Sold – Hancock Appoints Azor Orne to a Significant Judicial Office

Massachusetts militia Colonel Azor Orne was a notable patriot, serving on one of the Committees of Correspondence formed to call to the world’s attention the grievances of the colonists. He was elected to the First Continental Congress in 1774, but had to decline, instead accepting a post on the important provincial Committee of Safety (which controlled the military stores), where he served alongside Samuel Adams and John Hancock. On the fateful night of April 18, 1775, in company with fellow Marbleheaders Elbridge Gerry and Jeremiah Lee, Orne attended what was to prove the committee’s final pre-war meeting at Weatherby’s Black Horse Tavern just outside of Cambridge. The meeting adjourned late, and while Hancock and Adams left for nearby Lexington to sleep at Rev. Mr. Clarke’s house, the Marblehead men decided to spend the night at the tavern. The 800 British soldiers who were on their way that night to Lexington and Concord learned of the presence of the Committee members in Cambridge, so the tavern there also became a target. When patriots learned that this was the case, in addition to Paul Revere being despatched to Lexington to warn the province leaders that the British were coming, another courier was sent to Cambridge with the same news. Orne, Gerry and Lee were roused from their slumbers. They did not even have time to put on their clothes, but ran at once from the house and hid themselves in a cornfield while British regulars searched the tavern looking for members of the “Rebel Congress.” During the Revolution, Azor remained active and loaned a great deal of money to the cause.

Hancock was elected the first governor of Massachusetts under the new 1780 state Constitution, taking office on October 25 of that year. At that time, the Revolution was still ongoing and its outcome not certain; Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown was a year away. Soon after, he made his initial appointments and these included the first Massachusetts justices of the peace. Back then, a justice of the peace had more judicial powers than today, acting as an extension of a court of common pleas and initiating all civil cases. So men of the caliber of Orne were the recipient’s of these significant appointments.

Document Signed as Governor, on vellum, December 30, 1780, naming Orne a Justice of the Peace for twelve counties in eastern Massachusetts. This was a suitable position of responsibility for Orne, who had been with Hancock from the start and remained loyal and trustworthy. The format of this appointment is unlike any we have seen previously, and a different format was soon selected for future appointments; the latter is the one commonly seen. This one is 13 1/2 by 16 1/2 inches, has ruffles and flourishes, and has the recipient’s name written in red ink. A search of auction records for the past 35 years shows no other Hancock document dated 1780 has reached that marketplace. This surprising complete absence indicates that this may be the earliest Hancock signed document as Governor of Massachusetts in private hands.

After the war, Orne was a delegate to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, voting in favor of ratification of the new U.S. Constitution, and was named as Elector for the country’s first Presidential election in 1789.