This writer reflects on five-times great-grandfather's role in signing Declaration of Independence

With the United States of America celebrating its 250th birthday this year, many people are reflecting on those two and a half centuries. That includes Trevor Nelson, a Valley resident and writer behind the Won’t Fix Report on Substack.

One of his posts was about an ancestor of his, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His five-times great-grandfather, Thomas Nelson Jr., signed his John Hancock nine spaces below the actual John Hancock.

The Show spoke with Trevor Nelson earlier about his ancestor and how he thinks about that lineage — starting with a little bit about who Thomas Nelson Jr. was.

Full conversation

TREVOR NELSON: Yeah, so Thomas Nelson Jr. is a third-generation American. His grandfather came here from England. He was born in Yorktown, and he’s part of what’s considered Virginia’s First Families, or one of them. You know, honestly, in those times, these families were built on kind of the same European system. So he was being groomed to take places of power, and he was a leading merchant, businessman. He was in the House of Burgesses under the king, and he was a member of the Governor’s Council.

And then during the war, he was a brigadier general — well, he was a colonel first under the 2nd Virginia Infantry. And then he actually was elected to fill George Washington’s seat in the Second Continental Congress when Washington left to go command the Continental Army.

MARK BRODIE: And his time both sort of in the army and afterwards, it seems very interesting in doing some reading. It seems like he sort of put a lot on the line, both himself in the military, but also his finances, yeah?

TREVOR NELSON: He did, yeah. So there’s a lot of interesting ins and outs to this, but the short story is when he was — he was governor after Jefferson under British law — and then he ran his businesses, had enormous amounts of wealth, and gave a personal loan of around $2 million to help finance Virginia’s war costs. He actually offered money to the first cannonball that hit his home because he thought the officers had occupied the house. It’s still in Yorktown. You can go visit it. It has cannonballs in the side of it.

MARK BRODIE: Wow.

TREVOR NELSON: It’s pretty crazy. But that $2 million, and that was legit in the time $2 million, that’s not adjusted for now.

MARK BRODIE: That’s a lot of money.

TREVOR NELSON: A lot of money. And that was never repaid. But he died of asthma, they think, or they called it consumption. We’re not sure if it’s, you know, tuberculosis or just being fat and happy. We don’t know.

MARK BRODIE: So what does that lineage mean to you? I mean, as you say, you are related to somebody who signed the Declaration of Independence, which is not something a whole heck of a lot of people can say. I guess I’m curious, like as you were growing up and learning about him, what maybe did it mean to you then, and what does it mean to you now?

TREVOR NELSON: Well, I mean, when I was younger, it didn’t mean much. It was just kind of a family thing. I in fact, at one point, I thought it was just like family lore.

MARK BRODIE: Like you didn’t believe it?

TREVOR NELSON: Yeah, I just thought, oh, that’s kind of crazy. But, you know, when when I was older, I was taking AP Government in high school, and I mentioned this to my AP government teacher, and he was like, “Well, prove it.” So I, you know, got on the phone with my grandfather, and he’s like, “Oh, let me send you an enormous amount of documents.”

And that’s when I kind of started family history, tried to do a little more research. And sure enough, the majority of my extended family through my grandfather and like my cousins and stuff were all members of — there’s an association for signers or descendants of signers of the Declaration of Independence. And in order to get into that, you have to prove your lineage, which is kind of exciting.

And what that did is that spurred on in me in that conversation with my AP government teacher that there’s something bigger to this than just, “Oh, I’m learning about history.” Like it’s personal. For lack of a better metaphor, it’s in my blood.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

TREVOR NELSON: But what’s interesting about that, Mark, is it’s not — there’s a lot of us because there’s a lot of signers, and there’s a lot of descendants of signers. But it’s not just my story or my family’s story. This is an American story.

And what specifically like when I read about him, what he sacrificed and what he gave to the country is a story that I think we should all pay attention to. And, you know, he didn’t get a musical. There’s not a book written about him because he didn’t have a marketing firm after him. He wasn’t active. You know, he wasn’t like Jefferson went on to do bigger things. Washington, of course, is Washington.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

TREVOR NELSON: But, you know, Thomas went to cotillions and dances with Jefferson. But he also didn’t keep a lot of journals. He wasn’t a journaler. In terms of what that does for me is it made me kind of dig in a little deeper. And I think one of the bigger pieces it does for me is it helps me reflect on what it is they left behind. You know, he was a slave owner. That’s horrible. That’s a terrible thing.

But it’s not his whole legacy. He also put together and helped form a government built by imperfect men that is built to be changed. It’s built to be updated. It’s built to meet the modern times. That’s something that hadn’t been done before, and that’s why it’s still here 250 years later. And we’re seeing a lot of that friction right now, but that friction’s normal.

And we should remember, I think, that one of the core things of this whole experiment that we call America is that the power comes from people, comes from us, and we hold that ultimate power. That was revolutionary at the time. So those are things that help me reflect on that when I study about him and what does it mean to me, that’s what it means to me.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. So you mentioned his sacrifice, and I think in modern times, when we talk about sacrifice, it’s very often the military comes up, you know, people sacrificing, you know, to join the armed services or maybe as first responders. But it seems like Thomas Nelson Jr. had kind of a different type of sacrifice. And I wonder how you reflect on that, given sort of where we are right now.

TREVOR NELSON: Yeah, I think for I can’t speak for him, obviously, and he didn’t leave a lot of records, but some of the stuff that he did very much talk about is that he emboldened in me as his descendant, and I think people can learn from this, is that sacred honor meant something. His money, his fortune, his land, his time, his sacred honor meant something.

And that cost him very specifically money, it cost him his life. He’s one of these men who served in the government, for better or for worse, until he wore himself out. And that’s a level of sacrifice that I think that we should all think about when we think about America.

And that’s why people like members of the armed services are put on that pedestal, because it is a sacred honor they’re putting their lives on the line. You know, he fought in the battles. He was leading men, he was leading the Virginia militia to fight against tyranny. And I think that’s a that’s something we should all reflect on.

And that’s something I think, since the power derives from us, we should show up to these town halls, we should show up to the city council meetings, we should show up in the Legislature, we should vote. We shouldn’t take for granted this amazing privilege we have to live in a country that at the same time it’s so broken, is so fixable, and it just takes us to just lean in and give a care.

MARK BRODIE: When you think about your five-times-great-grandfather, are there other people, either currently or through history in public life, that kind of remind you of him?

TREVOR NELSON: Not specifically, but I think I see snippets of it. I see men and women who who take their role in our society seriously, and they serve and they give their time. But I don’t have one specific because I don’t feel like there’s there’s very few like him because he never got any payback. There was no We learn in like the "Hamilton" musical that they built this huge financial system and paid back the states. He was he was dead before that ever happened, and his family didn’t get any, you know, they didn’t get any recourse for that $2 million or the other stuff that they did.

But it’s, no, I don’t I can’t think of an individual who does this, but I see it in different people. And actually, it’s one of the lenses I look at for who I vote for in a weird way. I want to look for that person who is serving, I want to look for that person who takes it seriously and isn’t just there to gaslight people or keep themselves in a position of power just to be in that position of power.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Trevor Nelson, author, among other things, of Won’t Fix report on Substack. We were talking about his five-times-great-grandfather, Thomas Nelson Jr. Trevor, thanks so much. It was nice to talk to you.

TREVOR NELSON: Thank you very much, Mark.