George Walton, Georgia

1741-1804

Representing Georgia at the Continental Congress

George Walton was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1741. His parents died soon after, and he was adopted by an Uncle who apprenticed him as a carpenter. Little else is know about his early years. He appeared again in 1769 when he moved to Savannah and began to study Law. He was admitted to the Bar in 1774. Deeply involved with the patriot movement in Georgia, he would ultimately serve an important role in the development of the state.

At the formation of the Georgia provincial Congress, Walton was elected Secretary, and made President of the Council of Safety. In 1776 he was elected to the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. He spent many of the following years engaged in the defense of his state, and in a messy political battle with Button Gwinnett, another signer from Georgia. In 1778 Walton was commissioned a Colonel of the First Regiment of the Georgia Militia. He was injured in Battle and taken prisoner. He gained his freedom in 1779 through a prisoner exchange and was soon after elected Governor of Georgia, an office he held for only two months. Political conflict colored all of Walton's career. He was allied with General Lachlan McIntosh in a fierce struggle against Gwinnett for political dominance of the state. Walton was dispatched from office on several occasions, indicted for alleged criminal activities on others, in an interminable battle between two factions of the patriot movement in Georgia.

He was returned to congress in 1780 and stayed through 1781. He remained in Philadelphia until 1783. That year he was censured by the legislature for his involvement in a duel which led to the death Gwinnett by the hand of his rival, commissioned to treat with the Cherokee nation in Tennessee, and appointed Chief Justice of his state. In 1789 he served in the college of Electors and again elected Governor. The government was reorganized under an new constitution in November of that year, at which time Walton stepped down. He was immediately appointed a superior court judge. In 1795 he was sent to fill an unfulfilled term in the US Senate. He was not reelected. He then retired to farming. He died in Augusta in 1804 at the age of 64.

From: US History.org

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Like signers Button Gwinnett and Lyman Hall a nonnative of Georgia, George Walton fought hard to win independence for his adopted State and his Nation—both in the political arena and on the battlefield. He was wounded in the British siege of Savannah late in 1778 and endured captivity for almost a year. He evinced the same kind of tenacity in all his other endeavors and conquered a string of adversities in his ascent from humble origins to the highest National and State offices.

Born sometime in the 1740's near Farmville, Va., Walton was orphaned early and reared by an uncle, who apprenticed him to a carpenter. Walton supplemented extensive independent study with some formal schooling. In 1769 he moved to Savannah, Ga., read law under a local attorney, and 5 years later joined the bar.

That same year, Walton plunged into politics. Rallying Revolutionaries at Savannah as did Lyman Hall in St. John's Parish—the two Whig hotbeds in a lukewarm colony—Walton helped organize and played a key part in meetings at Savannah in July and August 1774 and the first provincial congress the next January. But these meetings, to which only a few parishes sent representatives, hardly set the dissent in motion. The divided delegates, aware of their limited constituency, failed to send Delegates to the Continental Congress, as had all the other Colonies, and thus alienated St. John's Parish. Except for creation of a committee of correspondence, to which Walton was appointed, the conferees for the most part substituted patriotic talk for action. During this period, Walton, blending political activism with romance, took a bride. She later gave birth to two sons.

By July 1775, when the second provincial congress convened and designated Walton as secretary, apathy in the Revolutionary ranks had given way to aggressiveness. The congress dispatched four Delegates to the Continental Congress to join Hall, already an unofficial "delegate" from St. John's Parish. The next year, the third provincial congress elected Walton, by this time chairman of the council of safety, as a Delegate (1776-81). In this capacity, he sat on committees dealing with western lands, national finance, and Indian affairs. His only lapse in attendance occurred in 1778-79, when the military defense of his own State took precedence over his congressional obligations. As a colonel in the Georgia militia, he was wounded and captured during the siege of Savannah in November-December 1778—the beginning of the British invasion of the South. He was imprisoned until the following September, when he was exchanged for a navy captain.

Right after his release, at Augusta Walton became involved in a factional dispute between two groups of Revolutionaries. Walton's group, irritated because their conservative opponents had taken advantage of the confusion generated by the British occupation of Savannah by putting their own "governor" into office without benefit of a general election, countered by selecting Walton as its "governor" (November 1779-January 1780). In January the new legally elected legislature picked a Governor, another anti-conservative. Walton returned to the Continental Congress in 1780-81, after which he headed back to Georgia.

Walton's subsequent career suffered no diminution. His offices included those of chief justice (1783-89) and justice (1790-95 and 1799-1804) of the State Superior Court; delegate to the State constitutional convention (1788); presidential elector (1789); Governor (1789-90); and U.S. Senator (1795-96), filling out an unexpired term. Meantime, he had been elected as a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention (1787), but did not attend. An advocate of higher education, he was also a trustee and founder of Richmond Academy, in Augusta, and Franklin College (later the University of Georgia), in Athens.

About 1790 while Governor, changing his residence from Savannah to the capital of Augusta, Walton built "Meadow Garden" cottage on the northern edge of the city on confiscated Loyalist lands he had acquired. He lived in the cottage for 5 years, when he moved to College Hill, a country estate he erected on the western outskirts. He died there in 1804. Assigned first to the Rosney Cemetery in Augusta, his remains now rest at the Signers' Monument in that city.

From: National Park Service