Gwinnett County and the Rarest Signature in America

Gwinnett County was created by the Georgia Legislature on December fifteenth, eighteen eighteen, and named for Button Gwinnett, one of Georgia's three signers of the Declaration of Independence. Gwinnett served briefly as president of the Executive Council of Georgia and acting governor of the state in seventeen seventy-seven, but his political career was short and violent. He died in May of seventeen seventy-seven from wounds received in a duel with a political rival, just months after signing the Declaration.

That early death made his autograph extraordinarily rare. Only about fifty-one examples of Button Gwinnett's signature are known to exist, making it the most valuable autograph of any Declaration signer, regularly selling at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The county carries his name into the twenty-first century, a tribute to a founder most Americans have never heard of, and almost no one can afford.