Arthur Middleton died on September 17, 1737, at his South Carolina plantation, the Oaks. He had withdrawn from the acting governorship years earlier, leaving a final period more closely associated with his estates than with the daily administration of the colony. The surviving biographical account records the date of death and the substantial property he held, including 107 enslaved people, but does not identify a fatal disease, an accident, or a sequence of symptoms. His family and estate history therefore provides a clearer outline of the end of his life than any surviving medical narrative. He was still short of his fifty-sixth birthday, despite the rounded age of fifty-six sometimes given in summaries. His widow, Sarah, survived him. No dependable account of bedside attendance, treatment, last words, or the length of his final illness has been established in the material consulted. His grandson, the Declaration signer also named Arthur Middleton, belonged to a later generation; that man's Revolutionary experiences and death must not be assigned to this colonial official.