The Signers Arthur Middleton
Middleton Family Portrait
Benjamin West
America, 1771
Courtesy of the Middleton Place Foundation
Charleston, S. C.
Arthur Middleton
(1742-1787)
Born into one of the wealthiest families in the South Carolina low country, Arthur Middleton was an ardent patriot. From the beginning of the imperial crisis, he advocated a complete break from Britain. Middleton represented South Carolina in the Continental Congress until 1778 and also served in the defense of Charleston against a siege by British forces in the spring of 1780, where he was captured with the rest of the patriot garrison. Refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown, Middleton and sixty-four other “dangerous men” were sent to St. Augustine, Florida, and incarcerated.
