Thomas Nelson Jr.

Thomas Nelson Jr. was born in 1738 in Yorktown, Virginia, educated in England, and became a merchant and planter in a family long established at the mouth of the York River. He sat in the House of Burgesses, carried Virginia's instructions for independence to Congress in 1776, and signed the Declaration. During the war he raised militia, pledged his own credit to borrow money for the cause, and in 1781, as governor, commanded Virginia troops at the siege of Yorktown. British officers occupied a Nelson family house in the town; early accounts say he urged that the American artillery not spare it. Details of that story vary, and there was more than one Nelson house in Yorktown, but his willingness to put the victory above his own property is well attested in early tradition. The war left him financially strained. He held people in slavery, as did the other great York County planters. He died in 1789, worn out in his early fifties.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · George Wythe · Thomas Jefferson · Benjamin Harrison V · Carter Braxton · George Washington