Roger Sherman — The Great Compromiser, Only Signer of All Four Founding Documents

**Roger Sherman** is the most underrated of the founders — the only person to sign all four of the great state papers of the United States: the Continental Association (1774), the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Articles of Confederation (1778), and the Constitution (1787). Born in 1721 in Newton, Massachusetts, to a farming family, he was largely self-educated, apprenticed as a shoemaker, and walked 150 miles to New Milford, Connecticut as a young man with his cobbler's tools on his back. He taught himself law, surveying, and mathematics from books, was admitted to the bar, and built a career in Connecticut politics through sheer competence, reliability, and an unmatched talent for practical compromise.