John Hancock

John Hancock was born on January 23, 1737, in Braintree, Massachusetts, in an area that is now part of Quincy. His father and grandfather were both ministers. The house no longer stands; its site is occupied by the former Adams Academy, now the headquarters of the Quincy Historical Society, which was built after John AdamsJohn AdamsJohn Adams (1735–1826) was the first vice president (1789–1797) and the second president (1797–1801) of the United States. Earlier he served in the Continental Congress, was a signer of the Treaty of Paris and became the first American minister to Great Britain.Open the full entry directed in his will that a school be erected there.⁠[1]

His mother was Mary Hawke Thaxter Hancock. His father died in 1744, leaving the family poor, and he was taken in by his childless uncle and aunt, Thomas and Lydia Hancock. Thomas Hancock, Boston’s wealthiest merchant, sent him to the Boston Latin School.⁠[2][3]

Hancock graduated from Harvard College in 1754 and then joined his uncle’s Boston trading firm, the House of Hancock, becoming a full partner in 1763.⁠[4][3]

When Thomas Hancock died in August 1764, John Hancock inherited the firm, his uncle’s mansion, two or three enslaved people and thousands of acres of land, becoming the firm’s sole owner. The Beacon Hill mansion, built by Joshua Blanchard for Thomas Hancock between 1734 and 1737, remained John Hancock’s home for the rest of his life.⁠[2][5]

In 1765 Hancock became a selectman of Boston. During the economic depression that year he offered trusted employees the chance to run branches of the House of Hancock, which the Commonwealth Museum describes as possibly America’s first business franchise.⁠[4][6]

He joined the boycotts against the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts. In 1766, after the Stamp Act was repealed, he won a seat in the Massachusetts colonial assembly.⁠[7][2]

In 1768 British customs officials seized Hancock’s sloop Liberty and charged him with smuggling and evading duties on imported wine. The charges were dropped after a highly publicized trial in which John Adams defended him.⁠[7][2][8]

After the Boston Massacre in 1770, Hancock chaired the Boston town committee that demanded the removal of British troops from the city. In 1773 he moderated the town meeting on the Tea Act at Faneuil Hall, and on March 5, 1774, he delivered the oration commemorating the Boston Massacre there.⁠[4][7]

In 1774–1775 he was president of the first and second Massachusetts Provincial Congresses, sharing leadership of the colony’s Patriots with Samuel AdamsSamuel AdamsSamuel Adams (1722–1803) was a politician of the American Revolution and a leader of the Massachusetts radicals who organized resistance to British colonial taxes and troops, served as a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1781, signed the Declaration of Independence and later became lieutenant governor and governor of Massachusetts.Open the full entry. On December 1, 1774, he was elected a delegate to the Second Continental Congress.⁠[4][2]

In April 1775 Hancock and Samuel Adams were guests of the Reverend Jonas Clarke at his parsonage in Lexington, now known as the Hancock-Clarke House. In the early hours of April 19, Paul Revere arrived from Boston and woke them with his warning that British troops were coming.⁠[9]

Warned that troops sent by General Thomas Gage were seeking him, Hancock left Lexington with Samuel Adams for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.⁠[4]

On May 24, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting at the Pennsylvania State House, unanimously elected Hancock its president. The Commonwealth Museum notes that his wealth, lifestyle and business experience appealed to the wealthy merchants and planters in Congress, and that he was an experienced moderator from the Boston Town Meeting and the colonial legislature.⁠[10]

Hancock had hoped to be named commander in chief of the Continental Army, but Congress chose George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington (1732–1799) was the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. Earlier he commanded the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787.Open the full entry. He presided over Congress until October 1777 and returned to Massachusetts that year, rejoining Congress briefly in 1778; he was a member of the Continental Congress from 1775 to 1780.⁠[4][7]

On August 28, 1775, Hancock married Dorothy Quincy, his fiancée of seven years, at Thaddeus Burr’s home, the Burr Homestead, in Fairfield, ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry; the Reverend Andrew Eliot, minister of Fairfield’s Congregational Church, officiated.⁠[11]

