John Hancock, 1737-93, was a patriot, statesman, and soldier who served as president of the Continental Congress from 1775 to 1777 and became the bold first signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was major-general of the Massachusetts militia in the Revolutionary War, a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1780, governor from 1780 to 1785 and again from 1787 to 1793, and he presided over the Massachusetts convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1788.