Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Heyward Jr. ( born July 28, 1746 St. Luke's Parish, South Carolina, † March 6, 1809 ibid ), signed as a representative of South Carolina's declaration of independence of the United States, making it one of the founding fathers of the United States.

Heyward was educated at home and then traveled to England in order to study law. He was in 1775 elected to the Continental Congress in 1778 and returned back to South Carolina to work as a judge. As commander of a militia unit he was captured during the siege of Charleston (South Carolina). After the war he continued to work as a judge until he went into retirement in 1798.