"John Hancock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... started on a trip through the Northern States, pointedly avoiding Rhode Island, then a foreign country. It was during this tour that a question of etiquette occurred about which there was a great stir at the time. John Hancock, then Governor of Massachusetts, did not call upon Washington but wrote inviting Washington to stay at his house, and when this invitation was declined, he wrote again inviting the President to dinner en famille. Washington again declined, ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... Declaration was finally signed, and Liberty Bell proclaimed the fact to all within hearing. John Hancock, we are told, referred to his almost schoolboy signature with a smile, saying that John Bull could read his name without spectacles. Franklin is said to have remarked that they must all hang together, or else most assuredly ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... apprentice to a silver-smith in Boston, when we meet him just before the American Revolution. Casting the handle of a sugar basin for John Hancock, he seriously burns his right hand. He is crippled, the work that he loves must be given up—forever. Johnny goes through some hard and bitter times before he finds his work in the struggle that is to free the Colonies from British rule. The solution ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... refusal, and of violently detaining such possession, that he or they be immediately fined and imprisoned. This proclamation, says a peppery old chronicler, may well rank with the one excepting those arch traitors and rebels, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, from the mercy of the British monarch. In view of Dunmore's confidence in the validity of the Camden-Yorke decision, it is noteworthy that no mention of the royal proclamation of 1763 occurs in his broadside; and that he bases his objection to the Transylvania ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... quarters of General Washington were at that time in the house subsequently owned by Colonel Burr, and known as Richmond Hill. This invitation was accepted, and Major Burr occasionally rode out with the general, but very soon became restless and dissatisfied. He wrote to John Hancock, then president of Congress, and who had been an intimate friend of his father, that he was disgusted, and inclined to retire from the service. Governor Hancock objected, and asked him whether he would accept the appointment of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the new members thus elected met at the appointed time. They waited a whole day for the governor to attend, administer the oaths, and open the session; but as he did not make his appearance, they voted themselves a provincial Congress, and chose for president of it John Hancock,—a man of great wealth, popular, and somewhat showy talents, and ardent patriotism; and eminent ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... The people believed that John Hancock's uncle had bought an immense diamond at a low price, and sold it for its value,—he having grown rich with a rapidity inexplicable to them. The fact was, however, according to Hutchinson, that he made his fortune by smuggling tea in molasses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... was founded. The cartoon represents the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The worthies are standing about the table dressed in the knee breeches and flowing coats of the day, with wigs conventionally powdered and that stately bearing which characterizes the typical historical painting. John Hancock is seated at the table prepared to make his name immortal. A figure, however, has just appeared in the doorway. It is the cartoonist's conventional conception of the modern Captain of Industry. His silk hat is on the back of his head as if he had just come from his office as fast ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... in that chair. This was addressed to John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress. Our venerable colleague refers to Samuel Adams. After the battles of Concord and Lexington, Governor Gage offered pardon to all the rebels who would lay down their arms, excepting Samuel Adams and ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... labyrinths which your industrious folly has devised; and you, however you may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those whose deaths you have procured, at the tremendous bar of God. John Hancock. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... yellow silk with a rattlesnake upon it (see Drayton's American Revolution, Vol. II, page 172; see Fig. 10). No one can tell what became of this flag, yet it was placed in the hall of Congress in a conspicuous place near the seat of John Hancock. Some claim that it was this flag that Paul Jones hoisted on his ship, and others that it was taken South to Fort Moultrie. So therefore we have, as late as April, 1776, a navy of seventeen vessels, proper committees of Congress to look after them, a commander-in-chief, ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... discovered by intelligent citizens. Judge Sewall, ever thoughtful, wrote his protest to friends when he found advertisements of four lotteries in one issue of the Boston News Letter. Though I have seen lottery tickets signed by John Hancock, he publicly expressed his aversion to the system, and Joel Barker and others wrote in condemnation. By 1830 the whole community seemed to have wakened to a sense of their pernicious and unprofitable effect, and laws ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Q. whom John Hancock loved, and was visiting at Lexington, when Paul Revere warned him of the redcoats' approach. This Dorothy happened to be staying just then with the Reverend Jonas Clark, under the protection of Madam Lydia Hancock, the governor's aunt. ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the daughter of a Boston merchant, Col. Joseph May, and his wife, Dorothy Sewall, daughter of Samuel Sewall and his wife, Elizabeth Quincy, sister of Dorothy Quincy, wife of John Hancock. By the marriage of Joseph May and Dorothy Sewall, two very distinguished lines of ancestry had been united. Under her father's roof, Mrs. Alcott had enjoyed every comfort and the best of social advantages. ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach |
