Hopkins, Stephen, 1707-1785

Stephen Hopkins (March 7, 1707 – July 13, 1785), a Founding Father of the United States, was a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, a chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and a signer of the Continental Association and the Declaration of Independence.

As a child, Hopkins was a voracious reader, becoming a serious student of the sciences, mathematics, and literature. He became a surveyor and astronomer and was involved in taking measurements during the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. He began his public service at age 23 as a justice of the peace in the newly established town of Scituate, Rhode Island. He soon became a justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, while also serving at times as the speaker of the House of Deputies and president of the Scituate Town Council. While active in civic affairs, he also was part owner of an iron foundry and was a successful merchant. In May 1747, Hopkins was appointed as a justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, serving until May 1749. He became the third chief justice of this body in May 1751, serving until May 1755. In 1755, he was elected to his first term as governor of the colony, and he served in this capacity for 9 out of the next 15 years.

In 1770, Hopkins once again became chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and during this tenure became a principal player in the colony's handling of the 1772 Gaspee Affair, when a group of irate Rhode Island citizens boarded a British revenue vessel and burned it to the waterline. In 1774, he was given an additional important responsibility as one of Rhode Island's two delegates to the First Continental Congress—his former rival Samuel Ward being the other. Hopkins had become well known in the Thirteen Colonies ten years earlier when he published a pamphlet entitled The Rights of Colonies Examined which was critical of British Parliament and its taxation policies.

Hopkins signed the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776 with worsening palsy in his hands. He signed it by holding his right hand with his left and saying, "My hand trembles, but my heart does not." He served in the Continental Congress until September 1776, when failing health forced him to resign. He was a strong backer of the College of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (later named Brown University) and became the institution's first chancellor. He died in Providence in 1785 at age 78 and is buried in the North Burial Ground there. Hopkins has been called Rhode Island's greatest statesman. In 1774, Hopkins owned six or seven enslaved people, making him among the top five percent of slaveholders in Providence at the time.