Caesar Rodney (1728-1784)

Signer of the Declaration of Independence

1728 Born in Dover, Delaware
1762-63 Member of the Delaware Assembly
1765 Delegate to the Stamp Act Congress
1769-1773 Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court
1774-1777 Delegate to the Continental Congress
1775
 		 Colonel of Militia (May);
Brigadier General (September)
1776 Signed the Declaration of Independence
1778-82
 		 President, Captain-General and
Commander-in-Chief of the Delaware State
1784 Died in Kent County, Delaware

 

Why was Caesar Rodney chosen by Delaware’s citizens as their greatest hero in the U.S. Capitol “Hall of Fame?”

Caesar Rodney is Delaware’s greatest hero of the Revolutionary War. Suffering with facial cancer, he had been urged to go to England for treatment, but due to his sense of responsibility to the cause of independence, he remained in America. It finally caused his death on June 29, 1784. He had written in a letter about the illness, that it was “truly dangerous, and what will be the event God only knows; I still live in hopes, and still retain my usual spirits.” Rodney continued to fight throughout the Revolution. He was in command of the Delaware Militia as Brigadier General when the British invaded the state in September 1777. Shortly thereafter, Thomas McKean commissioned Rodney as Major-general of the Delaware Militia.1

To learn more, click here. (Founders’ book)

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Bibliography:

1

Scott, Walter Dill, B.A., Ph.D., L.L.D., (ed.). President Emeritus, Northwestern University. The American Peoples Encyclopedia. Caesar Rodney. Chicago: The Spencer Press, Inc., 1948.


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