Lyman Hall

On April 12, 1724, in Wallingford, Colony of Connecticut, Lyman Hall was born into a New England family that valued education and religion. He graduated from Yale College, studied theology, and then shifted into medicine, building a practice that eventually took him to Georgia. In St. John's Parish he became a leading Patriot voice at the southern edge of British North America.

Hall represented St. John's Parish in the Continental Congress before Georgia as a whole fully committed to resistance, and in 1776 he signed the Declaration of Independence. During the war he remained active in Georgia politics while British campaigns repeatedly disrupted civil government in the South. From 1783 to 1784 he served as governor of Georgia during the difficult work of reconstruction after fighting.

Hall's public life connected the Declaration to Georgia's postwar institutions and to the state's growing commitment to education. His support for learning helped shape the climate that produced the chartering of the University of Georgia in 1785, one of the earliest state universities in the new republic.