Summary
Francis Hopkinson was a biting critic of British policies , and he signed the Declaration on August 2, 1776. His home was looted several times during the war.
Francis Hopkinson | Signer of the Declaration of Independence
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Biography
Francis Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia, the oldest of eight children of Thomas Hopkinson, a prominent political figure in the city. Thomas died when Francis was 14, but his mother, Mary Johnson Hopkinson, was determined to ensure that her son had a good education. Toward this end, she enrolled him in the brand new College of Philadelphia [later the University of Pennsylvania] when he was 16, making him a member of the college’s first class of students. He went on to earn an M.A. degree there, and then to read law with Benjamin Chew, the Attorney-General of the colony.
Hopkinson was admitted to the bar in 1761, but over the next 6 or 7 years, his career floundered. When his law practice failed to grow, he took a position as Customs Collector for the town of Salem, New Jersey. At the same time, he tried his hand at business, but with disappointing results. Unhappy, he sailed to England in 1766 in search of a better opportunity, but he was disappointed in that effort and returned home the following year. In modern parlance, Francis had not found his footing. He would do so on the eve of the Revolution.
In 1768, he married Ann Borden, daughter of a prominent New Jersey leader. He moved to Bordentown in 1774 and, from there, entered political life, becoming an assemblyman for New Jersey’s Royal Provincial Council. However, by that time he was already a biting critic of British policies and of the King himself. In the same year he took his seat on the Royal Provincial Council, he wrote a satire about King George III entitled A Pretty Story and composed other propaganda against British rule. He soon resigned his Crown appointment in favor of serving as a delegate to represent New Jersey at the Second Continental Congress. He voted for Richard Henry Lee’s resolution declaring the colonies free and independent states and signed the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776.
Like many of the leaders of the rebellion against Britain, Hopkinson became a target of the British military and of local Loyalists. His home in Bordentown was looted several times. As he told Benjamin Franklin, “I have suffered much by the Invasion of the Goths & Vandals…the Savages plundered me to their Hearts’ content—but I do not repine, as I really esteem it an honour to have suffered in my Country’s Cause in Support of the Rights of human Nature and of civil Society.
Hopkinson did not cut a fine figure among his fellow patriots. In fact, John Adams described Hopkinson to his wife Abigail with notably cruel humor. Hopkinson was, he told her, “one of your pretty little, curious, ingenious Men. His Head is not bigger, than a large Apple….I have not met with any Thing in natural History much more amusing and entertaining, than his personal Appearance.”
Although John Adams found Hopkinson to have a head like an apple, it was a head filled with musical creativity. Hopkinson was an accomplished organist and a harpsichordist, and, as early as 1759, he had composed a song, “My Days Have Been so Wondrous Free,” that is considered the earliest surviving American secular composition. In 1788, in the dedication to the composition of Seven Songs, he proudly declared, “I cannot, I believe, be refused the Credit of being the first Native of the United States who has produced a Musical Composition.” He was an inventor as well, producing a new musical instrument, the Bellarmonic, whose tones of metal balls he used in his compositions. He is believed to have designed the first American flag.
Hopkinson was also a strong supporter of the Constitution and its ratification. In September of 1789, President George Washington appointed him a district court judge for Pennsylvania, a position he held until his death from apoplexy two years later.
