Matlack, Timothy, 1736-1829

Timothy Matlack (March 28, 1736 – April 14, 1829) was a brewer and beer bottler who emerged as a popular and powerful leader in the American Revolutionary War, Secretary of Pennsylvania during the war, and a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1780. He became one of Pennsylvania's most provocative and influential political figures, but he was removed from office by his political enemies at the end of the war; however, he returned to power in the Jeffersonian era. Matlack was known for his excellent penmanship and was chosen to inscribe the original United States Declaration of Independence on vellum.

Born in Haddonfield in the Province of New Jersey, his family moved to Philadelphia in 1738. After attending Quaker schools, he was apprenticed to the prosperous Quaker merchant John Reynell in 1749. In 1760, Matlack opened a store called the Case Knife, and he and Owen Biddle purchased a steel furnace in Trenton, New Jersey in 1762. His shop failed in 1765, and he was disowned by the Quakers who complained that he had been "frequenting company in such a manner as to spend too much of his time from home". He was confined to debtors' prison in 1768 and 1769. By 1769, he had set up a new business selling bottled beer and opened his own brewery near Independence Hall.

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