THE SIGNERS

Two hundred and fifty years ago this summer, in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress gathered inside the Pennsylvania State House, today known as Independence Hall, on a mission to make history. On July 4, 1776, seeking to sever England’s longstanding control of the American colonies, Congress adopted the language contained in a radical document of self-determination. The Declaration of Independence would be engrossed on parchment paper, to be signed four weeks later, on August 2, by fifty-six members of Congress. Six signers had ties to Bucks, Hunterdon, and Mercer counties. Here, in brief, are their stories.

Talk about a classic American: Immigrant, laborer, militia member, industrialist, and public servant. Taylor came over from Northern Ireland in 1736 as an indentured servant, working at a forge near Philadelphia. When the boss died, Taylor married his widow. In 1753, Taylor leased the Durham Furnace in Bucks County, which would provide munitions for the American army during the revolution (even though it was owned by a prominent Loyalist, Joseph Galloway). Along the way, he served as a militia captain, a justice of the peace, and representative to the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly.

At first, Taylor leaned against independence, helping to draft instructions to Pennsylvania’s delegates to the Continental Congress in 1775 urging them to “utterly reject” splitting “from our mother country.” But he was flexible: After Pennsylvania’s delegation voted 3-2 for independence on July 2, 1776, Taylor and four other Pennsylvanians were sent to Philadelphia as a united group. Though he wasn’t there for the debate or the vote, Taylor got to sign the Declaration of Independence on August 2. He was among the eight signers, out of fifty-six, who were not born in the colonies.

Taylor’s summer home, in Catasauqua, in Lehigh County, is a National Historic Landmark not far from the Lehigh River. The George Taylor Trail includes the Bachmann Publick House in Easton, which Taylor owned, the Durham Historical Society, where you can see the site of the old Durham Furnace, and Easton Cemetery, where his remains were reburied in the nineteenth century.

Morris and Clymer were successful Philadelphia businessmen before the revolution and members of the Continental Congress. At different times after the war, both lived at the Summerseat estate in Morrisville: Morris (the borough’s namesake) from 1791 to 1798, Clymer from 1806 until his death in 1813.

Morris, known as the “financier of the revolution,” was one of the richest men in the country before the war, but went deeply in debt late in life. He was politically moderate and abstained from the vote for independence, creating a majority in the Pennsylvania delegation favoring the split. He was invited back to sign the Declaration. “I think it is the duty of a good citizen,” he said, “to follow when he cannot lead.”

Clymer, an orphan raised by an aunt and uncle who willed him his trading firm, bristled at British tax policies and became an ardent Patriot. He also served in the Pennsylvania legislature in the 1780s and in the first U.S. Congress, from 1789 to 1791.

Raised in Hopewell Township, “Honest John” Hart cut a dashing figure as a young man, long-haired and handsome, and by the 1770s owned more land (plus a mill) than anyone in Hopewell. (He also owned four slaves.) He and his wife, Deborah, had thirteen children. His political career took him from the Hunterdon County Board of Chosen Freeholders to the New Jersey Colonial Assembly and then the Second Continental Congress.

The New Jersey delegation to the First Congress favored diplomacy over independence, so another delegation including Hart was sent in 1776. Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia physician and signer, called Hart “a plain, honest, well-meaning Jersey farmer, with but little education, but with good sense and virtue enough to pursue the interests of his country.”

The John Hart Homestead, much enlarged after Hart’s death in 1884, still stands on Hart Avenue in Hopewell, though today it’s a private residence. There’s a plaque in Hart’s honor. He and Deborah are buried in Hopewell Old School Baptist Meeting House at Broad and Mercer streets.

Richard Stockton and The Reverend John Witherspoon A couple of brilliant and accomplished residents of Princeton were prominent signers. Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, arrived from Scotland in 1768 to become the sixth president of the College of New Jersey, today known as Princeton University. (Among his students were Aaron Burr and James Madison.)

Stockton was born in Princeton, graduated in the college’s first class in 1748, and became a respected lawyer. He had tipped from compromiser to rebel by 1776, when he and Witherspoon arrived in Philadelphia, belatedly, on July 1. He made John Adams repeat his crucial speech that they’d just missed. It worked; Stockton voted for independence.

Witherspoon was the only active clergyman among the signers. He was ready for independence when elected to the Second Continental Congress earlier in 1776, saying the country was “in danger of rotting for the want of it.” In 2001 a statue of Witherspoon was erected on the Princeton campus. Twenty-three years later, efforts to remove it because he had owned slaves failed. His home, Tusculum, on Cherry Hill Road, is a private residence.

In late September 1776, Stockton went on a congressional trip to New York to inspect conditions at Fort Ticonderoga. He was captured and held for five weeks. He returned to Princeton to find the British had ransacked his home. He died of cancer in 1781. Stockton and his wife, the poet Annis Boudinot Stockton, lived with their six children in a home that Annis had christened Morven, after the mythical Gaelic kingdom in James MacPherson’s The Poems of Ossian. Like the Witherspoons, the Stocktons also owned slaves.

Starting in 1945 and for nearly four decades, their home, at 55 Stockton Street, became the official residence of the New Jersey governor. (See our story about Morven in the Summer 2024 issue of River Towns.) Today it’s the acclaimed Morven Museum & Garden, which has mounted a special exhibition, “Five Independent Souls,” about Witherspoon, Stockton, Hart, plus Francis Hopkinson and Abraham Clark—all of New Jersey’s signers. “Five Independent Souls” will be on view through January 17, 2027.