Misinformation and Myths About John Hanson

There might be no United States president about whom more myth and misinformation exists than John Hanson. The John Hanson Memorial Association and Remembering John Hanson offer the correct record on John Hanson and seek to dispel Hanson myths, some of which are intentional and pernicious.

Partly because most of John Hanson’s personal papers were lost causing his biographical record to be sparse, but also to an extent because of confusion over having had two national governments, quite a bit of modern disinformation concerning John Hanson and his official record has come about, most of it only during the twenty-first century. Following are main of elements of this disinformation and their sources where known.

Wikipedia and Fringe Blogs

Today, the worst of the distorted record on John Hanson are Wikipedia’s Internet entries entitled John Hanson and another, John Hanson Myths, both heavily suffused in historical inaccuracies. For the uninitiated, Wikipedia is an Internet website purporting to be an encyclopedia. Wikipedia entries may be made or edited by anyone and too often are not well vetted for accuracy. Because of the ubiquity of Wikipedia, Internet searches on a wide variety of subjects often turn up Wikipedia’s entry, accurate or not, as the top search hit.

Exemplifying its notoriety for posting inaccurate history, the Wikipedia website incorrectly lists the three men elected as presidents of the 249-day interim body in 1781 not just as United States presidents but as the first three of the original government, clearly disproven by the historical record. For this reason and for other errors sown by Wikipedia concerning John Hanson, it is most unfortunate that the site's confused entries on John Hanson finish high, even at the top, in Internet searches on John Hanson.

Since Wikipedia’s first posting of its John Hanson article on November 23, 2001, the entry had been edited over 500 times by at least 285 different “editors” as of 2012. Some of those who edited the John Hanson entry go by the names Smackbot, Soltak, Viper Daimao, Cluebot, Hermit, Icewedge, Isomorphic, Closed Mouth, Jack of Oz, Snowolf, Discospinster, Obi Wan Kenobi and worse. Looking at the entire history of Wikipedia’s John Hanson article entries and edits, one finds no indication whatsoever of any input by Hanson scholars or actual historians.

How Wikipedia’s John Hanson article has evolved is typical of the site and why teachers and college faculty routinely prohibit their students from quoting Wikipedia sources in term papers, theses, dissertations and other work.  Snopes.com's entry on John Hanson, apparently picking up on Wikipedia and other erroneous sources, is, if anything, even more misguided. There are also a few blogs posting Hanson myths as truth and vice versa.  The John Hanson Memorial Association has a permanent public education campaign to correct Hanson myths and disinformation.

“Born in 1721”

He was born in 1715. The 1721 date is traceable to an error in a newspaper obituary.

“Caribbean Immigrant”

Two genealogists and a few amateurish twenty-first century bloggers have confused President John Hanson’s namesake grandfather with a John Henson (sic) who immigrated to Maryland from Barbados as an indentured servant in the 1660s several years after President Hanson’s well-connected grandfather, also named John Hanson, appears in colonial records. President Hanson's European family lineage before his grandfather is uncertain and contested as to whether it is English, Swedish or both, but it is proven that the wealthy immigrant John Hanson could not have been the Caribbean John Henson. See the appendices of Remembering John Hanson on John Hanson’s ancestry, which clearly demonstrates that President Hanson did not descend from the Barbados indentured servant John Henson.

"Signer of the Declaration of Independence"

Simple inspection of the signed Declaration of Independence shows that John Hanson was not a Signer. On August 2, 1776, when the colonies’ Second Continental Congress delegates signed the Declaration of Independence adopting it, Hanson was not yet a Maryland delegate to the Congress which authored the Declaration. Five years later, he was a Signer — and the key Signer at that — of the Articles of Confederation after he had been appointed by Maryland as a Second Continental Congress delegate. However, some Internet posters, weak on their United States history, have incorrectly listed John Hanson as a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, not even mentioning the Articles of Confederation.

“Presided over the Second Continental Congress”

Hanson never presided over the Second Continental Congress. Maryland elected Hanson to serve as her delegate in two national bodies, the Second Continental Congress from 1779 until it was dissolved in 1781, and then the Confederation Congress, which came into existence on November 5, 1781, the day he was elected president.

