George Walton

On November 16, 1749, in Cumberland County, Colony of Virginia, George Walton was born and left orphaned at an early age. He learned law through apprenticeship rather than college, then established himself in Savannah as an attorney on the eve of imperial crisis. Georgia's provincial politics gave him a rapid rise once resistance to British rule widened in 1775 and 1776.

Walton entered the Continental Congress in 1776 and signed the Declaration of Independence as one of Georgia's delegates. During the war he was captured at the Battle of Savannah in 1778, later returned to office, and served as governor of Georgia in 1779 and again in the late 1780s. He also became chief justice of Georgia, placing him at the center of the state's legal and political reconstruction.

Walton's service linked the Declaration to the emergence of stable state institutions in Georgia after independence. His governorship and judicial office helped connect Revolutionary legitimacy to the courts and executive authority that endured under the federal Constitution.