George Read

George Read — American lawyer, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a framer who also signed the United States Constitution, died in New Castle, Delaware, on September 21, 1798. He was sixty-five. Born September 18, 1733, in Cecil County, Maryland, and raised in Delaware’s legal culture, he practiced law in New Castle, served in the Continental Congress, and helped steer the small state through revolution and union. He was one of only two statesmen to sign all three of the era’s foundational American documents often cited together — the Continental Association, the Declaration, and the Constitution — a record of continuity across crisis. As Delaware’s president (governor), U.S. senator, and later chief justice of the state, he preferred careful institutional building to fiery oratory. Federalist in temperament, he argued for a stronger national frame while remaining rooted in Delaware’s politics of balance between large and small states. He died in New Castle three days after his sixty-fifth birthday, closing a career that had bridged colony and republic. The town that trained him buried him; the documents he signed outlived every factional quarrel of the 1790s. He died in New Castle on September 21, 1798. Delaware still teaches his name among the founders who made a tiny state a constitutional pivot. Read’s gift was durable counsel — signing when signing meant risk, then governing when governing meant patience. Notice Nearby keeps the death date so September 21 remembers the Delaware Founding Father who put his name on independence and on the Constitution alike.