Thomas Lynch (statesman) Thomas Lynch (statesman) Thomas Lynch (1727–1776) was an American planter and statesman from South Carolina. He was a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 and the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1776. Thomas Lynch was born in St. James Parish, Berkeley County, South Carolina, in 1727. He served in the Colonial Legislature of South Carolina and represented the Colony in the Stamp Act Congress, heading the committee which drafted the petition to the House of Commons. Elected to both the First and Second Continental Congresses, Lynch joined Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Harrison on a committee sent to Cambridge,
Samuel Ward (American statesman) elected Samuel Ward and Stephen Hopkins as delegates to congress. Ward served on several important committees, including the "Committee on Secrets" and frequently sat in the chair when the Congress met as a committee of the whole. He devoted all of his energy to the Continental Congress, until his untimely death from smallpox at a meeting of the convention in Philadelphia. Ward died a little more than three months before the Declaration of Independence was signed. He was originally buried in Philadelphia, but in 1860 was reinterred in the Common Burying Ground in Newport, Rhode Island. Samuel Ward (American statesman)