Known for

• Signing the Declaration (he died very soon after this event)

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During 1776

• Delegate for North Carolina

• Age: 46

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Background

• Born: 1730 in Princeton, New Jersey

  • Died 1779, very soon after the signing of the Declaration, due to poor health; the only signer of the Declaration who died at the seat of government​

• Education: Grammar school of Stonybrook Quaker Meeting

  • He may have attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) but there's no record of it​

• Spouse: None; his bride-to-be, Isabella Johnston, had died suddenly in 1766, leaving him embittered

• ​Children: None

• Slaveowning

  • Along with his business partner and nephew, Nathaniel Allen, Hewes had enslaved sixteen Black men and women according to 1774 records

  • In his 1779 tax record, Hewes listed about thirty Black people as taxable property 

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Personal beliefs

• Politics: Warmed up to the realization that negotiation with Britain was impossible and therefore, rebellion must result.

  • By March 1776, Hewes felt that independence was inevitable: "I see no prospect of a reconciliation. Nothing is left but to fight it out."

  • Hewes, June 20, 1776: "...On Monday the great question of independency and total separation from all political intercourse with Great Britain will come on. It will be carried, I expect, by a great majority, and then, I suppose we shall take upon us a new name..."

  • John Adams remembered Hewes as changing his mind suddenly about supporting independence, but there is reason to distrust Adams's account: there is no evidence that Hewes's vote was sudden, and also Adams certainly incorrectly remembered the vote for independence as hinging on Hewes (it never did).

• Religion: Raised Quaker; briefly dabbled in Anglicanism; may possibly have become Deist later on​​