George Read (September 18, 1733 – September 21, 1798) was an American politician from New Castle in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a Continental Congressman from Delaware, a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, president of Delaware, and a member of the Federalist Party. In addition, Read served as U.S. Senator from Delaware and chief justice of Delaware.

Read was a Founding Father of the United States, one of only two statesmen who signed four of the great state papers on which the country's founding is based: Petition to the King and Continental Association, both passed by the Congress of 1774, as well as the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and Constitution of the United States in 1787.

Read was the son of John and Mary (Howell) Read. John Read was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of an Englishman of large fortune belonging to the family of Read of Berkshire, Hertfordshire, and Oxfordshire. The death of his beloved having left him bereft, John Read came to the American colonies and, with a view of diverting his mind, entered into extensive enterprises in Maryland and Delaware.

Soon after his arrival in America, John Read purchased a large estate in Cecil County, Maryland, and founded with six associates the city of Charlestown on the headwaters of Chesapeake Bay, with the intention of creating a new market for the northern trade. They developed northern Maryland and built up the neighboring iron works of the Principio Company, in which the older generations of the Washington family, and at a later period General George Washington, were also largely interested.

As an original proprietor of Charlestown, John Read was appointed by the colonial legislature of Maryland one of the commissioners to lay it out and govern it. He held various military offices during his life, and in his later years resided on his plantation in New Castle County.

George Read was born at Cecil County, Maryland, on September 18, 1733. When he was an infant, the family moved to New Castle County, Delaware, settling near the village of Christiana. As he grew up, Read joined Thomas McKean at the Rev. Francis Allison's Academy at New London, Pennsylvania, and then studied law in Philadelphia with John Moland. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1753, and a year later he returned home to establish a practice at New Castle.

In 1763 he married Gertrude Ross Till, daughter of the Rev. George Ross, the Anglican rector of Immanuel Church in New Castle and widowed sister of George Ross, also a future signer of the Declaration of Independence. They had four children, John, George Jr., William, and Mary, who married Matthew Pearce (she is often confused with her paternal aunt, Mary Read, who in 1769 married Gunning Bedford, Sr., a future Governor of Delaware). They lived on The Strand in New Castle, and their house was in what is now the garden of the present Read House and Gardens, owned by the Delaware Historical Society. They were members of Immanuel Episcopal Church.

In 1763 John Penn, the proprietary governor, appointed Read crown attorney general for the three Delaware counties, and he served in that position until leaving for the Continental Congress in 1774. He also served in the Colonial Assembly of the lower Delaware counties for twelve sessions, from 1764/65 through 1775/76.