William Gibbons (congressman)

William Gibbons ( born April 8, 1726 Bear Bluff, South Carolina, † September 27, 1800 in Savannah, Georgia) was an American lawyer and politician, who participated as a delegate from Georgia to the Continental Congress.

Born in South Carolina in what is now Jasper County William Gibbons was formed in Charleston for lawyers. After his admission to the bar he began to practice in Savannah (Georgia ). From 1760 to 1762 he was a member of the colonial Parliament of Georgia. As a supporter of the independence movement he joined in 1774 at the Sons of Liberty. On 11 May 1775 he broke with some colleagues in a warehouse in Savannah, from which they stole 600 pounds of gunpowder from royal property.

In July of the same year Gibbons participated as a delegate to the Provincial Congress of Georgia; December 11, 1775, he was appointed to the local Committee of Safety. Between 1777 and 1781 he was a member of the Executive Council of Georgia. After he had acted as an assistant judge at the Court of Chatham County from 1781 to 1782, he moved in 1783 for the first time as a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives from Georgia. In 1784 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, which met this year in Annapolis and Trenton. Other terms of office in parliament of his country joined from 1785 to 1789 and from 1791 to 1793. Speaker of the House, he was in 1783, 1786 and 1787.

In 1789, Gibbons served as president of the Constitutional Convention of Georgia. Subsequently, he worked again legally and belonged from 1790 to 1792 as a judge of the Inferior Court in Chatham County.