Dr. Lyman Hall, a graduate of Yale University, is one of two signers of the Declaration of Independence buried beneath the Signers' Monument in front of the Municipal Building.

He was born in Wallingford, Conn., on April 12, 1724 and originally was a minister. He was dismissed as a congregational pastor in Fairfield, Conn., for "immorality." The details of his indiscretion have been obscured by time. He switched from theology to medicine and moved to Charleston, S.C., about 1756.

He was granted land in Georgia in 1760 and established a plantation near Midway, between Savannah and Brunswick. He also built a home in nearby Sunbury, Ga.

In 1776, he was a member of the Continental Congress who signed the Declaration of Independence. Both his Midway plantation house and Sunbury home were burned by the British.

After the Revolutionary War, he became governor of Georgia in 1783. He pushed the Georgia General Assembly to create seminars of learning, which led to the founding of the University of Georgia.

His final years were spent in Savannah, but he moved in 1790 to a plantation at Shell Bluff in Burke County near Waynesboro, overlooking the Savannah River. There he died on Oct. 19 of that year. His remains were moved in 1848 to the Signers' Monument on Greene Street.