William Whipple

William Whipple was born in 1730 in Kittery, in what is now Maine, and went to sea as a young man, commanding ships in the Atlantic trade before settling as a merchant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He sat in the provincial congress and was sent to the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1777 he left Congress to serve as a brigadier general of New Hampshire militia in the campaign that ended with the British surrender at Saratoga, one of the turning points of the war. After the Revolution he became a judge of the state superior court. Like many merchants of his time, Whipple had been involved in the slave trade as a ship captain; later he freed an enslaved man in his household named Prince. He died in Portsmouth in 1785.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Josiah Bartlett · Matthew Thornton