Thomas Stone

Thomas Stone was born about 1743 in Charles County, Maryland, studied law, and practiced in Annapolis and at his plantation, Haberdeventure. He was a moderate who hoped, longer than some of his colleagues, that the quarrel with Britain might be settled short of a final break. In the Continental Congress he nevertheless voted for independence and signed the Declaration, and he worked on the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation. He later served in the Maryland Senate. When his wife, Margaret, fell gravely ill, he declined to attend the Constitutional Convention of 1787; she died, and Stone himself died a few months later, in October 1787, at the age of about forty-four. He was a planter who held people in slavery. His short public life is that of a cautious man who, when the choice came, put his name on the document and then went home to duties he would not lay aside.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Samuel Chase · William Paca · Charles Carroll of Carrollton