Summary
The Georgia Assembly appointed George Walton as one of its Continental Congress delegates. British forces took Walton prisoner after seizing Savannah; he was later freed.
George Walton | Signer of the Declaration of Independence
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Biography
George Walton was born near Farmville, Virginia, but the exact year of his birth is unknown. He was unusual among the signers of the Declaration of Independence in that his parents were poor. Both had died by the time he was twelve, and he was apprenticed at an early age to a carpenter. His master was a man with limited education who worked Walton hard, and he would not even provide the boy with a candle so that he could read at night. But Walton was determined to provide himself what education he could from books.
In 1769, Walton moved to Georgia where he pursued the study of the law with a Savannah barrister. In 1774, at the age of 33, he was admitted to the bar and began his own practice of law.
As the country moved closer to revolution, Walton, like Button Gwinnett and Lyman Hall, found Georgia to be dragging its feet about independence. It sent no delegates to the First Continental Congress and was the only colony not represented at those Philadelphia meetings. But Walton had clearly committed himself to independence, serving as the President of the colony’s Council of Safety. Finally, in 1776, the Georgia Assembly appointed delegates to the Second Continental Congress. One was the former carpenter’s apprentice, George Walton. He, Gwinnett, and Hall signed the Declaration of Independence.
In 1778, with the war well underway, Walton received a colonel’s commission in the militia. Walton joined the defense of Savannah when the British moved to seize the city, and, during the fighting, he was wounded in the thigh. He fell from his horse, and, when the enemy took the city, they made him a prisoner of war. He was finally freed in an exchange of prisoners in September 1779. Soon after his release, he was elected Governor of Georgia but held the office for only two months, preferring to return to Congress in 1780.
Walton became involved in a bitter struggle for political dominance between Lachlan McIntosh and Button Gwinnett. He allied himself with McIntosh, and Walton was frequently a casualty of this struggle. He was driven out of office on several occasions and indicted for alleged criminal activities on others.
Walton was in Philadelphia in 1783 when he learned he was censured by the Georgia legislature for his involvement in the duel between McIntosh and Gwinnett that ended in Gwinnett’s death. Despite this, he was appointed Chief Justice of the state and, in 1789, was again elected Governor. In 1795, he was sent to the U.S. Senate but retired from politics the following year when he was not reelected. Although he continued his judicial duties, he did not run for or accept any further office. Instead, he took up farming.
He returned to Georgia, moving to Augusta after it became the new state capital, and devoted himself to civic improvement projects, particularly focused on education. He died on February 2, 1804, leaving behind a widow, Dorothy Camber Walton, and one son.
