Benjamin Harrison V

Benjamin Harrison V (April 5, 1726 – April 24, 1791) was an American planter, merchant, and politician who was a Founding Father of the United States. He served as a delegate to the United States Continental Congress, and was a signer of the Continental Association and the Declaration of Independence. He also served as Virginia's governor (1781–1784), affirming a tradition of public service in the Harrison family.

Benjamin was born at the family homestead, Berkeley Plantation, where in 1619 there was established one of the first annual observances of a day of Thanksgiving. It is also the location where the Army bugle call of "Taps" was written and first played in 1862. Benjamin served an aggregate of three decades in the Virginia House of Burgesses, alternately representing Surry County and Charles City County. He was among the early patriots to formally protest measures that King George III and the British Parliament imposed upon the American colonies, leading to the American Revolution. Although a slaveholder, Harrison joined a 1772 petition to the king, requesting that he abolish the slave trade.

As a delegate to the Continental Congress and chair of its Committee of the Whole, Harrison attended and presided over the final debate of the Declaration of Independence. He was one of its signers in 1776. The Declaration included a foundational philosophy of the United States: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Harrison was elected as Virginia's fifth governor; his administration was marked by its futile struggle with a state treasury decimated by the Revolutionary War. He later returned to the Virginia House for two final terms. In rare disagreement with his traditional ally George Washington, Harrison in 1788 cast one of his last votes, opposing ratification of the nation's Constitution for its lack of a bill of rights. He left two descendants who became United States presidents—son William Henry Harrison and great-grandson Benjamin Harrison.

Harrison was born April 5, 1726, in Charles City County, Virginia; he was the eldest son and 3rd oldest of ten children of Benjamin Harrison IV (1693–1745) and Anne Carter (1702–1743); Anne was a daughter of Robert Carter I. Benjamin Harrison I (1594–1648) arrived in the colonies around 1630 and by 1633 began a family tradition of public service when he was recorded as clerk of the Virginia Governor's Council.

Benjamin Harrison II (1645–1712) and Benjamin Harrison III (1673–1710) followed this example, serving as delegates in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Benjamin IV and his wife Anne built the family's manor house at Berkeley Plantation; he served as a justice of the peace and represented Charles City County in the Virginia House of Burgesses. (Biographer Clifford Dowdey notes that the family did not employ the roman numeral suffixes, which historians have assigned for clarity.)

Benjamin V, was described in his youth as "tall and powerfully built," with "features that were clearly defined, with a well-shaped mouth above a strong pointed chin." He spent a year or two at the College of William & Mary. His brother Carter Henry (1736–1793) became a leader in Cumberland County. Brother Nathaniel (1742–1782) was elected to the House of Burgesses, then to the Virginia Senate. Brother Henry (1736–1772) fought in the French and Indian War and later established Hunting Quarter Plantation in Sussex County, brother Charles (1740–1793) became a brigadier general in the Continental Army.

Harrison's father, at age 51 and with a child in hand, was struck by lightning as he shut an upstairs window during a storm on July 12, 1745; he and his daughter Hannah were killed. Benjamin V inherited the bulk of his father's estate, including Berkeley and several surrounding plantations, as well as thousands of acres extending to Surry County and the falls of the James River. Also among his holdings was a fishery on the river and a grist mill in Henrico County. He also assumed ownership and responsibility for the manor house's equipment, stock, and numerous enslaved people. His siblings inherited another six plantations, possessions, and enslaved people, as the father chose to depart from the tradition of leaving the entire estate to the eldest son.