Post by Historical Society of the New York Courts

New York’s four signers of the Declaration of Independence did not sign it with the rest of Congress on July 4. Their delegation abstained from the vote that day because the instructions they carried from the Provincial Congress said nothing about independence. New York ratified the Declaration on July 9, and the delegation added its signatures when the engrossed copy was signed on August 2. Philip Livingston was the wealthiest of the four, a Manhattan merchant from the Hudson River Livingston family who had opposed independence as recently as that summer. He helped found King’s College, the New York Society Library, and New York Hospital. He died in 1778 while still serving in Congress, before the war he had reluctantly joined was decided. Francis Lewis was born in Wales and orphaned by age five. He built a mercantile fortune trading out of New York and Philadelphia, was taken prisoner during the French and Indian War and held in France, and returned to New York to rebuild his business. During the Revolution, the British destroyed his Long Island estate and captured his wife. She died in 1779 from the conditions of her captivity. Lewis Morris owned Morrisania, a large family estate in what is now the Bronx. He had served as a judge of the Admiralty Court and sat in New York’s Colonial Assembly before the war. His half-brother Gouverneur Morris would later help draft the federal Constitution. Lewis Morris reportedly signed the Declaration by saying, “Damn the consequences, give me the pen.” William Floyd, from Brookhaven on Long Island, inherited his family’s farm as a teenager after both parents died within months of each other. He was not a prominent voice in floor debates and generally deferred to the rest of the delegation. The British seized his estate shortly after the Declaration was signed and used it as a military staging ground for the remainder of the war. #DeclarationOfIndependence #FoundingFathers #America250 #HSoftheNYCourts #NYSCourts #NYSJudges #NYSLawyers #NYSHistory #NYCHistory #NYHistory #NYLegalHistory #LegalHistory #AmericanHistory #History