Button Gwinnett

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Button Gwinnett.

Button Gwinnett (baptized: April 10, 1735 – May 19, 1777), was second of the signatories (first signature on the left) on the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Georgia. He was also briefly the provisional president of Georgia in 1777, prior to his death, and Gwinnett County (now a major suburb of metro Atlanta) was named after him.

Button was born in 1732 in the parish of Down Hatherley in Gloucestershire, England, to Reverend Samuel and Anne Gwinnett. There are conflicting reports as to his birthdate, but he was baptized in St Catherine’s Church in Gloucester on April 10, 1735. After attending The King's School, Gloucester he started his career as a merchant in Bristol, England. He then moved to Wolverhampton in 1755 and married a local, Ann Bourne, in 1757. In 1762 the couple left Wolverhampton and moved to America.

Arriving first in Charleston, South Carolina, by 1765 they had travelled to Savannah, Georgia. Gwinnett abandoned his mercantile pursuits, selling off all his merchandise to buy a tract of land on St. Catherines Island where he started a plantation. He prospered as a planter, and by 1769 had gained such local prominence that he was elected to the Provincial Assembly.

He was appointed commander of Georgia's continental militia, but declined the position, and was elected to attend the Continental Congress. He signed the first paper copy of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and remained in Philadelphia until the Parchment Declaration was completed. He signed the final copy on August 2, 1776. After signing the Declaration, he was accompanied as far as Virginia by Carter Braxton, another of the Signers, carrying a proposed State Constitution drawn up by John Adams.

He served in the Georgia State Legislature and in 1777 he wrote the original draft of Georgia’s first State Constitution mainly from the John Adams pamphlet. He soon became Speaker of the Georgia Assembly, a position he held until the death of the President (Governor) of Georgia, Archibald Bulloch. Gwinnett was elevated to the vacated position by the Assembly’s Executive Council.

As president of the Council of Safety, he led an unsuccessful attempt to invade Florida. He was cleared of wrongdoing in this undertaking. He challenged his chief political foe, Lachlan McIntosh, to a duel, which was fought on May 16, 1777, at the small town of Thunderbolt, near Savannah. Both were wounded: McIntosh survived, but Button Gwinnett died three days later of gangrene resulting from having the bone of his leg shattered.

A monument for Button Gwinnett at Colonial Park Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia.

A fairly obscure historical figure, Gwinnett nonetheless does hold one claim to fame: his autograph is among the most valuable in the world, a fact used to good effect by science fiction author Isaac Asimov in his short story "Button, Button." Valuations usually suggest an example of an original Gwinnett signature would be valued only behind the likes of Julius Caesar and William Shakespeare, making Gwinnett’s by far the most valuable American autograph. Single examples of Gwinnett’s autograph have been sold for as much as $150,000. Its extraordinarily high value is a result of a combination of the desire by many top collectors to acquire a complete set of autographs by all 56 signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and the extreme rarity of the Gwinnett signature (there are less than 30 known extant examples, since Gwinnett was fairly obscure prior to signing the Declaration and died shortly afterwards). In the 1920s, five copies of his signature were owned by a Dr. Rosenbach.