Thomas Heyward Jr.

Thomas Heyward Jr. was born in 1746 in St. Helena Parish, South Carolina, studied law in England, and returned to practice in Charleston. He sat in the provincial congress and in the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence and later the Articles of Confederation. In 1780 he was taken prisoner at the surrender of Charleston and was held at St. Augustine with Edward Rutledge and Arthur Middleton. During the war his plantation was raided and property was lost. After his release he became an associate justice of the South Carolina courts and eventually retired to his plantation. Heyward was a planter who held people in slavery. He died in 1809. Together with Rutledge and Middleton, he is a reminder that for some Southern signers the cost of independence was not only political opposition but capture, imprisonment, and damage to their homes.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Edward Rutledge · Thomas Lynch Jr. · Arthur Middleton