Hancock was orphaned as a child and adopted by his uncle Thomas, who was a wealthy merchant and who was childless. Thomas Hancock’s enterprise was a conglomerate that included retailing, wholesaling, importing, exporting, warehousing, ship and wharf ownership, investment banking, and real estate investing. John apprenticed as a clerk and proved so capable that, in 1760, he was sent on a business mission to England. There he witnessed the coronation of George III and engaged some of the leading businessmen of London. The house of Hancock supplied British forces in the French and Indian War. In 1764, his uncle died and John inherited what was said to be the greatest fortune in New England. This placed him in a society of men who who would later consist mainly of loyalists, but he soon became involved in revolutionary politics and was known as a friend to John and Samuel Adams. Hancock was a member of the Stamp Act Congress in 1766 and in 1768 emerged as a popular hero for his resistance to the Townshend duties. The seizure of his ship Liberty provoked a riot in Boston and admiring patriots celebrated when efforts to prosecute him failed. Hancock was elected to the legislature the following year and later abetted the Boston Tea Party. In 1774, he was elected to the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts and simultaneously to the Continental Congress. When Peyton Randolph resigned from that body in 1776, Hancock assumed the position of President, which he held when the Declaration of Independence was passed and signed.
Each ship that sailed in the Colonial era required a bill of lading from the shipper describing its cargo and affirming its mission and destination. This partly printed and partly Autograph Document Signed in the text, Boston, August 3, 1771, is a rare memento of the Hancock merchant house. “Shipped by the Grace of God, in good order and well conditioned by John Hancock, upon the good brig called the Paoli, where of is master under God for the present voyage, Isaac Cazneau, and now riding at anchor in the harbor of Boston, and by God’s grace bound for London, to say Thirty nine cask of white sperm oil, Eight hundred &_fifty five barrels of tar, Thirty eight hundred of white oak barrell staves, & Nineteen barrells of potash...to be delivered in the like good order and well conditioned at the aforesaid Port of London...unto Mesrs Hayley &_Hopkins there...and so God send the good sloop to her desired Port of Safety, Amen.” Captain Cazneau has signed the document at the end. Cazneau was so trusted by Hancock that when the British occupied Boston in 1775, he left the captain the keys to his house with a request that he look after it.
We do not recall seeing another such document from the house of Hancock prior to our acquisition of this one, which is written out and signed by John.