HERE LIES JOHN HANCOCK

John Hancock’s audacious autograph on the Declaration of Independence led to the phrase “put your John Hancock here” when signing a document. Now let’s find out where they put the real John Hancock, along with a few other Founding Fathers…and Mother Goose. Here’s the third part of our story about where America’s Founding Fathers are buried. (Part II is on page 274.)

WAYWARD SON

Here’s a trick question: Which Founding Father is buried at Hancock Cemetery? Answer: None of them. Even though Hancock Cemetery was named after his father, Reverend Colonel John Hancock Jr., John Hancock III (1737–93) never had much of an attachment to his birthplace of Braintree, Massachusetts. Hancock was only seven when the reverend died, so he was raised by his rich uncle in nearby Boston, where he later attended Harvard College and then took over his uncle’s mercantile business.

When relations with King George III started breaking down in the 1760s, most of Boston’s elite sided with the British. But Hancock, along with his friend, fellow Bostonian Samuel Adams, joined the fight for independence. In 1774, with Adams’s help, Hancock became president of the Massachusetts Provisional Congress, and soon after became president of the First and Second Continental Congresses—the legislative body that declared the colonies’ independence from England.

As president of the Continental Congress, Hancock was the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence. As he inked his fancy, six-square-inch signature, he proclaimed to everyone in the room, “There, I guess King George will be able to read that!” (Sounds of laughter.)

MYTH-MAKERS

That anecdote fits right in with Hancock’s reputation for flaunting his wealth and always speaking his mind. But did he really say that? No one knows what he said on July 4. Or maybe it was the 2nd, or the 6th…or maybe August? Most of these tales-turned-school-lessons (like George Washington’s cherry tree and Abe Lincoln’s log cabin) weren’t even written down until decades after the subjects had died.

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed by 59 patriots on July 4, 1776, but that’s how it’s been portrayed in countless history books and paintings. Congress actually voted for Independence on July 2 (that’s the date many of the Founding Fathers thought should be a holiday). The final draft wasn’t approved until July 4, which is when the broadsheet was sent to the printer. That’s why it says on top, “IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.” Only a few men were on hand to sign it; the first was John Hancock, and his words were not recorded. (We still find it humorous that in King George’s diary, he noted that “nothing important” happened on July 4, 1776.) It wasn’t until August that most of the other signers put their John Hancocks on the document. (Hancock may or may not have said his famous quote that day.)

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And while we’re at it, July 4, 1776, isn’t really the nation’s birthday: the Declaration of Independence was just that, a declaration stating that the colonies were breaking away from England. The nation wasn’t “founded” until the U.S. Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788. None of this diminishes Hancock’s role as a Founding Father, nor would it be the last tall tale associated with him.

LAID TO REST

In 1780 Hancock was elected the first governor of Massachusetts and served in the position on and off for the next 10 years. By the early 1790s, he was more figurehead than governor, and his health was failing fast. He’d had severe gout—a painful arthritic condition—since he was 36. He was only in his mid-50s, but he looked and felt like a much older man. He succumbed to the disease in October 1793, becoming one of the first of the signers to die. His body was kept in Hancock Manor (on Beacon Hill in Boston) for a week.

Samuel Adams took over as governor and declared Hancock’s funeral a state holiday. The largest crowd that had ever gathered in Boston up to that point—20,000 people—paid their respects as Hancock’s body was taken through the city from the State House to Granary Burying Ground. His lead coffin was placed inside a tomb along a long brick wall. A white marble slab with his name on it was attached to the wall.

Why the Old Granary? Anybody who was anybody in Boston was interred there. In addition to Hancock, you can also visit the markers of Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Robert Treat Pine (another signer), Benjamin Franklin’s parents (but not Franklin himself), five colonists who were killed in the Boston Massacre, and Mary “Mother” Goose (not the original Mother Goose herself, but the mother-in-law of a publisher of Mother Goose books). Also buried there is Samuel Sewall, one of the judges during the Salem witch hunts of the 1690s. Sewall later wrote an “article of penitence,” begging forgiveness for his part in the hysteria.

TWO FEET UNDER

Unlike typical graveyards, burying grounds are just what they sound like. A single grave or tomb can contain several people, even from different families. And not all these graves were given proper markers. Boston’s third-oldest cemetery (after the first two filled up), the Old Granary was established next to a grain storage building in the 1660s on what was basically swampland. Because of the area’s low water table, the graves had to be quite shallow—most are less than two feet belowground. It wasn’t uncommon after heavy rainfall for bones to find their way to the surface. (As recently as 2009, an unfortunate tourist fell through the dirt and landed waist-deep into a previously unknown crypt.)

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By the time Hancock was laid to rest there in 1793, the burying ground was already overcrowded. Over the next century, as the city of Boston rose up around it, the Old Granary went through several renovations. Graves were rearranged and rows were straightened to make room for sidewalks. Unless a family could afford to replace their crumbing headstone, whoever was buried beneath it would be lost to history. Out of the estimated 5,000 to 8,000 people who were buried at the Old Granary, less than a third of them were even given proper gravestones in the first place.

THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY

Though a household name today, John Hancock was largely forgotten after his death. That was pretty much the case for every Founding Father whose name wasn’t George Washington. Admiration for Washington, the Revolutionary War hero and nation’s first president—even by his sworn enemies—was almost universal. In the 1800s, as the only man equally admired in the North and the South, he came to embody all the Founding Fathers. Because John Hancock’s fame faded so quickly after his passing, no care was taken to preserve his legacy. In 1809 John Adams lamented that both Hancock and Samuel Adams had been “buried in oblivion.” By 1863 Hancock wasn’t even famous enough for his house on Beacon Street to be saved.

PUBLIC RELATIONS DISASTER

Then came the centennial. Observance of the nation’s 100th anniversary in 1876 sparked a renewed interest in all of the Founding Fathers. And Boston, a city that played a large role in the country’s formation, saw a huge jump in tourism. That created a problem at the Old Granary. Over the next two decades, as historical plaques and markers honoring Boston’s forgotten heroes started popping up all over the city, no one knew exactly where Hancock’s body was.

Not helping matters was an 1886 account by a local historian named Edwin M. Bacon. In Bacon’s Dictionary of Boston, he wrote that, back in the 1860s, when construction workers were building a new basement in a building on neighboring Park Street, they removed a high wall across the street to let more light in:

In tearing down the old wall, the tomb of John Hancock must have been broken into, as the wall formed one side of it, so there is no proof that even his body remains there. The body was inclosed in a lead coffin: who knows but this may have been converted into water pipes, or used up in various plumbing operations?

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If Bacon’s account is true, then it’s most likely that the workers threw all of the human remains—including Hancock’s—in the trash.

And that’s not Bacon’s only Hancock tale. He also wrote that not long after Hancock was laid to rest, grave robbers dug up the Founding Father and tried to pry the expensive rings off his fingers, but they were so bloated by rigor mortis (the fingers, not the robbers) that the rings wouldn’t budge. So the robbers removed Hancock’s hands instead. If this did indeed happen, then Bacon was the first to write about it…80 years later.

THERE HE IS!

True or not, stories like that only added to the Founding Fathers’ lore, and as Hancock was finally starting to get the credit he deserved, it would be advantageous for Old Granary officials to determine where he was. In early 1895, plans were announced for a new monument to be erected at his grave site. That August, the Boston Globe reported that workers renovating the site had located Hancock’s intact coffin, and it would be securely reburied underneath a massive granite obelisk in the Old Granary. The monument went up quickly, but other than that one newspaper article, there is no record of Hancock’s body ever being found. The only way to know for sure if he’s actually buried there would be to exhume the grave and look for a skeleton (with or without any hands), and there are no plans for that to happen.

THE OBELISK

If you’d like to see Hancock’s grave, it’s not hard to miss. Like his famous signature, the stone monument—with a flattering portrait of the statesman etched into its side—dwarfs all the other markers around it. In fact, it’s the third-largest obelisk in the entire burying ground. And even though it wasn’t erected until a century after he died, it’s a good bet that Hancock would be impressed. (Of course, he would also be impressed by the 790-foot John Hancock Tower, which has been Boston’s tallest building since the bicentennial.)

There are several other graves surrounding Hancock’s (which you have to stand on when looking at his obelisk). One of the markers is for Hancock’s wife, Dorothy, who died 37 years after him. Another nearby headstone marks the grave of…

FRANK

Servant to

JOHN HANCOCK ESQR.

lied interr’d here

who died 23d Jan

1771

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As a testament to Hancock’s wealth and power, Frank is one of the few African Americans ever interred in the Old Granary. Another was Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave who was the first African American killed in the Revolutionary War.

HERE LIES LONGFELLOW

John Hancock isn’t even the most visited grave at the Old Granary. That accolade goes to Paul Revere (1735–1818), the silversmith who, in 1775, rode his horse all over Massachusetts in a single night and warned his compatriots that the British were coming. That’s according to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”…which altered some key details. For one, it didn’t take one rider one night but several riders several days to spread the news of the impending British invasion. Because Longfellow’s story happens to be the most popular one, that’s how most people think it happened. The poet wasn’t trying to give a history lesson, though, he was creating a fictionalized account of history to serve his own purpose—a warning against the impending Civil War.

Thanks to scores of historians over the centuries who have studied that fateful ride, what we do know is that if Paul Revere—along with fellow patriots William Dawes, Samuel Prescott, and others whose names are lost to history—hadn’t warned John Hancock and Samuel Adams about the impending invasion, the wanted men would probably have been captured and hanged for treason. However, it did take a bit of prodding by Revere when Hancock refused to retreat. “If I had my musket,” said Hancock, “I would never turn my back on these troops.” But Revere did convince him to leave, and two years later, John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence.

THE OLD GRANARY TODAY

The Beantown Pub, located across from the Old Granary on Tremont Street, is probably the only place you can drink a Sam Adams Lager while looking out at the grave of Samuel Adams. His marker is a large rock, about four feet high, with a green plaque that dates to 1898 (nearly a century after his death). Located steps away from a subway station, the Old Granary receives about 3,000 visitors every day. It’s one of the most popular spots on the Freedom Trail, which consists of 16 historical sites between Boston Common and the Bunker Hill Monument.

Can’t make it to the Old Granary yourself? You can visit it virtually on Google Earth, where you can see markers on the graves of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Paul Revere…whose remains may or may not be with their headstones.

Our tour of the Founding Fathers’ final resting places takes us next to Philadelphia, where the Liberty Bell isn’t the only famous piece of history with a crack in it. Off to page 387.

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