith of Pennsylvania
Irish-born York, Pennsylvania, lawyer who was added to the state delegation in 1776 and signed the Declaration.
George Taylor
Irish-born Pennsylvania ironmaster, once an indentured servant, who was appointed to Congress in 1776 and signed the Declaration.
James Wilson
Scottish-born legal thinker who signed the Declaration and the Constitution and became a justice of the Supreme Court.
George Ross
Pennsylvania lawyer appointed to Congress in 1776 who signed the Declaration and died three years later.
Delaware
Caesar Rodney
Delaware planter and militia leader who rode overnight to Philadelphia so that his state's delegation could vote for independence.
George Read
Delaware lawyer who voted against independence on 2 July, then signed the Declaration and later the Constitution.
Thomas McKean
Delaware delegate who voted for independence, signed later than most, and went on to be chief justice and governor of Pennsylvania.
Maryland
Samuel Chase
Maryland signer later named to the Supreme Court, impeached by his political opponents in 1805 and acquitted.
William Paca
Maryland lawyer and planter who signed the Declaration and later served as governor and as a federal judge.
Thomas Stone
Moderate Maryland lawyer who signed the Declaration, helped frame the Articles of Confederation, and died in 1787.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
The only Catholic signer of the Declaration, one of the richest men in the colonies, and the last of the fifty-six to die.
Virginia
George Wythe
Virginia lawyer and first American law professor, teacher of Jefferson, who signed the Declaration and later turned against slavery.
Richard Henry Lee
Virginia statesman who, on 7 June 1776, moved the resolution that the colonies 'are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.'
Thomas Jefferson
Principal author of the Declaration and third President of the United States.
Benjamin Harrison V
Virginia planter and speaker who signed the Declaration and later served as governor; father of a future president.
Thomas Nelson Jr.
Virginia signer who, as governor and militia commander, led troops at the siege of Yorktown and risked his own property there.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Quieter of the two Lee brothers in Congress, a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration and the Articles of Confederation.
Carter Braxton
Virginia planter who signed the Declaration; the war damaged his commercial ventures, and later stories often exaggerate his losses.
North Carolina
William Hooper
Boston-born North Carolina lawyer who was away for the July vote and returned to sign the Declaration in August.
Joseph Hewes
North Carolina merchant who signed the Declaration, helped fit out the early Continental navy, and died while still in Congress.
John Penn
Virginia-born North Carolina lawyer who signed the Declaration and the Articles of Confederation.
South Carolina
Edward Rutledge
Youngest signer of the Declaration, later a prisoner of war at St. Augustine and governor of South Carolina.
Thomas Heyward Jr.
South Carolina lawyer who signed the Declaration, was captured at Charleston, and later sat as a judge in his state.
Thomas Lynch Jr.
South Carolina signer, as young as Edward Rutledge, who was lost at sea about 1779 on a voyage to France.
Arthur Middleton
South Carolina planter who signed the Declaration, was imprisoned at St. Augustine after the fall of Charleston, and died in 1787.
Georgia
Button Gwinnett
English-born Georgia signer who died in May 1777 of wounds from a duel with Lachlan McIntosh.
Lyman Hall
Connecticut-born physician and former Congregationalist minister who represented Georgia in Congress and later served as governor.
George Walton
Virginia-born Georgia lawyer who signed the Declaration, was wounded and captured at Savannah, and later served as governor and chief justice.
Also in the library
The Founding Documents · The Federalist Papers · The Anti-Federalist Papers · The Articles of Confederation · The Virginia Declaration of Rights · George Washington · James Madison · George Mason · John Dickinson · Patrick Henry · Thomas Paine
Sources
Dates, occupations, birthplaces and death dates follow the National Archives signers factsheet, which draws on the American National Biography (1999) and Who Was Who in America: Historical Volume 1607–1896 (1963). Full citations are in docs/signers-sources.json. Dates that are uncertain are marked with c. (circa).