John Hanson was an American businessman and politicain. He served also as treasurer of Frederick County, Maryland, in 1775.
Background
John Hanson was born on April 13, 1721, in Port Tobacco, Maryland, United States, the son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Story) Hanson. He was descended from Roger de Rastrick, who was living in Yorkshire, England, in the middle of the thirteenth century. A descendant married a connection of the Swedish royal family; and his son became an officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus. In 1642 four sons of this soldier were sent by Queen Christina to the New World in the care of John Printz, governor of New Sweden. They removed from Tinicum Island, in the Delaware River, to Kent Island, Maryland, in 1653, and about three years later the youngest of the four, John Hanson, established the family in Charles County. His son, Samuel, was elected a member of the General Assembly of Maryland in 1716 and 1728, and served his county as sheriff, commissary, clerk, and member of the board of visitors of the county school.
Career
John Hanson entered public life in 1757 as a representative of Charles County in the Assembly, and served nearly every year from 1757 to 1773, when he removed to Frederick County. Under the influence of that progressive frontier section of the province he continued to serve in the Assembly until his election, in 1779, as a delegate to the Continental Congress. Hanson was a member of the committee of the legislature which drafted instructions to the Maryland delegates to the Stamp-Act Congress in New York (1765). He signed the non-importation agreement of Maryland, which was adopted June 22, 1769, at a meeting of county committees as a protest against the Townshend Acts.
Hanson was chairman of the meeting in Frederick County which in June 1774 passed resolutions to stop all trade with Great Britain and the West Indies until the Acts of Parliament blockading the Port of Boston were repealed. As a member of the Maryland Convention, he signed July 26, 1775, the Association of the Freemen of Maryland which approved the use of arms to repel British troops. As chairman of the Committee of Observation, first for all Frederick County and subsequently for the Middle District, Hanson was active in raising troops and providing arms and ammunition. He was one of a committee of three chosen by the Maryland Convention to establish a gun-lock factory in Frederick. In July 1775 he wrote to the president of the Continental Congress warning him of an expedition by Loyalists and Indians against the Maryland frontier, a danger which was removed only by the arrest of the leaders, November 19, 1775, near Hagerstown.
Under Hanson’s leadership the delegates from Frederick County to the Maryland Convention advocated independence several months before such sentiment was dominant in the other counties, and he held that every resolution of the Convention tending to separate Maryland from a majority of the colonies without the consent of the people was destructive of its internal safety. The Maryland Assembly elected him a delegate to the Continental Congress on December 22, 1779. He took his scat in that body June 14, 1780. At this time the Maryland delegates were alone in refusing to ratify the Articles of Confederation. They had instructions not to ratify until Virginia and other states had relinquished their claims to the unsettled territory extending westward to the Mississippi River. John Hanson and his colleague Daniel Carroll labored successfully for this relinquishment. The ratification of the Articles of Confederation was completed March 1, 1781, and on November 5 of that year Hanson was elected president of the Congress of the Confederacy. He retired from public life at the close of his term of one year and died at Oxon Hill, Prince Georges County.
Achievements
John Hanson has been listed as a noteworthy Continental congressman by Marquis Who's Who.
Connections
Hanson’s wife was Jane Contee of Prince Georges County. They had nine children, one of whom, Alexander Contee Hanson, became chancellor of Maryland.
