John Hancock

Two deaths made him. His father, a Braintree minister, died in 1744, and the seven-year-old was sent up to Beacon Hill to live with a childless uncle who happened to be one of the wealthiest men in Boston. Thomas Hancock's firm shipped rum, whale oil and fish out and British manufactures in, and the nephew was groomed for it — Boston Latin, a Harvard degree in 1754, a year in England cultivating suppliers, a full partnership in January 1763. Then the uncle died in August 1764 and left him the House of Hancock, the mansion, thousands of acres, and the two or three enslaved people who worked in the household.

Customs officers seized his sloop Liberty on June 10, 1768, and the riot that followed helped bring troops into Boston. John Adams defended him through a five-month admiralty proceeding the Crown abandoned without explanation. Whether Hancock smuggled at all is still argued — no documentation of it has ever been found. Selectman, then the Massachusetts House, then the Provincial Congress, then the chair of the Second Continental Congress from May 1775, where he signed the engrossed Declaration on August 2, 1776. BriefHistory has the signature and the rebellion it announced. What is left over is the man the signature buried.

He buried both his children. Lydia, born in 1776, lived ten months. John George Washington Hancock took a head injury while ice skating and died in 1787, at eight. The rest of the record runs smaller than the reputation. He took the field exactly once, nominally commanding 6,000 Massachusetts militiamen at Newport in August 1778, and when the French fleet sailed off his militia went home. He had been Harvard's treasurer since 1773, holding roughly 15,000 pounds of the college's money, and after Harvard replaced him he spent years refusing to settle the account. He died still owing it. His heirs paid down the principal and then declined to pay the compound interest.

The signature outlived the man and stood in for him. The story that he wrote large so George III could read it unaided surfaced years later, and there was no ceremonial signing on July 4 at all. Boston let the rest go. John Adams complained in 1809 that Hancock was nearly forgotten, the Beacon Hill house came down in 1863 after both the city and the legislature declined to keep it, and the grave went unmarked until a column rose in the Granary Burying Ground in 1896. James Truslow Adams finished the job in the 1930s with sketches drawn almost entirely from Hancock's enemies. Donald Proctor and Charles Akers argued for a rehearing in the 1970s, and historians granted it.

John Hancock's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Massacre Day oration speech
  Delivered March 5 and reprinted across the colonies 1774
• Signature on the engrossed Declaration of Independence other
  Signed August 2 — there was no ceremony on July 4 1776
• Articles of Confederation law
  Signed July 9 with the other Massachusetts delegates 1778
• Pardon of the Shays rebels other
  Issued on his return to the governorship 1787
• Massachusetts ratifying convention other
  He presided and spoke for ratification — the vote was 187 to 168 1788

• 1744 aged ~7 His father dies and he is sent to his uncle on Beacon Hill
• August 1764 aged 27 Inherits the House of Hancock and becomes one of the richest men in the colonies The estate included the mansion, thousands of acres, and enslaved household workers freed under his uncle's will.
• June 10, 1768 aged 31 Customs officers seize his sloop Liberty and Boston riots John Adams defended him. The Crown dropped the case after nearly five months without explanation.
• April 19, 1775 aged 38 Paul Revere reaches Lexington near midnight to warn him and Samuel Adams Gage's later pardon proclamation excepted the two of them by name.
• May 24, 1775 aged 38 Elected president of the Second Continental Congress
• August 28, 1775 aged 38 Marries Dorothy Quincy at Fairfield, Connecticut
• October 1780 aged 43 Elected the first governor of Massachusetts with over 90 percent of the vote
• 1787 aged ~50 His surviving child dies at eight of a skating injury
• October 8, 1793 aged 56 Dies in bed at Hancock Manor at 56 Acting governor Samuel Adams made the day of the burial a state holiday.

• Samuel Adams 1722–1803
  Revolutionary organizer who helped mobilize resistance to British rule and build support for independence. mentor, later estranged
• John Adams 1735–1826
  Second President and key Founding Father who helped secure independence and shaped early American diplomacy. defended by
• Paul Revere 1735–1818
  Silversmith and engraver whose Boston Massacre print and 1775 ride carried Revolutionary messaging. warned by
• George Washington 1732–1799
  First President of the United States and commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. named his only son for him
• Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826
  Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President who oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. signed what he drafted