Fates of our founding fathers: Part one
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Give me Liberty
Rodger Williamson
With both Fathers Day this Sunday and Independence Day just over two weeks away, I have chosen to take a look at the lives, and misfortunes, of some of those who risked everything to declare our nation a union of states, united together, as free and independent from the mismanaged government of Great Britain.
As you read this, I ask that you take a moment and contemplate, what would you be willing to risk, if similar circumstances were to occur in our near future?
Dated July 4, 1776, the original, or first copy of the Declaration of Independence, probably only included the signature of John Hancock, as the president of the Continental Congress, when it was sent to the printers for publication. The copy that we all know today that includes the signatures of 56 delegates is known as the “engrossed” or “parchment” copy that was specified by a Congressional Resolution, passed on July 19, 1776, “to be signed by every member of Congress.”
According to signer Thomas McKean of Delaware, not all the signers were present on the date of adoption, and historians note that most of the delegates signed the Declaration on the second of August, in 1776, with some adding their names later.
In an 1811 letter to signer and now former President John Adams, Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania recounted the signing starkly, describing it as a scene of “pensive and awful silence.” Rush said the delegates were called up, one after another, and then filed forward somberly to subscribe to what each thought was their ensuing death warrant.
He related that the “gloom of the morning” was briefly interrupted when the rotund Benjamin Harrison of Virginia said to a diminutive Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, at the signing table, “I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes and be with the angels, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.” According to Rush, Harrison’s remark “procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity with which the whole business was conducted.”
If there was a “father figure” for our “founding fathers,” it was the oldest signer of our Declaration of Independence, the 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania (1706-1790). Franklin was the father of William Franklin, who was an illegitimate son of an unknown mother. The relationship between father and son would be irreparably split when William chose to remain loyal to Britain during the hostilities.
Benjamin Franklin established a common-law marriage with Deborah Read, and he fathered two children with her before her death in 1774. Their son, born in 1732, died from smallpox in 1736. Their daughter, Sarah “Sally” Franklin, was born in 1743 and lived on until 1808.
As a member of “the Committee of Five” that drafted the Declaration, Franklin made several “small but important” changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jefferson. Franklin, however, managed to do well for himself in the long run, so I will circle back around to him in a later follow-up to this piece.
What follows is a very brief biography of some of the signers, those who paid a higher price than the rest, for their commitment to the idea of liberty and freedom from a tyrannical government. I will begin with three of the youngest fathers, who as signers of the Declaration would all be esteemed as amongst our founding fathers. All three, as representatives of South Carolina, suffered intertwining fates at the hands of the British during the war.
Arthur Middleton (S.C.), 1742-1787, was 34 years old and the father of three children when he signed our Declaration of Independence, before he would father another six more. Middleton served in the defense of Charleston until it fell to the British in May of 1780. Middleton was arrested, along with South Carolina’s other Declaration signatories, Thomas Heyward and his brother-in-law Edward Rutledge.
They were held first aboard a guard ship in the Charleston Harbor, then transported to St. Augustine, Florida, where they remained until a prisoner exchange in July the following year. While a Prisoner of War, British troops ransacked Middleton’s plantation, beheading statues and looting artwork and furniture. Arthur’s wife, Mary, was forced to beg help from the British to care for her children during his imprisonment. With his health now broken from his mistreatment by the British, Middleton died in early 1787, at just age 44.
Edward Rutledge (S.C.), 1749-1800, was the youngest delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence at age 26. His wife, Henrietta Middleton, was a sister of Declaration signer Andrew Middleton. Together, Edward and Henrietta were the parents of a son born in 1775, and then later another son born in 1771, and a daughter born in 1785.
In November 1776, Rutledge returned to South Carolina, serving both in the General Assembly and as a captain of artillery in the South Carolina militia. Rutledge fought at the Battle of Beaufort in 1779, and in May 1780 was captured along with his other South Carolina co-signers of the Declaration, Thomas Heyward, and his brother-in-law Arthur Middleton.
Since the entire Rutledge family supported independence, the British also imprisoned his mother, Sarah Hext Rutledge, in Charleston. Rutledge, Middleton and Heyward were held for most of a year at St. Augustine, released during a prisoner exchange in July 1781. His wife, Henrietta, died in 1792, at age 41, and later that year Rutledge married 40-year-old Mary Shubrick Everleigh, the widow of Nicholas Eveleigh (a colonel, and later the deputy adjutant general for the Continental Army for South Carolina and Georgia during the Revolution, and the first comptroller of the U.S. Treasury from 1789 until his death in 1791).
Mary would live until 85 years of age in 1837, but she became a widow again in 1800 when her husband, Edward Rutledge, died at 50 years of age.
Thomas Heyward Jr. (S.C.), 1746-1809, was a 29-year-old father of just two children with his wife, Elizabeth Mathewes Heyward, when he signed the Declaration in 1776. Thomas would go on to father another seven children until his wife’s death in 1782.
Thomas remarried to Susanna Elizabeth Savage and fathered still another three children. After signing the Declaration of Independence, Heyward returned to South Carolina to join the militia and defend his state against the British. In 1779 he was wounded at the Battle of Port Royal Island, near Beaufort, South Carolina. A year later, he was a defender of the City of Charleston.
When the British captured the city in May 1780, Thomas was among those captured and was imprisoned in Saint Augustine, Florida (along with South Carolina’s other Declaration signatories Arthur Middleton and Edward Rutledge). While he was a Prisoner of War, the British raided his plantation, burning his home to the ground.
As he sailed aboard a British ship, being returned to Philadelphia, Heyward fell overboard and narrowly escaped drowning at sea by holding on to the rudder of the ship until he could be rescued by the ship’s crew. After the war, he continued to serve as a judge, retiring from the bench in 1798. Thomas Heyward died in 1809 at age 62.
In total, there were 56 signers to our Declaration. I may or may not get to them all, but I already have the bios of many others written and ready for “part two” in next week’s edition of “The Coosa County News.”
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