{"id":20662,"date":"2026-02-19T10:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T17:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=20662"},"modified":"2026-03-01T15:06:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T22:06:51","slug":"francis-hopkinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=20662","title":{"rendered":"The Founders: Francis Hopkinson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cIf my poor abilities can be of the least service to my country in her day of trial I shall not complain of the hardship of the task\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-large-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Francis Hopkinson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Composer, Attorney and Signer of the Declaration of Independence <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Francis Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia in 1737 he attended what became the University of Pennsylvania and earned two degrees. He was a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1776 and signed the Declaration of Independence. He was an importer, an attorney and a musician. He wrote songs, invented musical instruments and played in ensembles. He attempted more than a few time to become a customs collector both for the King and after independence for the fledgling USA. Customs collector was a very lucrative job. His <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Francis_Hopkinson\">biography on Wikipedia <\/a>is worth reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIf my poor abilities can be of the least service to my country in her day of trial I shall not complain of the hardship of the task\u201d Francis Hopkinson Composer, Attorney and Signer of the Declaration of Independence Francis Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia in 1737 he attended what became the University of Pennsylvania [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1543],"tags":[1542,1552,311],"class_list":["post-20662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-founding-fathers","tag-declaration","tag-francis-hopkinson","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Francis_Hopkinson_1785_-_Robert_Edge_Pine.jpg?fit=562%2C719&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99jGb-5ng","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20662"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20832,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20662\/revisions\/20832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}