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Judge Quincy was not only a devout Christian and a respected member of the community, he was also a fine linguist. He was so well informed on many subjects that, while he was by birth and tradition a Conservative, giving absolute loyalty to the mother country, and desirous of obeying her slightest dictate, yet he was so much more broad-minded than many of his party that he welcomed in his home even those admirers of his daughters who were determined to resist what they termed the unjust commands of the English Government. Among these patriots-to-be who came often to the Quincy home was John Adams, in later days the second President of the United States, and who was a boy of old Braintree and a comrade of John Hancock, whose future history was to be closely linked with the new and independent America. Hancock was, at the time of his first visit to the old Quincy mansion, a brilliant young man, drawn to the Judge’s home by an overwhelming desire to see more of pretty Dorothy, whose slippered foot stepping from the old meeting-house had roused his interest. Up to the time when he began to come to the house, little Dorothy was still considered a child by her brothers and sisters, her aims and ambitions were laughed at, if she voiced them, and she was treated as the family pet and plaything rather than a girl rapidly blossoming into very beautiful womanhood.

As she saw one after another of her sisters become engaged to the man of her choice, watched the happy bustle of preparation in the household, then took part in the wedding festivities, and saw the bride pass out of the old mansion to become mistress of a home of her own, Dorothy was quick to perceive the important part played by man in a woman’s life, and, young as she was, she felt within herself that power of fascination which was to be hers to so great a degree in the coming years. Dorothy had dark eyes which were wells of feeling when she was deeply moved, her hair was velvet smooth, and also dark, and the play of feelings grave and gay which lighted up her mobile face when in conversation was a constant charm to those who knew the vivacious girl. When she first met John Hancock she had won an enviable popularity by reason of her beauty and grace, and was admired and sought after even more than her sisters had been; yet no compliments or admiration spoiled her sweet naturalness or her charm of manner.

In those days girls married when they were very young, but Dorothy withstood all the adoration which was poured at her feet beyond the time when she might naturally have chosen a husband, because her standards were so high that not one of her admirers came near to satisfying them. But in her heart there was an Ideal Man who had come to occupy the first place in her affection.

As she had sat by her father’s side, night after night, listening while John Adams spoke with hot enthusiasm of his friend John Hancock, the boy of Braintree, now a rising young citizen of Boston, the resolute advocate of justice for the colonies, who stood unflinchingly against the demands of the mother country, where he thought them unfair,–the conversation had roused her enthusiasm for this unknown hero, until she silently erected an altar within her heart to this ideal of manly virtues.

Then John Hancock came to the old mansion to seek the girl who had attracted his attention on that Sabbath Day in June, little dreaming that in those conversations which Dorothy had heard between her father and John Adams she had pieced together a complete biography of her Hero. She knew that in 1737, when the Reverend John Hancock was minister of the First Church in the North Precinct of Braintree (afterward Quincy), he had made the following entry in the parish register of births:

JOHN HANCOCK, MY SON, JANUARY 16, 1737.

Dorothy also knew that there in the simple parsonage the minister’s son grew up, and together with his brother and sister enjoyed the usual life of a child in the country. When he was seven years old his father died, leaving very little money for the support of the widow and three children. Thomas Hancock, his uncle, was at that time the richest merchant in Boston, and had also married a daughter of a prosperous bookseller who was heir to no small fortune herself. The couple being childless, at the death of John Hancock’s father they adopted the boy, who was at once taken from the simple parsonage to Thomas Hancock’s mansion on Beacon Hill, which must have seemed like a fairy palace to the minister’s son, as he “climbed the grand steps and entered the paneled hall with its broad staircase, carved balusters, and a chiming clock surmounted with carved figures, gilt with burnished gold.” There were also portraits of dignitaries on the walls of the great drawing-room, which were very impressive in their lace ruffles and velvet costumes of the period, and many articles of furniture of which the country boy did not even know the names.