The Four Maryland Signers of the Declaration of Independence

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." so begins the Declaration of Independence, signed by 56 delegates to the Continental Congress. Four of the signers were from Maryland:

• William Paca was 35 and a Harford County lawyer at the time he was appointed to the Continental Congress. He eventually became a judge and later governor of the state of Maryland.
• Thomas Stone was 32 and a lawyer from Charles County when he signed the Declaration. He later served a term in Congress. His wife died in 1787 and it is said that Stone never recovered from the grief. He died at 44 years old in Alexandria, Virginia while awaiting a ship to take him to England.
• Samuel Chase was 35 and a lawyer from Somerset County. He later became the Chief Justice of the Criminal Court in Maryland and then was selected as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States.
• Charles Carroll was 39 and a lawyer from Annapolis. He had a long career, helping to form the Maryland government when he returned from the Continental Congress. He later served in the Maryland legislature and the U.S. Congress. Carroll was the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. He was the last survivor of the signers. He died in 1832 at the age of 95.

The signers of the Declaration had much to lose. As landowners and businessmen, they risked having their property and estates confiscated. Of course they also risked being killed for treason.

Some 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, Carroll said that the liberties secured by the document and enjoyed by the new generation of Americans were "the best earthly inheritance their ancestors could bequeath to them."

"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor," the Declaration of Independence ends before the signers affirm their support by boldly signing their names.

• New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
• Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
• Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
• Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
• New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
• New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
• Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
• Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
• Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
• Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
• North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
• South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
• Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Read the whole Declaration of Independence here.