Thornton, Matthew

Thornton, Matthew,

1714–1803, political leader in the American RevolutionAmerican Revolution,
1775–83, struggle by which the Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic seaboard of North America won independence from Great Britain and became the United States. It is also called the American War of Independence.
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, signer of the Declaration of IndependenceDeclaration of Independence,
full and formal declaration adopted July 4, 1776, by representatives of the Thirteen Colonies in North America announcing the separation of those colonies from Great Britain and making them into the United States.
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, b. Ireland. Taken to America as a child, he studied medicine and in 1740 began practice at Londonderry, N.H. He served as an army surgeon in the French and Indian WarsFrench and Indian Wars,
1689–1763, the name given by American historians to the North American colonial wars between Great Britain and France in the late 17th and the 18th cent.
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 and held political posts in New Hampshire before and after his term in the Continental Congress (1776–77).

Bibliography

See biography by C. T. Adams (1903).