19 Facts About Carter Braxton

Carter Braxton was a Founding Father of the United States, signer of the Declaration of Independence, merchant, and Virginia planter.

The elder Carter Braxton owned at least one ship, the Carter Braxton that traded with the West Indies and elsewhere, and was commission agent for cargoes of enslaved blacks sold to Virginia planters.

Carter Braxton died, aged 71, when Carter was twelve; his eldest son George Jr.

Carter Braxton purchased a small schooner shortly after his second marriage and like his father turned his energies to trade.

Carter Braxton later owned many more slaves on his various plantations which extended westward into those leased by tenant farmers in Amherst County.

Carter Braxton began his long career representing King William County in the Virginia House of Burgesses, taking his seat in 1761.

However, in 1774 Carter Braxton returned to Williamsburg as King William County's delegate, and joined 108 others in the Fourth Virginia Association, which authorized local committees of safety as well as volunteer militia.

When Lord Dunmore seized the colony's gunpowder and flintlocks for their rifles, Carter Braxton helped negotiate a compromise between fellow legislator Patrick Henry and his own father-in-law Corbin that averted a crisis.

In 1774, Carter Braxton joined the patriots' Committee of Safety in Virginia, as well as chaired the legislative committee considering legal penalties for Tories.

In that capacity Braxton signed the Declaration of Independence, although he had previously opposed it as premature in Committee of the Whole, and explained his stance in several letters to his uncle Landon Carter.

Carter Braxton drew revolutionaries' criticism for his pamphlet, Address to the Convention, which he had printed in reply to the proposals of John Adams's Thoughts on Government.

Between 1776 and 1785, Carter Braxton served in 8 of the 11 legislative assemblies and attended 14 of 21 sessions, with a special concern for debt and tax moratoriums or other relief.

Carter Braxton invested a great deal of his wealth in the American Revolution.

Carter Braxton sold Virginia and Carolina tobacco and corned meat abroad, and secured arms and ammunition, as well as wheat and salt, and cloth and other trade goods.

In 1786 Carter Braxton sold a plantation and rented a smaller residence in Richmond, which allowed him to repay his own indebtedness to the Robinson estate in 1787.

Ineligible for re-election for three years, Carter Braxton was elected a second time in 1794.

Family tradition maintains Henrico County sheriff Samuel Mosby was at Carter Braxton's door attempting to collect debts lest he have to pay them himself.

Carter Braxton's widow survived until July 5,1814, and was praised in an obituary for the assistance and comfort she had offered Braxton during his final years.

Confederate General Carter Braxton Bragg was named for the signer, but not apparently a descendant.