Meeting Notes: July 16, 2025

The July meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond was held on July 16, 2025, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.

The evening’s presentation was made by Jennifer Epstein Rudnick, author of Search for the Signers: Visiting the Graves of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, published by ‎ Mascot Books, 2021. Jennifer knew she wanted a career in history after being inspired by her fifth-grade teacher. She grew up in northwestern Connecticut and earned a Bachelor of Arts from Gettysburg College. She has worked for the National Park Service at several sites, for more than 20 years and has been on the National Mall in Washington, DC, hoping to inspire the next generation of historians like her teacher did for her.

What started out as an interest when she saw the musical 1776 soon became an obsession. During a road trip with friends to Boston, in a cemetery which had three Declaration signers’ graves, a project was conceived of traveling to and photographing the graves of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. It seemed an easy task. As photos were taken and names checked off the list, But questions arose. Is this where the signer was first buried? Was he moved from an original burial spot? Why did that move happen? Is the actual grave location known? Along the quest, it turns out that a number of Declaration signers, prominent men in their colonies, are not interred in their original burial locations. Jennifer shared stories of lesser-known facts and fictions about her signer discoveries and how some signers are not really buried where their burial marker sits.

She spoke about the stories she heard of the signers and her adventures attempting to locate the actual resting sites and markers of signers. Thomas Jefferson’s original headstone was moved to Columbia, Missouri to protect it from chippers at Monticello. A nephew poisoned George Wythe which caused him to have a lingering death and Wythe had time to disinherit the nephew by revising his will before he died. Roger Sherman died in 1793 but was buried in a cemetery created in 1797. The difficulty in locating the cemetery in which Richard Henry Lee is buried required multiple sleuthing trips due to a confusing state highway marker. Francis Lightfoot Lee (one of the only pair of brothers to sign the Declaration of Independence) was given as another example of a signer’s reburial as he was originally buried at "Menokin," his home, but was subsequently moved to Tayloe Cemetery, on “Mount Airy” plantation near Warsaw, Richmond County, Virginia. Thomas Nelson, who served in the war, but died with no money and was buried in an unmarked grave near to his father out of fear his creditors might use his body as collateral for getting paid and a subsequently placed headstone had his dates of birth and death incorrect. And lastly, the legend that the remains of Ceasar Rodney did not lay in the Christ Episcopal Church Yard in Dover, Delaware because remains had been moved from his plantation property when, years later, midnight movers were not sure they had the right remains (perhaps those of a woman) and being told his remains may now be under what is Runway Seven of the Dover Air Force Base or a field of potatoes.

While signer William Ellery does not make it into the musical 1776, one of his actions does which is combined into the character of signer Stephen Hopkins. In the play’s final scene, signer John Hancock askes Hopkins to sit down to sign. Hopkins says no, that he wants to remember the face of each man gathered around, saying “I was determined to see how they all looked as they signed what might be their death warrant.”

John Adams wrote about signer Stephen Hopkins, “His Custom was to drink nothing all day nor till Eight O Clock, in the evening, and then his Beveredge was Jamaica Spirit and Water. It gave him Wit, Humour, Anecdotes, Science and Learning…He never drank to excess, but all he drank was immediately not only converted into Wit, Sense, Knowledge, and good humour, but inspired Us all with similar qualities.”

Most importantly, Mrs. Rudnick believes, as was stated at the memorial dedication for Matthew Thornton in 1892, “There may be danger that lapse of time and subsequent important events in the history of our nation may tend to obscure the glory of their achievements, and to diminish that due sense of gratitude that ought to exist in the hearts of all succeeding generations as long as our nation shall endure. Monuments and statues illustrate, emphasize, and keep in remembrance great facts and characters in history.”

The Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence is in the Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

 

 

Signers of the Declaration of Independence [56]

 

New Hampshire	New York	Pennsylvannia	North Carolina
BARTLETT, Josiah	FLOYD, William	CLYMER, George	HEWES, Joseph
THORNTON, Matthew	LEWIS, Francis	FRANKLIN, Benjamin	HOOPER, William
WHIPPLE, William	LIVINGSTON, Robert	MORRIS, Robert	PENN, John
	MORRIS, Lewis	MORTON, John
Massachusetts		ROSS, George	South Carolina
ADAMS, John	New Jersey	RUSH, Benjamin	HEYWARD JR, Thomas
ADAMS, Samuel	CLARK, Abraham	SMITH, James	LYNCH JR., Thomas
GERRY, Elbridge	HART, John	TAYLOR, George	MIDDLETON, Arthur
HANCOCK, John	HOPKINSON Francis	WILSON, James	RUTLEDGE, Edward
PAINE, Robert Treat	STOCKTON, Richard
	WITHERSPOON, John	Virginia	Georgia
Connecticut		BRAXTON, Carter	GWINNETT, Button
HUNTINGTON, Samuel	Maryland	HARRISON, Benjamin	HALL, Lyman
SHERMAN, Roger	CARROLL, Charles	JEFFERSON, Thomas	WALTON, George
WILLIAMS, William	CHASE, Samuel	LEE, Francis Lightfoot
WOLCOTT, Oliver	PACA, William	LEE, Richard Henry
	STONE, Thomas	NELSON, JR., Thomas
Rhode Island		WYTHE, George
ELLERY, William	Delaware
HOPKINS, Stephens	McKEAN, Thomas
	READ, George
	RODNEY, Caesar

 

 

Fred Sorrell

Secretary