Thomas Stone, a descendant of the third colonial governor of Maryland, was born in 1743 at Poynton Manor in Charles County. He studied law, was admitted to the bar, and set up practice in Frederick. Stone married Margaret Brown (b. 1751) in 1768 and returned to Charles County three years later. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, he served in the Second Continental Congress and the Maryland Senate. Shortly after his wife’s demise in June 1787, a grieving Stone declined to attend the Constitutional Convention, to which he had been elected.