John Hancock
![Portrait by [[John Singleton Copley]], {{circa|1770–1772}}](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/John_Hancock_1770-crop.jpg)
Before the American Revolution, Hancock was one of the wealthiest men in the Thirteen Colonies, having inherited a profitable mercantile business from his uncle. He began his political career in Boston as a protégé of Samuel Adams, an influential local politician, though the two men later became estranged. Hancock used his wealth to support the colonial cause as tensions increased between colonists and Great Britain in the 1760s. He became very popular in Massachusetts, especially after British officials seized his sloop ''Liberty'' in 1768 and charged him with smuggling. Those charges were eventually dropped; he has often been described as a smuggler in historical accounts, but the accuracy of this characterization has been questioned. Provided by Wikipedia