239th Anniversary of American Independence

Today is an American holiday. We celebrate today as the birth of our country. Today is not the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, or even when the Continental Congress began meeting to discuss our breaking free from England. Today is merely the day Continental Congress finalized the wording of the Declaration as shown by the date printed on the final copy. Even still, this is the day we celebrate America's birthday.

Continuing with my recent posts about what is considered acceptable service with the DAR, Signers of the Declaration of Independence are all accepted Patriots of the Daughters of the American Revolution. They are:

From Connecticut:

• Samuel Huntington
• Roger Sherman
• William Williams
• Oliver Wolcott

From Delaware:

• Thomas McKean
• George Read
• Caesar Rodney

From Georgia:

• Button Gwinnett 
• Lyman Hall 
• George Walton

From Maryland:

• Charles Carroll
• Samuel Chase
• William Paca
• Thomas Stone

From Massachusetts:

• John Adams
• Samuel Adams
• Elbridge Gerry
• John Hancock
• Robert Treat Paine

From New Hampshire:

• Josiah Bartlett
• Matthew Thornton
• William Whipple

From New Jersey:

• Abraham Clark
• John Hart
• Francis Hopkinson
• Richard Stockton
• John Witherspoon

From New York:

• William Floyd
• Francis Lewis
• Philip Livingston
• Lewis Morris

From North Carolina:

• Joseph Hewes
• William Hooper
• John Penn

From Pennsylvania:

• George Clymer
• Benjamin Franklin
• Robert Morris
• John Morton
• George Ross
• Benjamin Rush
• James Smith
• George Taylor
• James Wilson

From Rhode Island:

• William Ellery
• Stephen Hopkins

From South Carolina:

• Thomas Heyward, Jr.
• Thomas Lynch, Jr.
• Arthur Middleton
• Edward Rutledge

From Virginia:

• Carter Braxton
• Benjamin Harrison
• Thomas Jefferson
• Francis Lightfoot Lee
• Richard Henry Lee
• Thomas Nelson, Jr.
• George Wythe

I have not followed out the lines of most of these families. I do know at least some of them do still have living descendants. (One of Benjamin Franklin descendants came to a recent DAR Chapter Meeting of mine to teach us about the life of his ancestor.)

The DAR tags a few of them as having no living descendants, and as you can tell from the list above, not all of the signers appear in the DAR database. While it is possible some of the unlinked signers had descendants, I would imagine the likelihood of that would be extremely low given the fact that women have had 125 years to declare their lineage in the society.

While no DAR Patriot is "better" or "worse" than another, or more or less "worthy" because of the type of service he or she did, I have to say signing the Declaration of Independence has to be one of the "coolest" forms of service!

Sources:

• Constitution Facts: The Story of the Fourth of July
• The Declaration of Independence (as viewed on archives.gov)