56 different men signed the Declaration of Independence, and three of them were Georgians.

We've already introduced you to one of them, but there's two other men and the two other stories still to be told.

There's the lawyer that twice served as governor and survived as a prisoner of war.

And there's the doctor who also became governor who had a home burned by the British.

This is Marked!, a series that zooms in on Georgia and its backstory, one historical marker at a time.

I'm Maiya May and I'm here at Georgia Historical Marker 121-28 to tell you the story of the other guys from Georgia who signed the Declaration of Independence, all they did to shape our state and their contributions to the early years of the American experiment.

This is a signer's monument.

With all that goes on in downtown Augusta, the signers Monument might be easy to miss.

But in the middle of Georgia's Garden City, it honors the legacy of three Georgia names on the Declaration of Independence.

One of those stories, we've already told you the always fascinating Button Gwinnett, but Lyman Hall and George Walton.

Yes, as in Hall and Walton Counties, these two men have interesting stories of their own, but long before their monument, they were politicians, molding politics, shaping the state and carving out their place in the pages of the Georgia History books, Lyman Hall and George Walton are the two other guys from Georgia that are on the Declaration of Independence, but they often play like a second fiddle to Button Gwinnett.

But these are the guys that were really determined to get Georgia to the finish line of independence.

And at first glance, Lyman Hall could not be less of a Georgian born in Connecticut, educated up there, went to Yale when Yale wasn't even 50 years old yet, got a degree around 1747, and he even knows the Yale family.

The man has connections.

Not long after graduating, Lyman Hall takes up religion and becomes a pastor, but there's some drama with that.

He was actually fired from his job at one point for what can be described as immoral conduct.

The specifics of that immoral conduct have never come to light, but you can use your imagination.

So in the wake of that, it doesn't completely derail his career.

He shows some contrition and ends up becoming a pastor elsewhere.

He also marries Abi Gilbert, but unfortunately she dies pretty young, not even 29 or so.

And after her death, he decides to move on somewhere new, try something new, and he ends up settling in Charleston.

Lyman Hall's, also a doctor around 1760, he moves to the town of Sunbury, Georgia.

Sunbury is an interesting story on its own.

It's a pretty vital part to the Lyman Hall and George Walton stories.

Savannah is the beating heart of Georgia politics at the time, but Sunbury is important in its own way before its capture in 1779.

This is where all the important people are moving thinkers, doctors, lawyers.

It's also a political incubator where governors, senators, military leaders, they're all there.

If you're in Georgia and you wanna be in politics, Sunbury is really the place to be.

It's the nerve center where the movers and shakers are.

There's also a lot of money and wealth in Sunbury, but oddly enough with all of its money and commerce, St.

John's Parish in Sunbury doesn't have its own congressional representation.

Lyman Hall changes that.

He's pretty vocal saying, we need our voices heard too.

He's the driving force behind the parish getting congressional representation.

So naturally in 1775, he is the one that is picked to represent Sunbury in the second Continental Congress.

And another member of the second continental Congress is George Walton - And like Lyman Hall, George Walton is not a native Georgian.

He was born in Cumberland County, Virginia, but he's orphaned very young.

He first loses his father and then by 1757 his mother, Mary Hughes Walton has also passed.

So George along with his siblings, goes to live with his Uncle George and Aunt Martha.

By 1765, George is learning carpentry.

He becomes a builder's apprentice.

He also had a lot of ambition and drive to learn reading a lot and educating himself on all sorts of topics.

By the time he is 20 years old and 1769, he's left Virginia, he wants to get out and explore new places, so he heads south.

So when George Walton gets to Georgia at 20 years old, full of optimism and a thirst for knowledge and experience, he makes a beeline for where the action is.

Savannah and the Georgia Coast At this point, he leaves carpentry behind.

He starts studying law and whatever he is studying starts sticking because he becomes one of the top lawyers in Georgia.

And just like so many others at this time, this is also where you're going to get wrapped up in politics.

It's everywhere at this point, and you have to pick a side Like Gwinnett and Hall, Walton is propagate early on and he becomes the first secretary of Georgia's provincial Congress.

We talk a lot about Congress here, so let's avoid some confusion.

Okay.

First there is the Provincial Congress and that's state level think Golden Dome.

And then there's the Continental Congress, that's Federal, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, and there's actually two of those.

The first Continental Congress only last about two months from early September to late October, 1774, and it's held in Philadelphia's Carpenter's Hall.

The second Continental Congress runs from May, 1775 all the way to late spring 1781.

And this is the one most of us are familiar with and like.

Button Gwinnett, George Walton served in both the Georgia Provincial Congress and the second Continental Congress, and it's that second continental Congress where all three of them, Gwinnett, Hall, and Walton, pretty much become linked for life because they are the three Georgians that will put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence.

