The Document Creating What is Today the Oldest Continuously Operating Charitable Fund in the United States, Signed by John Hancock and the Selectmen of Boston in 1768

Hancock was one of the wealthiest men in New England, having inherited a profitable mercantile shipping business from his uncle in 1764. He first came to public note in 1765 for his resistance to the Stamp Act, when he participated in a boycott of British goods. This made him popular in Boston, and he was elected a Selectman of the Town of Boston that year. He was then 28 years of age. This was followed in May 1766 by his election to the Massachusetts Legislature, a post he held concurrently with that in Boston. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, but soon passed the Townsend Acts, which imposed new taxes (including the famous levy on tea). Colonial merchants found the new regulations oppressive, and many colonists protested that the new duties were taxation without representation. Hancock joined other Bostonians in calling for a boycott of British imports until the Townshend duties were repealed. In their enforcement of the customs regulations, the Customs Board targeted Hancock, and tried to catch him as a smuggler who avoided paying the duties owed. In 1768 Hancock was in a major confrontation with British customs, which sued to seize one of his ships and to personally penalize Hancock himself. Hancock was tried in October 1768 on charges of allegedly unloading 100 pipes of wine from the ship Liberty without paying the duties. If convicted, Hancock would have had to pay a penalty of triple the value of the wine, which came to £9,000. With John Adams serving as his lawyer, Hancock fought the case in a highly publicized trial. Five months later, with no explanation, the charges against Hancock were dropped.

James Richards was a merchant and real estate investor in Hartford, Connecticut in its early years. He died in 1680, leaving the staggering fortune of £7931, the third largest estate to have been probated in Hartford. His son Thomas was a legatee, and through his marriage to Joanna Dodd also came into land holdings in Boston. Thomas died in 1715, leaving all of his estate to his daughters, Mary and Joanna. Joanna Richards married William Brooker in 1720, he executing a prenuptial agreement to acknowledge her control of her property brought into the marriage. On May 11, 1759, being then a widow, Mrs. Brooker made a will which, after giving sundry legacies to her relatives and a gift to a missionary society, left the bulk of her estate for the relief of poor widows. The will was probated on August 11, 1763, and her estate amounted to the large sum of £1600.

The “Selectmen’s Minutes for the Town of Boston” show that, at a meeting on April 10, 1765, a committee was formed “to call on the Executors of the Will of the late Mrs. Joanna Brooker, and enquire whether they are ready to pay into the hands of the  Selectmen the Moneys left by the Testatrix, to be improved by the Selectmen of Boston for the time being as they shall Judge best, the income thereof to be by them applied for the relief of Widows etc., and they are desired to report as soon as may be.”

Two years later the Selectmen were still waiting for the Brooker executor to pay over the money. At a meeting on July 20, 1767, a committee of four men, one of whom was John Hancock, was appointed “to call for the Money left by the Will of Mrs. Brooker for the Selectmen to distribute among such poor widows as they may Judge proper.” Apparently the executor was still not ready.

Amidst the swirl of the momentous events of late 1768 and his trial, Hancock continued to perform his duties as Selectman of Boston. Manuscript document signed, Boston, December 20, 1768, being the Boston Selectmen’s signed receipt for the Brooker bequest. “Being there be Received of the Executor of Mrs. Brooker’s will, for which he gave his receipt.” It is signed by Selectmen of Boston:  John Scollay (longtime chairman and the great-grandfather of Henry Melville), John Hancock, Timothy Newell (Revolutionary War diarist), Thomas Marshall, Samuel Austin, and Oliver Wendell (grandfather of poet Oliver Wendell Holmes and great-grandfather of the jurist of the same name).

The Brooker bequest became known as “The Poor Widows Fund”, and it still exists today as part of the City of Boston’s Small Grant Trust Program. After a remarkable 247 years, it continues to give out grants for the relief of the poor and sick out of its $4,645 remaining principal. In fact, it is not merely the oldest charitable fund administered by Boston, but in the entire United States.  We glean this information from the National Philanthropic Trust, which in its “history of giving” lists as the oldest continuously operating charitable fund in the United States none older than this one. This is not surprising, as such a fund would have had to remain funded and operating for nearly a quarter of a millennium.