John Hancock

Hancock was born in Braintree, Massachusetts in a part of town which eventually became the separate city of Quincy, Massachusetts. His father died when he was young, and he was adopted by his paternal uncle—Thomas Hancock, a highly successful merchant in New England. After graduating from Boston Latin School, he attended Harvard University and received a business degree in 1754, when he was 17. Upon graduation, he worked for his uncle. From 1760–1764, Hancock lived in England while building relationships with customers and suppliers of his uncle's shipbuilding business. Shortly after his return from England, his uncle died and he inherited the fortune and business, making him the wealthiest man in New England at the time.

At first only a financier of the growing rebellion, he later became a public critic of British rule. On March 5, 1774, the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, he gave a speech strongly condemning the British. In the same year, he was unanimously elected president of the Provisional Congress of Massachusetts, and presided over its Committee of Safety. Under Hancock, Massachusetts raised bands of "minutemen"—soldiers who pledged to be ready for battle in a minute's notice—and his boycott of tea imported by the British East India Company eventually led to the Boston Tea Party.