10/08/2026
Putting your "John Hancock" on a document is another term for signing your name. The synonym is from the President of the Second Continental Congress, John Hancock, placing his name prominently on the document. On October 8, 1793 John Hancock died, having been an American merchant, and serving his state and nation as the first and third Governor of Massachusetts, President of Congress and the first delegate signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Putting your "John Hancock" on a document is another term for signing your name. The synonym is from the President of the Second Continental Congress, John Hancock, placing his name prominently on the document. On October 8, 1793 John Hancock died, having been an American merchant, and serving his state and nation as the first and third Governor of Massachusetts, President of Congress and the first delegate signer of the Declaration of Independence.
John Hancock was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1737. He graduated at Harvard College, in 1754, at the age of seventeen, with no particular marks of distinction.
On leaving college, he entered the counting-room of his uncle, one of the wealthiest merchants of Boston, where he remained six years.
He then went to Europe, and returned, after four years' absence, to enter upon the immense fortune of his uncle, who, dying, had made him his heir.
In 1766, at a political meeting to nominate a candidate to the Legislature of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams, desirous of enlisting in the cause of the people, the great estate and influential name of John Hancock, nominated friend of his country. Indeed, he made himself so prominent in the politics of the day, that he was in danger of prosecution for treason.
In 1768, one of his sloops, laden with w**e, from Madeira, was seized by the Government, on a pretext of false entry. A mob collected, and pelted the officers with stones, broke the windows of their residences, and seized a boat belonging to the collector of the port, which they dragged to the Common, and burned.
This was the first serious disturbance which had occurred in America growing out of the events preceding the Revolution.
It made a prodigious noise in the world, and gave a great prominence to the name of John Hancock.
In 1774 he was elected a member of the Continental Congress, and was chosen President of that body. That year he delivered an oration, on the anniversary of the Boston massacre, which established his reputation as a true friend of the country.
In 1776, as President of Congress, he placed his name at the head of that immortal paper which declaimed to the world our Independence, where it stands in that round, striking hand, which exhibits a bold and fearless spirit, and a resolution never to subscribe to any compromise with tyranny or oppression.
Mr, Hancock was blessed with a pleasing person, winning address, and possessed great wealth. Staking everything on the die of the Revolution, he became one of the most popular leaders of that glorious struggle, and one of the most obnoxious to the Tory authorities.
In 1780 he was chosen first Governor, under the new Constitution, of his native State, which office he continued to hold (with the exception of two years) until his death, in October, 1793, at the age of fifty-five.
Possessed of ample means, Governor Hancock lived in a style of princely magnificence, and Ids abode was the ne plus ultra of a noble and brilliant hospitality. His door was never shut on the people, and the poor were never sent empty-handed or in sorrow from his door.
At his table might be seen all classes, from grave and dignified clergy down to the gifted in song, narrative, anecdote, and wit.
Biographies of Two Hundred and Fifty Distinguished National Men, by Horatio Bateman, Vol. 1, 1871.
Image: John Hancock, by John Singleton Copley, 1765. At the bottom is his signature from the Declaration of Independence.
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