Americans blessed with a good high school education in the history of their country can call to mind the famous signers of the Declaration of Independence. At a minimum, everyone remembers John Hancock for his sprawling signature, Ben Franklin for his wisdom and age, and the young Thomas Jefferson for the famous words “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Lesser known are Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon, Pennsylvania’s Thomas McKean, and New York merchant Francis Lewis. All paid for the promise they had made in the Declaration’s final sentence “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Lewis’s home in Queens was burned to the ground by the British, McKean along with his family “was hunted like a fox,” and Witherspoon lost both a son and his house to the war.
