5 m 20 ft Zoom to Pan Old Post Road - Established 1666 - Gov. William Paca
Harford County, Harford County, Maryland
Marker Inscription
Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Born October 31, 1740 on Chilberry Hall Farm 11/4 miles south of here. Died October 27, 1799. Erected by the Governor William Paca Chapter D.A.R. Harford County Maryland 1930
The Story
William Paca was one of Maryland's four signers of the Declaration of Independence, born in 1740 on a Harford County plantation just south of this spot. A lawyer and patriot during the Revolution, he went on to serve as governor of the new state of Maryland and later as a federal judge before his death in 1799. This monument was placed in 1930 by the Daughters of the American Revolution chapter that bears his name, marking the countryside where a future Founder spent his earliest years.
Why it matters
Paca is a reminder that the Declaration's signers were ordinary provincials from places like rural Harford County who staked their lives on independence, and that Maryland's voice was part of the founding chorus.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1740, when William Paca was born on a Harford County farm, the land that would become the United States was still a scatter of British colonies strung along the Atlantic. Maryland was a prosperous tobacco colony, its wealth built on plantations and its politics dominated by a small circle of landed families. A boy born to that world could expect a comfortable life of land, law, and local standing — but not, yet, a country of his own.
By the time Paca reached adulthood, the mood was shifting. Educated young Marylanders read law, argued politics, and grew increasingly frustrated with rule from London. The imperial quarrels of the 1760s and 1770s — over taxes, trade, and who had the right to govern — pulled men like Paca off the comfortable path and into the dangerous business of resistance.
The monument here, placed in the countryside just north of his birthplace, deliberately roots a national figure in ordinary Maryland soil. It asks you to remember that the Revolution was made not only in Philadelphia's grand halls but by provincials who came from farms exactly like this one.
People & events
William Paca trained as a lawyer and rose through Maryland's revolutionary politics into the Continental Congress, where in 1776 he joined the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Putting his name to that document was no small gesture: the signers were pledging their lives and fortunes against the most powerful empire on earth, and failure meant ruin or the gallows.
His service did not end with independence. He went on to serve as governor of the new state of Maryland during the war years and after, helping steer the state through the difficult work of turning a rebellion into a functioning government. Later he sat as a federal judge — a role that placed him inside the very constitutional order he had helped bring into being. He died in 1799, at the close of the century whose politics he had helped remake.
The marker itself has a story worth telling. It was erected in 1930 by a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution that bears Paca's name. In the early twentieth century, patriotic societies like the DAR fanned out across the country to mark the birthplaces and homesteads of the founding generation, determined that the men and women of 1776 not be forgotten as living memory faded.
Its place in the American story
Every schoolchild learns a handful of the Declaration's signers, but there were dozens, and most were figures like Paca — respected in their home colonies, little known nationally, yet indispensable. Independence was declared not by a few celebrated names but by a broad coalition of such provincial leaders, each risking everything to make the vote unanimous. Paca's signature is a reminder that Maryland's voice was part of that founding chorus.
His later career traces the harder, less romantic work that followed the Declaration. Anyone can proclaim independence; the real test was building governments that could last. As a wartime governor and then a judge, Paca belonged to the generation that had to convert soaring words into laws, courts, and stable institutions — the unglamorous machinery that actually held the new republic together.
That a future Founder spent his earliest years on a modest Harford County plantation is itself the point. The Revolution drew its leadership from the everyday landscape of colonial America, and monuments like this one keep that connection visible.
If you visit
This is a roadside monument in the Maryland countryside, so come with the right expectations: the reward here is place and imagination, not a museum. The inscription tells you his birthplace lies a short distance to the south — so as you stand here, you're looking out over the same rural country where a signer of the Declaration spent his boyhood.
Take a moment to notice who put the marker here, and when. Erected by a DAR chapter in 1930, it's a small artifact of how twentieth-century Americans chose to remember their Revolution — a piece of history about history. The care taken to fix a national figure to this specific patch of ground says a great deal about local pride.
For a fuller day, pair the spot with Maryland's richer revolutionary sites. Annapolis, the colonial capital where Paca practiced law and politics, preserves a great deal from the era and rounds out the story that begins on this quiet stretch of Harford County road.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · William Paca
Related events
- · Signing of the Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
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Gov. William Paca
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This roadside marker along the old Post Road honors William Paca, born nearby in 1740, who rose to sign the Declaration of Independence and later served three terms as governor of Maryland. The Post Road itself, noted here as established in 1666, was one of the colonial arteries binding the Atlantic settlements together long before the Revolution. Paca went on to help shape Maryland's early state government and its constitution.
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