“John Hanson Did Not Solve the Western Lands Impasse”

No one else has ever been suggested as having had a stronger role. All of Hanson’s biographers agree that no one took a stronger role in Maryland than Hanson did in persuading the state to withhold her ratification of the Articles of Confederation until the western lands impasse could be resolved. Certainly he had his Maryland General Assembly allies to form a majority on the matter, but no person other than Hanson is mentioned in any Hanson biography or elsewhere inspected as having taken the lead on the issue. After ratification of the Articles had been stalled for three years over the western lands issue, it got resolved within eight months after Hanson arrived at the Second Continental Congress as a Maryland delegate. There, too, no one other than Hanson has ever been mentioned as being the prime mover of the solution in the Congress. In fact, one could argue that Hanson’s role in getting the western lands problem resolved, and the nation thus finally united, was his greatest accomplishment. It is mainly responsible for his being elected president.

“The Hanson Plan Never Existed”

The Declaration of Maryland in which Maryland declined to ratify the Articles of Confederation until the western lands impasse could be resolved was often referred to as the “Hanson Plan” because John Hanson had taken the lead in the Maryland General Assembly in proposing it and getting it passed. "Hanson Plan" is the only byname that the Declaration has ever had. As carefully detailed in Remembering John Hanson, while there is no official record that the plan put forth by Hanson first in Maryland and then at the Congress was officially labeled the Hanson Plan, colloquially this is the only byname it has ever had. As parallel examples, the Monroe Doctrine and Truman Doctrine are how nearly all today refer to these without the terms ever having been officially named as such.

“Not Elected Unanimously”

This myth is a twisting of the record. From Remembering John Hanson: “As its first action that day, the new government elected John Hanson as the nation's first president. The minutes of the meeting do not indicate that his election was unanimous though long oral tradition holds that it was, which is entirely plausible given that there were no other candidates.” Four years of research in preparing Remembering John Hanson turned up no source whatsoever indicating that John Hanson was not elected unanimously.

“First Black President”

Picking up on the Barbados immigrant yarn, the comedian Dick Gregory hypothesized that the Caribbean immigrant Henson was black or part black, that President John Hanson was this immigrant’s grandson and, ironically using the one-drop rule, that Hanson was therefore the nation’s first Black president. Hanson family descendants would be proud if this were true, but it is the most fallacious and easily disproven myth about John Hanson.

“Third (or Fourth) President”

Typical of the kind of error found at Wikipedia, and especially misleading, is the Wikipedia myth that John Hanson “was the third presiding officer of the Congress of the United States, and he considered himself a successor to the first two men to hold the office, Samuel Huntington and Thomas McKean." This short phrase is shot through with falsehood. First, the Congress of the United States did not exist until 1789 when government under the Constitution came into being six years after Hanson’s death. Second, Samuel Huntington and Thomas McKean were the first and third presidents of the virtually powerless interim body which existed for 249 days in 1781 before the election of the first government, which was not yet in existence when Huntington and McKean served as presidents for a few weeks each before resigning. Hanson was president of a different body than were Huntington and McKean. Third, the record shows that this is certainly how Hanson, Huntington, McKean and others in 1781 saw it.

“Not a True Executive Officer”

This myth is entirely contrary to the record. If somehow Hanson were not the nation’s chief executive during his presidency, then who could have been? The government's first order of business after Hanson’s election as president was, of necessity, organizational, and the establishment of the ranks of authority of government offices was the first step. Adopting the recommendations of a special committee charged with establishing an official hierarchy, the Congress legislated that, " . . . the President takes precedent of all and every person in the United States; next to him, members of Congress have precedence; then the Commander-in-Chief of the Army; then the great officers of Congress." That Hanson was the nation’s chief executive in the fullest sense is amply demonstrated by the facts that he did head the sole branch of government at the time, was elected by the highest elected body in the land to do so, thus occupied the prescribed highest office in the land, and was the first United States head of state recognized as such at home or abroad. To be sure, his executive powers were fewer than those of presidents under the later Constitution, but indisputably he was the new nation’s first chief executive. The weakness of the original government was the precise reason why it convened the Constitutional Convention and then deliberately replaced itself with a stronger government under the Constitution.

“Did Not Establish the First Thanksgiving”

This myth flies straight in the face of easily accessible official record. The Second Continental Congress had issued earlier one-time declarations observing Thanksgiving but not as an official ongoing annual observance. On March 19, 1782, John Hanson issued a proclamation that the last Thursday in November be observed annually thereafter as a national Thanksgiving Day. In 2011, John Hanson's 1782 Thanksgiving decree resurfaced when it was auctioned from the estate of his fifth-great-grandson. It's purchaser is unknown and the decree may or may not ever be seen again.

