The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:
When Virginia’s Third Revolutionary Convention elected delegates to the Second Continental Congress in the summer of 1775, it wasn’t clear that independence was the path.
The convention met July 17 to Aug. 26, 1775, in Henrico Parish Church (renamed St. John’s Episcopal in the 19th century). To represent Virginia in Congress, the convention elected Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson Jr., Richard Bland and George Wythe. Bland declined on account of his “advanced age,” and Francis Lightfoot Lee was elected to replace him. Peyton Randolph died in Philadelphia on Oct. 22, 1775, while attending Congress; on Dec. 15, 1775, the Virginia Convention elected Carter Braxton to take his place.
By the late spring of 1776, most in Congress came around to acknowledging the obvious: the Colonies were already on their own. It fell to Richard Henry Lee, acting on instructions from the Virginia Convention, to introduce a resolution on June 7 declaring the Colonies free and independent states.
The Declaration of Independence, basically the work of Jefferson but with edits by Ben Franklin and other members of Congress, was adopted on July 4 by 12 of the 13 Colonies. New York approved it on July 9. Congress then ordered the preparation of an engrossed copy. Engrossing, according to the National Archives, is “the process of preparing an official document in a large, clear hand” using pen and ink. The engrosser, probably Timothy Matlack of Pennsylvania, copied Jefferson’s amended draft onto a piece of parchment — animal skin —measuring 24.25 by 29.75 inches.
On Aug. 2, Matlack’s work was placed on a table in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House (later renamed Independence Hall). Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania recalled a “pensive and awful silence” as the delegates were invited to sign with a goose-quill pen. John Hancock, president of Congress, was first to affix his bold signature.
The seven Virginia signatures appear at the bottom center. George Wythe, Jefferson’s mentor, wasn’t in Philadelphia on Aug. 2; he had been called back to Williamsburg. The other Virginians left the top space for him. He signed in late August. Richard Henry Lee signed in September. The bottom signature belongs to reluctant revolutionary Carter Braxton, the last Virginia delegate to be elected.
Eventually 56 men signed. They knew full well they were committing treason against Great Britain. In the event, none were hanged, but several were captured and held as POWs. Richard Stockton of New Jersey, caught by Loyalists in late 1776 and turned over to the British, endured a month in prison under harsh conditions. None of the Virginians suffered that indignity, although Thomas Jefferson narrowly escaped capture by Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton (see our story on Jack Jouett’s ride).
Jefferson is well known, and Cardinal News has published profiles of George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee and Benjamin Harrison. Here’s a look at three of the lesser-known Virginia signers.
Thomas Nelson Jr.
In the mid-19th century, Virginians decided to erect a monument in Richmond to the foremost son of the Old Dominion. Ringed around George Washington, on a lower tier, stand six Revolutionary heroes: Andrew Lewis, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and Thomas Nelson Jr. They serve as a kind of honor guard for the father of his country.
Thomas Nelson’s grandfather, “Scotch Tom” Nelson, settled at Yorktown in 1705. In the early 18th century, it was possible for white male immigrants, with luck and pluck, to amass dazzling fortunes. After only nine years in Virginia, Scotch Tom, son of a cloth merchant, was investing in a trading company with Gov. Alexander Spotswood and other aristocrats. Scotch Tom shipped and sold goods, accrued large land holdings, enslaved people, dealt in tobacco and married his offspring into other prominent families.
Thomas Nelson, the signer, was born in Yorktown in 1738. After an education in England, he began his Colonial career. As ancient Roman aristocrats followed a cursus honorum, a series of prescribed steps toward social and political eminence, so did the elite young males of Virginia’s Golden Age — golden for them, certainly not for the enslaved — ascend a well-marked ladder toward power and recognition. Thanks to his father’s connections, Nelson was appointed justice of the peace and colonel of the county militia, and was elected to the House of Burgesses.
Nelson had time and taste for pursuits other than politics. He fell in love with Lucy Grymes, the Colony’s “greatest Belle,” beautiful and talented. She was an “elegant dancer” and took harpsichord lessons from Peter Pelham at Bruton Parish Church. Her father served on the Governor’s Council. Their wedding on July 29, 1762, was a major event in Williamsburg. Together they stocked the First Families’ gene pool with 11 offspring.
Good-natured and generous, Thomas Nelson enjoyed family life. He was fond of food, wine and the pipe, but also loved outdoor pursuits like fox-hunting. In a backhanded compliment, John Adams described him as “alert and lively, for his Weight.”
The tobacco-scented idyll of the Virginia nobility was nearing its end. In 1774, the Virginia Revolutionary Convention enacted a boycott on British imports. As chairman of the York County committee to enforce the boycott, Nelson threw two half-chests of tea into the York River, even though the embargo was hurting his business. In spring 1776, he played a key part in the vote instructing Virginia’s Congressional delegates to propose severing ties with the mother country.
With fighting underway, he was appointed brigadier general of the state militia, with duties that included soliciting money from his wealthy peers. He pledged to repay the loans personally if the state should default.
In June 1781, the General Assembly elected him governor. He commanded the state militia at the Battle of Yorktown, acting as Lafayette’s reserve. According to legend, he urged Gen. Washington to fire on his own home, the Nelson House, which Cornwallis was using as headquarters.
