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Born on January 12, 1737, in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, John Hancock found his life altered by the death of his father in 1744. The following year young Hancock moved in with his affluent uncle, Thomas, who lived in Boston. This decision set Hancock's life on a course of wealth and privilege that afforded him the opportunity to be a generous public servant. His wealth and popularity in Boston made him a central figure in the American Revolutionary cause.

Educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard College, Hancock began to work for his uncle in the mid- 1750s. He spent the year 1760-1761 in England establishing business networks that no doubt helped when he took over his uncle's business a few years later. The same year that Hancock was put in charge of the House of Hancock, the events that eventually led to the separation of the colonies from Great Britain got under way with the Sugar Act of 1764. The subsequent Stamp Act (1765), Declaratory Act (1766), Townshend Revenue Act (1767), Boston Massacre (1770), Tea Act (1773), and finally the Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts (1774) brought tensions between the colonies and Great Britain to a head. Between 1764 and 1775 Boston became the epicenter of Revolutionary events in the power struggle between the colonies and Parliament. Hancock was at the center of that struggle as a private businessman who provided his funds when necessary and as a leader in an official capacity at both the local and state levels. When the Massachusetts General Court defiantly transformed itself into the Provincial Congress (1774), that Revolutionary body chose John Hancock as its president.

Hancock's name seemed always to be part of the Revolutionary controversy, whether it was when the British seized his ship Liberty in the late 1760s, when he delivered a fiery oration in 1774 commemorating the Boston Massacre of 1770 in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, when he became a target of British troops on that fateful April day in 1775 when the battles of Lexington and Concord became etched permanently in history, or when he sat as president of the Second Continental Congress and in that capacity was the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence. In fact, the British monarch perceived Hancock's role to be so central that King George III named him as one of only a few that the king would not pardon when or if the colonists came to their senses.

In 1780 Massachusetts approved its state constitution, and Hancock was elected the first governor of the Commonwealth. Hancock resigned the governorship in 1785 but was reelected to that position two years later and remained in it until his death. As governor he also served as the presiding officer at the state's ratifying convention. Hancock proved to be instrumental in persuading a divided convention to support the new federal Constitution, after suggesting a number of amendments. After years of poor health, Hancock died on October 8, 1793. For more than twenty years Hancock had been a committed public servant at the local, state, and national levels. He earned his credentials in the crucible of revolution, and he maintained them through war and government formation. When he died, Boston buried him like a hero.

References:

1. Brandes, Paul D. John Hancock's Life and Speeches: A Personalized Vision of the American Revolution, 1763-1793. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1996.

2. Fowler, William M., Jr. The Baron of Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

3. Jensen, Merrill, John P. Kaminski, and Gaspare J. Saladino, eds. The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Massachusetts, vol. 6. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 2000.

4. Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776. New York: W. W. Norton., 1991.

5. Ritter, Karl W., and James R. Andrews. The American Ideology: Reflections of the Revolution in American Rhetoric. Falls Church, Va.: Speech Communication Association, 1978.

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