Despite serving in Congress side by side, George Walton does not like, Button Gwinnett at all.

There's a certain irony in all of this because despite the bad blood and animosity, Button Gwinnett and George Walton are kind of forced to work together and help shape not just Georgia, but the nation and somehow the two manage to coexist.

And George Walton's story, like so many leaders of the era isn't confined to just politics.

George Walton also had military experience.

He served notably under the command of General Robert Howe, and this was during the December, 1778 capture of Savannah by the British.

And during that fight, defending the city of Savannah, Walton actually takes a shot to the thigh and falls from his horse, and he does live, but he ends up being captured by the British.

And while Walton is being held as a prisoner of war, Lyman Hall has dangers of his own back at home.

By the beginning of 1779, the British have set fire to Sunbury the town.

Such a crucial part of Georgia's early history is quite literally going up in flames.

When Sunbury's burned Lyman Hall and his family flee.

They get out of town, they head back north and they stay there until the end of the revolution.

Walton though is at this point a prisoner of war and he's released during a prisoner swap in 1779.

By the time the American Revolution is winding down and America is in the early days of independence, Lyman Hall still got work to do in Georgia.

He returns with his family and settles in Savannah practicing medicine.

Lyman Hall didn't serve in the military, but his contributions to Georgia after the revolution are still pretty substantial.

He becomes governor in 1783, and while he only served for a calendar year, he makes that year count.

Lyman Hall was a big believer in education, especially in revolution, Georgia.

A lot of people in the state, including him, are really big advocates for a public university.

You have Joseph Hamm, you have Abraham Baldwin, Lyman Hall's, yet another one.

They really believe in the value of being able to get a public education, and Lyman Hall really laid a lot of the groundwork for that when he was governor that year as governor also had some challenges.

Treasury is empty, the state has no money, it's bankrupt, and he's gotta navigate the state through all of these issues.

The other issue he has to deal with is with the Georgia frontier away from the coast, Georgia is still wildly undeveloped and in the rural wilderness, there's still a lot of fighting going on between indigenous native Americans and loyalists who are still holding on after the revolution.

His governorship means he has to help navigate all of that.

By 1790 Lyman Hall's time as governor is over and he moves his family out of Savannah, settling on the Shell Bluff Plantation in Burke County, Georgia.

But he won't be able to enjoy his retirement for very long because later that year at age 66, he passes away and the governor at the time of his death, George Walton.

George Walton's life is also pretty interesting post-revolution.

He goes on to be George's governor, not once, but twice.

He serves as a justice on the state superior court and also as a member of Congress.

And for a very brief point, only about three months is Georgia's lone Senator Politics and post-revolution.

Georgia is pretty messy too.

And Walton like Lyman Hall has to be smart about how he plays all that.

He's aligned himself in many ways with Lachlan McIntosh, which means he's now a political enemy of Button Gwinnett.

So this is an any enemy of my friend is also my enemy kind of relationship.

Partisan fighting at this time is almost par for the course.

The wigs are pretty much split down the middle between the radical side and the conservative side.

And oftentimes what could not be settled with a duel was settled with indictments.

And plenty of those were handed out to George Walton by Button Gwinnett.

It was presumably a campaign to punish him, but none of those would actually become convictions in 1783, 6 full years after.

Button Gwinnett dies, George Walton receives a censure from the Georgia State legislature.

That's an official government reprimand, a procedural slap on the hand.

And it was all because of his connection as peripheral as it was to the McIntosh-Gwinnett duel.

The effects of that duel feel like they're everywhere in Georgia, but it's also a reminder of how history works.

It's never just the thing.

It's also the ripple effects.

For years after.

Lyman Hall and George Walton are interesting, beyond just signing the Declaration of Independence, they had real influence on how our state took shape courts, education, finances, But there were also two guys who had very significant setbacks that could have easily have changed their trajectories.

I mean, what if George Walton had not been a prisoner of war and had not been exchanged in a prisoner swap?

Lyman Hall fled his home when Sunbury burned and went back home to Connecticut.

What if he'd stayed there?

What if he didn't come back to Georgia to start up again?

They had to confront and handle a lot, and that's a real factor in the telling of their story and also how it influenced Georgia at the time.

Here in Augusta, people actually drive past Walton and Hall every day.

Lyman Hall and George Walton are both buried under this monument, and many people are unaware of this story this marker tells, and while it's a monument to the signers, it's also a monument to a familiar story.

One of conflict, contribution and resilience that at the end of the day made a huge difference in the state of Georgia then and now.

I'm Maiya May, and we'll see you at our next stop.