On Nov. 20, 1781, Nelson resigned as governor, citing ill health. He was plagued by physical complaints likely psychosomatic in nature. Exactly how much he lost in the war is hard to quantify, but he paid for his country’s freedom with his fortune and his health.
He was also an enslaver on a massive scale and in 1788, due to mounting debts, sold off 120 enslaved people in Prince William County.
On Jan. 4, 1789, Nelson died at one of his plantations in Hanover County, probably from asthma compounded by stress and depression. His doctor wrote that from his “patriotick exertions during the late war he had exhausted a fortune … I attended him in his last illness and saw that the exquisite tortures of the mind were the disease that destroyed his body.”
Posthumously, Nelson lost the college that was named for him when Thomas Nelson Community College was renamed Virginia Peninsula Community College in 2022.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Well-born Englishmen of the 18th century considered it their duty to serve in government, a model followed by Virginians.
Francis Lightfoot Lee was born in 1734 at Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County. If he did not exit the womb with a silver spoon in his mouth, one was probably inserted forthwith. Stratford Hall was the home or birthplace of Burgesses, governors, members of Virginia’s revolutionary conventions and members of the Continental Congress, including Francis Lightfoot and Richard Henry Lee, the only brothers to sign the Declaration. The post-Revolutionary generation at Stratford produced Robert E. Lee.
Francis “Frank” Lee inherited land in Loudoun County and represented Loudoun in the House of Burgesses, where his numerous brothers and cousins formed a sort of Lee cabal. In 1769, he married 16-year-old Rebecca Tayloe, another Northern Neck blueblood, from Mount Airy in Richmond County. Lee was 35. The newlyweds built a mansion they called Menokin in Richmond County.
Lee stayed in the Burgesses, now representing Richmond. Dunmore’s offer of freedom for the enslaved persons of “rebels” pushed Lee, as it did many elite Virginians, into the independence camp.
Aristocrats don’t usually fly the flag of revolution — see the Bolshevik example — but the Virginia plantation masters, habituated to autocratic rule over their miniature kingdoms, chafed at submission to authorities an ocean away.
Frank Lee had the fortitude to sign his potential death warrant in 1776, but by 1779 could no longer stomach the rough-and-tumble of Congress. He remained in the Virginia Senate until 1782. With independence secured, he withdrew to Menokin, contented with the privileged life of the gentleman farmer. Like other leading Virginians, he depended on the forced labor of enslaved people to maintain his wealth and position.
Frank and Rebecca Lee never had children but raised two nieces. Frank’s brothers Arthur, Richard Henry and William went to the grave in 1792, 1794 and 1795. Frank and Rebecca followed in 1797, dying within 10 days of each other. Aristocrats from birth, Frank and Rebecca remain aristocrats in death, resting in a family plot at Mount Airy, the most architecturally sophisticated of Virginia’s surviving Colonial mansions.
Menokin was allowed to fall into ruin in the 20th century. Today its remains are protected with an open, roofed structure. The Menokin Foundation’s visitor center interprets the story of the Lees as well as that of the enslaved people who labored there until 1865.
Carter Braxton
Braxton was born in 1736 in King and Queen County. The thread of life was fragile in the 18th century, and his mother, Mary, a daughter of “King” Carter, died a week after Braxton’s birth.
In 1755, while a student at William and Mary, Braxton married Judith Robinson, niece of John Robinson, speaker of the House of Burgesses. Two years later, Judith died giving birth.
Perhaps as a distraction from grief, Braxton traveled in Europe for two years. In 1760, he married Elizabeth Corbin, daughter of Richard Corbin, a member of the Governor’s Council. They had 16 children. All of these Braxtons lived at Chericoke plantation in King William County and then, after that house burned, in West Point.
Carter Braxton filled the roles typical of his class: landowner, planter, vestryman, sheriff, justice of the peace, burgess. He enslaved about 165 people in the 1770s.
Politically, Braxton was a moderate. In 1775, Lord Dunmore seized the Colony’s gunpowder, enraging Patrick Henry and a group of militiamen. Braxton helped de-escalate the crisis, arranging for his father-in-law, the deputy collector of royal revenue, to pay for the seized powder.
From February 1776, Braxton served in Continental Congress. That spring he published a pamphlet rebutting what he considered the excessively democratic ideas of John Adams. In “Thoughts on Government,” Adams says a representative assembly “should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.” Braxton countered that “disinterested attachment to the publick good … never characterized the mass of the people in any state.” To Patrick Henry, this was evidence of “too great a bias to Aristocracy.”
Braxton’s pamphlet, together with rumors that his wife and father-in-law were Loyalists, rankled Patrick Henry and the Lees, and the Virginia Convention acted to remove him from the Congressional delegation. His term didn’t expire until Aug. 11, however, and his signature on the Declaration proves that it was possible for men to agree on ending British rule, yet differ on the government to replace it. A man could be a revolutionary and still wish to preserve the social order.
The reluctant revolutionary returned to Virginia, where he sat in the House of Delegates. Making peace with Patrick Henry, he served on the Council of State, the governor’s advisory board, while Henry was governor in 1786.
When Braxton died in 1797, the obituary failed to mention that he had signed the Declaration of Independence. Contemporary records don’t say where he was buried. If at Chericoke, the marker has been lost. What secures his memory is a fading name on a fragile document that is far more enduring than any stone in a graveyard.
