Thomas Sim Lee

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Thomas Sim Lee (October 29, 1745–November 9, 1819) was an American planter and statesman of Frederick County, Maryland. He was born in 1745 in Upper Marlboro, Maryland and played an important part in the birth of his state and the nation. He was Governor of Maryland from 1779 to 1783 and again from 1792 to 1794. Thomas Sim Lee was a close relative of the influential Lee family of Virginia.

Thomas Sim Lee was one of the participants of the Annapolis Convention in the mid 1770s, which produced a constitution for Maryland and transformed the colony into a state. On July 26, 1775 he was one of the signatories of the Declaration of the Association of the Freemen of Maryland, an influential statement in the Revolutionary War.

As Governor of Maryland, Thomas Sim Lee, signed the bill on Feb. 2, 1781 in the Maryland State Legislature to make Maryland the 13th and final state to approve the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Maryland refused to ratify the Articles until every state had ceded its western land claims. When these concessions were granted, on this day, as the last piece of business during the afternoon Session, "among engrossed Bills" was "signed and sealed by the Governor, in the Senate Chamber, in the presence of the members of both Houses...an Act to empower the delegates of this state in Congress to subscribe and ratify the articles of confederation" and "perpetual union among the states." The Senate then adjourned "to the first Monday in August next". The signing of the Articles by the Maryland delegates took place in Philadelphia at noon time on March 1, 1781. With these events, the Articles entered into force and the United States came into being as a united, sovereign and national state.

Thomas Sim Lee represented Maryland as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1783. He also was a member of the house of delegates in 1787. He declined the opportunity to serve in the convention that drafted the Constitution of the United States, but served in the state convention that ratified the Federal Constitution in 1788. He helped organize the state militia, and took an active role in opposing the Whisky Insurrection in western Pennsylvania and Maryland. He died in 1819 in Needwood, Maryland, and is buried at the All Saints' Parish Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland.

[edit] External link

biographic sketch at U.S. Congress website

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Preceded by Thomas Johnson	Governor of Maryland 1779 –1782	Succeeded by William Paca
Preceded by James Brice	Governor of Maryland 1792 –1794	Succeeded by John Hoskins Stone