Button Gwinnett Tombstone

Button Gwinnett (1735 – May 19 or 27, 1777) was an British-born American political leader who, as a representative of Georgia to the Continental Congress, was the second of the signatories (first signature on the left) on the United States Declaration of Independence. He was also, briefly, the provisional president of Georgia in 1777, and Gwinnett County (now a major suburb of metropolitan Atlanta) was named for him. Gwinnett was killed in a duel by a rival, Lachlan McIntosh, following a dispute after a failed invasion of East Florida.
Gwinnett was born in 1735 in the parish of Down Hatherley in the county of Gloucestershire, Great Britain, to Welsh parents, the Reverend Samuel and Anne (née Button) Gwinnett. He was the first of his parents' seven children. There are conflicting reports as to his birth date, but he was baptized in St Catherine’s Church in Gloucester on April 10, 1735. After attending The King's School, Gloucester he started his career as a merchant in England. He then moved to Wolverhampton in 1755 and married a local, Ann Bourne, in 1757 at St. Peter's Church at the age of 22. In 1762 the couple left Wolverhampton and moved to America.
Arriving first in Charleston, South Carolina, by 1765 they had traveled to Georgia. Gwinnett abandoned his mercantile pursuits, selling off all his merchandise to buy a tract of land where he started a plantation. He prospered as a planter, and by 1769 had gained such local prominence that he was elected to the Provincial Assembly. During his tenure in the Assembly, Gwinnett's chief political rival was Lachlan McIntosh, and Lyman Hall was his closest ally. Gwinnett did not become a strong advocate of colonial rights until 1775, when St. John's Parish, which encompassed his lands, threatened to secede from Georgia due to the colony's rather conservative response to the events of the times.
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