Signer of the Declaration of Independence, born at Kittery, ME, on the 14th of January 1730; went to sea as a boy, became a ship-captain at twenty; engaged in the West India trade, and for a time in the slave trade, in which he acquired a fortune before he retired from the sea. In 1776–79 he was a member of the Continental Congress; signed the Declaration of Independence; with Stark he was active in the campaign against Burgoyne (1777), and assisted in the Rhode Island Expedition of 1778. He was a member of Congress (1778–79), and judge of the superior court of New Hampshire from 1782 until his death at Portsmouth, on the 28th of November 1785.
