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Senate Years of Service: 1795-1796 Party: Federalist
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WALTON, George, (brother of John Walton and cousin of Matthew Walton),
a Delegate and a Senator from Georgia; born in Cumberland County, Va., in either
1749 or 1750; apprenticed as a carpenter; attended the common schools; moved to Savannah, Ga.,
in 1769; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1774 and commenced practice in Savannah, Ga.;
secretary of the Provincial Congress in 1775 and a member of the committee of intelligence; member,
council of safety in 1775 and later president of that body; member, State house of representatives;
member of the Continental Congress 1776, 1777, 1780, and 1781; a signer of the Declaration of
Independence; served in the Revolutionary War and was captured at Savannah; colonel in the First
Georgia Battalion; Governor of Georgia 1779; commissioner to treat with the Indians and to negotiate
a treaty with the Cherokees in Tennessee in 1783; chief justice of Georgia 1783-1789; member of
the Augusta Board of Commissioners 1784-1785; represented Georgia in the settlement of the
boundary line between South Carolina and Georgia in 1786; elected as a delegate to the convention
to frame the Federal Constitution in 1787, but declined; Governor of Georgia 1789; was appointed
first judge of the superior courts of the eastern judicial circuit in 1790; appointed to the United States
Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Jackson and served from November 16,
1795, to February 20, 1796, when a successor was elected; trustee of Richmond Academy and of
the University of Georgia; moved to Augusta; again appointed judge of the superior circuit of
Georgia and served from 1799 until his death at his home, College Hill, near Augusta, Richmond
County, Ga., February 2, 1804; interment in Rosney Cemetery; reinterment in 1848 beneath the
monument in front of the courthouse on Greene Street, Augusta, Ga.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography;
Bridges, Edwin. George Walton: A Political Biography. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago,
1981; Lamplugh, George R. George Walton, Chief Justice of Georgia, 1783-1785. Georgia
Historical Quarterly 65 (Summer 1981): 82-91.
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