Four years later, to avoid arrest for debt, the distraught Wilson moved from Philadelphia to Burlington, N.J. The next year, apparently while on Federal circuit court business, he arrived at Edenton, N.C., in a state of acute mental stress and was taken into the home of James Iredell, a fellow Supreme Court Justice. He died there within a few months. Although first buried at Hayes Plantation near Edenton, his remains were later reinterred in the yard of Christ Church at Philadelphia.
John Witherspoon
NEW JERSEY
Rev. John Witherspoon, the only active clergyman among the signers, achieved a greater reputation as a religious leader and educator than as a politician. Emigrating from Scotland to America in the midst of the controversy between the Colonies and the Crown, he took part in the Revolution, lost a son during the war, and signed the Articles of Confederation as well as the Declaration. He is better known, however, for his role in the growth of the Presbyterian Church and for his distinguished presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University).
The son of a Calvinist minister, Witherspoon was born in 1723 at the village of Gifford, near Edinburgh. He attended grammar school at the neighboring town of Haddington and won master of arts (1739) and divinity (1743) degrees from the University of Edinburgh. In 1743 the Haddington Presbytery licensed him to preach. He was ordained 2 years later at Beith, where he occupied a pulpit until 1757. He then transferred to Paisley, not far from Glasgow. Meantime, in 1748, he had married; only five of his ten children survived childhood.
Over the years, Witherspoon attained leadership of a group of conservative clergymen who were engaged in a prolonged struggle with a group of their colleagues to maintain the “purity” of orthodox Church doctrine. Witherspoon penned a stream of sermons and tracts attacking the opposition and denouncing moral decay in Scotland. He also defended the traditional prerogative of the people to choose their own ministers, a right ecclesiastical authorities had taken from them.
In 1768 Witherspoon channeled his energies in a new direction. He gave up his post at Paisley and accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey, after two representatives of the college had visited him and finally at the end of 2 years of effort overcome the objections of his wife. He sailed to America with his family. The college bloomed under his direction. He increased the endowment, instituted new methods of instruction, and broadened and revitalized the curriculum. Continuing also as a minister and church leader, he patched up a major schism in the Presbyterian Church; stimulated its expansion, especially in the Middle Colonies; and worked closely with the Congregationalists.
