Founding father born on july 4

The story goes that on his deathbed in Massachusetts, John Adams, the second president of the United States and member of the Continental Congress, spoke of his friend in Charlottesville, Virginia, noting that “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” Old friends who had their share of political disagreements on the nature of the new American democracy, they had grown old in their home states, and—ironically and unbeknownst to Adams—died on the same day, July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after they had ratified the passage of the Declaration of Independence.

That is perhaps the most famous presidential Fourth of the July story, but there are two more.

The second story begins and ends in Virginia.

James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, also died on July 4—in 1831. Monroe had a busy career in which he served both Virginia and the young nation for which he fought in the revolution. Monroe had been a United States senator from Virginia, and he had also served as that