On July 2, 1776, Congress voted for independence, and on July 4 the delegates approved the text of the Declaration of Independence. On August 2 the delegates began signing the handwritten copy, now on display at the National Archives; Hancock signed first, in bold letters. Whether he remarked that King George III could read his signature without spectacles is doubtful.⁠[12]

In January 1777 Mary Katherine Goddard printed a version that revealed the signers’ names for the first time. Hancock did not sign copies for every state, but he signed one for Massachusetts.⁠[12]

In 1780 Hancock was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention and was elected governor the same year, becoming the first governor elected under the state constitution ratified in 1780.⁠[4][5]

He rode to his inauguration in a golden chariot, wearing a red velvet coat with gold trim and buttons, escorted by the Corps of Cadets with fifty riders in front and fifty behind. In a later address to the legislature he called for re-establishing public schools, raising teachers’ salaries, supporting Harvard College and aiding widows and orphans.⁠[13]

Hancock announced his retirement as governor in 1785 and then served in the Congress of the Confederation until 1786. His successor, James Bowdoin, faced Shays’ Rebellion, an uprising of destitute farmers in western Massachusetts; the rebellion was suppressed, but Bowdoin’s popularity fell sharply.⁠[7][4][14]

Hancock was elected governor again in 1787. He pardoned the rebels, reasoning that farmers could never repay their debts from a jail cell, whereas Samuel Adams had favored executing the rebellion’s leaders.⁠[14]

In 1788 Hancock presided over the Massachusetts convention that ratified the federal Constitution. Initially cool toward the Constitution and unclear in his position, and often absent because of ill health, he came to support ratification while tying his support to calls for a bill of rights; the Commonwealth Museum judges his decision important in securing Massachusetts’s approval.⁠[4][15]

Re-elected governor that year, he chose Samuel Adams as his running mate for lieutenant governor despite their past disagreements; Adams later succeeded him as governor.⁠[16]

In his last months Hancock was too weak to address the legislature and sat to the side while his message was read. Three weeks later, on October 8, 1793, he died at home during his ninth term as governor, and he received a grand funeral.⁠[16][4][5]

He was buried in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground, where his tomb is marked by an elaborately decorated obelisk. Established in 1660, the burying ground also holds Declaration signers Samuel Adams and Robert Treat Paine, Paul Revere and others.⁠[7][17][18]

Hancock and Dorothy Quincy had two children: a daughter, Lydia Henchman Hancock, born in 1776, who died ten months later, and a son, John George Washington Hancock, born in 1778, who died in 1787.⁠[11]

Dorothy Quincy’s family home stood a few hundred yards from Hancock’s birthplace, and the city of Quincy takes its name from her family. After Hancock’s death she remarried in 1796; she died on February 3, 1830, at the age of 82.⁠[19][11]

Hancock was known for luxury in the 1760s, wearing silk-velvet suits and furnishing his household with imported goods, and later earned the nickname “King Hancock.” He provided food and firewood for the poor, paid for the release of everyone held in debtors’ prison, and bought Boston’s first fire engine.⁠[3][6]

The Commonwealth Museum’s exhibit judges that Hancock kept his popularity despite his conspicuous wealth and compares him with Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, the only president elected four times; he led the country through the Great Depression and World War II and greatly expanded the federal government’s role through the New Deal.Open the full entry, another leader born into wealth whose programs aided the needy during the Great Depression, describing both in terms of “noblesse oblige.”⁠[20]

John Singleton Copley’s 1765 oil portrait of Hancock, painted at the Beacon Hill mansion, passed to his widow in 1793, probably went to the City of Boston around 1830 and hung in Faneuil Hall, and has been deposited by the city at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, since 1876.⁠[3]

Most of the Hancock estate was later bought by the Massachusetts government as the site of the new State House; the mansion stood where the State House’s West Wing is now. The land was sold in February 1863; the family’s offer to move the building for $12,000 was rejected, and the house was sold on June 16, 1863, for $230 and demolished within ten days.⁠[5]

Hancock-Clarke House (Lexington History Museums): Official website: https://lexingtonhistory.org/hancockclarkehouse (opens in a new window).⁠[9]

Granary Burying Ground (City of Boston): Official website: https://boston.gov/node/3266 (opens in a new window).⁠[18]