Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,206

This is the grave of Joseph Hewes.

Born in 1730 in Princeton, New Jersey, Hewes grew up a Quaker. He went to local schools. Some have said he went to the College of New Jersey, which became Princeton, but there’s no actual evidence to the point. In any case, he needed to make a living, so around 1749 he moved to Philadelphia to apprentice in a mercantile business. This meant he had to travel around some, which wasn’t so common for people in the early 1750s and which I am sure excited him. It also meant he got to scout around for better opportunities in his life. This led him up and down the American coast and into the Caribbean. It goes without saying that anyone working in shipping at this time was involved in the slave trade. That’s where much of the money from northern fortunes comes from, don’t let anyone tell you slavery was a southern problem. It was an American problem.

Well, on his travels, Hewes decided that making a go of it in North Carolina would make sense. Not a lot of people felt this way. Thanks to the Outer Banks and general lack of good ports, North Carolina didn’t have the growing urban trade centers that dominated late colonial America–Boston, New York, Providence, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah. Big gap there between the Chesapeake and Charleston. But there was a small port at Edenton and when his apprenticeship ended in 1754, he decided to try his hand in developing that area.

Hewes did quite well in Edenton, becoming the town’s leading merchant and someone with lots of connections through the colonies thanks to his previous work. His business interests grew–the mercantile stuff of course was the core, but he started a rope factory and a shipyard to build and repair ships. He was a locally important person in politics as well, at first winning a couple of local offices and then being sent to the colonial legislature for North Carolina in 1760. He’d spend the next 15 years there, mostly working on financial matters, where he had a lot of expertise. He might have remained a Quaker or he might have been an Anglican at some point. People debate this, though why they care is another question. Still, if you are looking for major leaders in 18th century North Carolina, it’s somewhat slim pickings so I guess have to focus on something.

Now, if this sounds like an exciting guy to you, I don’t know what to say. He’s not very exciting. But this is exactly the kind of long-term leader who was thrust into something of the spotlight during the American Revolution. When the Committees of Correspondence developed in 1774, Hewes was one of the leaders in North Carolina to take this seriously and get the legislature to send some delegates. Hewes seems to have been happy to be one of those. He was already skeptical that any reconciliation between the colonies and the crown was likely, but he was willing to at least try.

Now that Hewes was back in Philadelphia, he was happy to stick around. After all, it’s where his family was. So the First Continental Congress ended and he just stayed. Then North Carolina selected him as a representative to the Second Continental Congress, so that was easy enough for him. The North Carolina legislature was clear that their instructions were not to include advocating for independence. Hewes tried to take this seriously. He continued to believe that reconciliation was impossible but he also took his instructions from North Carolina seriously. It seems to have negatively impacted his health. It was a lot of stress after all.

Much later, when an old John Adams thought back to the American Revolution, he considered Hewes and the stress he was under here. He probably overstated just how much this was–he remembered Hewes as someone skeptical of independence, but the larger record doesn’t totally support that. But this is how Adams remembered the scene:

For many days the majority depended on Mr. Hewes of North Carolina. While a member one day was speaking and reading documents from all the colonies to prove that public opinion, the general sense of all, was in favor of the measure, when he came to North Carolina and produced letters and public proceedings that the majority in that colony was in favor of it, Mr. Hewes, who had hitherto constantly voted against it, started suddenly upright and lifting both hands to heaven as if he had been in a trance, cried out, “It is done and I will abide by it.” I would give more for the perfect painting of the terror and horror upon the face of the old majority at that critical moment than for the best piece of Raphael. The question, however, was eluded by an immediate motion for adjournment.”

The problem with this is that Hewes was not a deciding factor here either way. Second, Hewes was pretty consistent and didn’t change his mind much through this whole process. Still, this misremembered scenario by an old man many decades might lead us into Hewes’ conflicted mind a bit.

In any case, Hewes signed the Declaration of Independence and dedicated himself to the fights ahead. He was heavily involved in building some kind of navy in the years after 1776, a good place for him as a merchant. There were complexities back in North Carolina and political realities and he wasn’t reelected in 1777 but he was sent back in 1779. He went back to Philadelphia. But he was sick by this time. We don’t really know why, but complained of a constant headache, so maybe it was brain cancer or something. In any case, he resigned from Congress due to his health in October 1779 and he died the next month, at the ripe old age of 49.

Hewes might have been one of the Founders who is more remembered today instead of one of the many signatures on the Declaration of Independence completely forgotten about. But like a lot of these folks, he just didn’t live long enough in an era where death could happen to anyone at anytime and in fact did happen that way all the time.

Joseph Hewes is buried in Christ Church Burial Ground, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This gravestone, erected relatively recently, may be an approximation of his grave rather than the exact spot, but then who really knows what’s under any grave marker.

If you would like this series to visit other signers of the Declaration of Independence, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Arthur Middleton is in Dorchester County, South Carolina and Lewis Morris is in The Bronx. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.