minister to religious dissenters in Hanover County, Virginia. He eventually helped found the first presbytery in Virginia (the Presbytery of Hanover), evangelized slaves (remarkable in its time), and influenced young Patrick Henry who traveled with his mother to listen to sermons. Richmond was chartered as a town in 1742. By 1768, William Byrd III had squandered the family fortune and resorted to a public lottery to raise money for his debts. He auctioned off large lots of still-undeveloped Byrd family land in the Richmond region. Revolutionary War In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his famous "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" speech in what is now known as St. John's Church, during the Second Virginia Convention. This speech helped convince members of Virginia's House of Burgesses (that Governor Dunmore had tried to dissolve in Williamsburg the previous year) to pass a resolution delivering Virginia troops to what became the American Revolutionary War. Another year later, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, and the colonists' revolt became official (and Virginia's delegates in turn signed the resolution drafted by Thomas Jefferson upon a Virginia model). Jefferson became Virginia's governor during the war, although he had to flee British raiders and pass through Richmond several times. In 1780, Virginia's state capital was officially moved from Williamsburg to Richmond. During the war, British troops captured Williamsburg and often raided Virginia towns accessible by water (including Richmond). The worst raid to befall Richmond (a port city at the falls of the James River) occurred in 1781, when troops under the command of the turncoat Benedict Arnold burned Richmond and its neighboring port at Warwick. Yet Richmond recovered, and grew such that in May 1782, the Virginia General Assembly meeting in Richmond incorporated it as a city. In 1785, the General Assembly laid the cornerstone for the Virginia State Capitol, which Jefferson designed. Also that year, it chartered the James River Company, with soon-to-be U.S. President George Washington as its honorary corporate president, in part because Washington had advocated westward canal development. Development of the James River Canal (ultimately to connect to the Kanawha River across the Appalachian Mountains) ensued. This led to Richmond's further development as a commercial (and slave-trading) center. The first bridge across the James River, named Mayo's Bridge after the town's founder, was built in 1787. The General Assembly passed the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which Jefferson had drafted