Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Born: July 28, 1746
Died: April 22, 1809
Colony/State: South Carolina
Occupation / Public Role: Lawyer, planter, legislator, military officer, judge, delegate to the Continental Congress
Contribution to the Founding Era: Delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, South Carolina militia officer, British prisoner of war during the Revolution, and later a judge in South Carolina.
Thomas Heyward, Jr. was born in St. Luke’s Parish, South Carolina and was educated at home before studying law at the Middle Temple in London. After returning to South Carolina, he entered legal practice and public life, joining the colony’s political leadership in the years before independence.
Before independence, Heyward became active in South Carolina’s revolutionary movement. He served in the commons house of assembly in 1772, was a delegate to the provincial convention in 1774, and served on the council of safety in 1775–1776. He was then chosen to replace Christopher Gadsden in the Continental Congress and became one of South Carolina’s four signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Heyward’s service to the Revolutionary cause was not limited to politics. The U.S. House and the Charleston Museum both note that he served in the South Carolina militia during the war. During the British campaign in the South, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war for about eleven months, first in Charleston and then in St. Augustine, Florida. The National Constitution Center notes that this imprisonment became one of the defining hardships of his wartime service.
After the Revolution, Heyward continued in public life in South Carolina. He served in the state house of representatives, later became a judge of the circuit court, and was a member of the South Carolina state constitutional convention of 1790. His career stretched well beyond the Declaration and into the task of helping govern the state after independence had been won.
Thomas Heyward, Jr. died in 1809 in South Carolina. He is not as famous today as Jefferson or Franklin, but he was one of South Carolina’s real working founders: lawyer, signer, soldier, prisoner, legislator, and judge. He was not just present for independence. He paid for it in captivity too.
Related Links
- Signers of the Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of Independence
- Thomas Lynch, Jr.
- Arthur Middleton
- Edward Rutledge