“Not a Friend of Washington”

This myth is truly absurd. Refutations to this are too numerous to present all of them. Some of the clearest are as follows. Before his move to Frederick, Maryland in 1769, Hanson lived at Mulberry Grove, his Port Tobacco (Charles County, Maryland) home about 30 miles from Mount Vernon. Washington would visit his doctor, James Craik, and Hanson at Port Tobacco, and Hanson visited Mount Vernon. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, it was Hanson who mustered the two rifle companies from Frederick County, Maryland which were the first units to arrive in Massachusetts to aid Washington and the new Continental Army he was mustering. Hanson led a Maryland delegation to confer directly with Washington at the Battle of New Brunswick. During Hanson’s presidential administration, Washington reported to Hanson as his Commander-In- Chief as Washington explicitly stated when he presented President Hanson with Cornwallis’s surrender sword congratulating Hanson face to face "on your appointment to fill the most important seat in the United States." As president, Hanson wrote officially to no one more often than to Washington. In Hanson’s personal letters before and while president, he frequently and affectionately writes in unfaltering support of Washington. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Washington appointed Hanson’s son Alexander as his aide de camp. As president, Washington offered to appoint Alexander to the United States Supreme Court, which Alexander turned down to remain in his position of Chancellor of Maryland. Twice Alexander Contee Hanson served as a Washington presidential elector, the first time voting against Alexander's own cousin for president. Twice, Hanson’s son-in-law, Dr. Philip Thomas, served as a Washington presidential elector. As to mentoring, Hanson was 17 years Washington’s senior and one of the nation’s very oldest statesmen of his era. There is much more, but this evidence more than suffices.

“John Hanson is Not Swedish.”

He may or may not have been. As detailed in a lengthy appendix in Remembering John Hanson, a genealogist in 1988 contended that John Hanson did not have partial Swedish heritage as all of his previous biographers and family oral tradition from multiple lines had long held. The genealogist submitted instead that John Hanson was the grandson of one John Henson (sic), a poor immigrant indentured servant from Barbados who arrived in Maryland in 1661 and was freed in 1666. However, John Hanson’s wealthy immigrant grandfather, also named John Hanson, shows up in Maryland years before this. Research entirely disproves the Barbados immigrant ancestral theory, but was not able either to prove or disprove that the American Hanson family has some Swedish blood. It may or may not but the weight of evidence points strongly toward joint English-Swedish ancestry.

"The Two-Dollar Bill"

Dick Gregory, mentioned above, and others spun further by purporting that one of the individuals shown on the back of the two-dollar bill is African-American and therefore John Hanson. The confusion arose from an Internet photograph of a John Hanson who was a Liberian senator in the nineteenth century. The back of the two-dollar bill shows an engraving of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. John Hanson was the key Signer of the Articles of Confederation but was not a Signer of the Declaration of Independence.

"Jane Hanson Outlived All of Her Children"

On this, one virtually always sees that Jane and John Hanson had twelve children and that when Jane died in 1812 she had outlived them all. The couple actually had thirteen children including two sets of twins, and Jane was survived only by her youngest child, Elizabeth Arianna Adolphus Hanson Floweree, who lived until 1825, dying at age 52. The likely reasons for the miscounting of the children are that all of the twins died in infancy or early childhood, and that two of them, John and Elizabeth, had later-born siblings, including Elizabeth Floweree, named for them. Elizabeth and Daniel Floweree had eight children, at least two of whom were born before their grandmother Jane died.

Most Prevalent Muddle: Two National Governments and Two Consultative Bodies

Easy-to-debunk myths aside, what has led to much modern misinformation about John Hanson and his role in national government is the confusion surrounding the four successive national bodies that were consultative arrangements among the colonies before and during the Revolutionary War or actual governments afterward, all existing in the short fifteen-year span from 1774 to 1789. Only two of these were governments, and John Hanson was the first president of the original government, the Confederation Congress, also called the  United States in Congress Assembled.

Some, even in its day, confused the first government with its predecessor body, the Second Continental Congress, which did not function as a government. Further, the First Continental Congress and the vestigial interim body of 1781, though powerless and existing for only 21 and 249 days respectively, nevertheless became widely confused with the other bodies of the era then and since.

For example, the nation saw the Second Continental Congress and the interim body, both consultative, and then the first government, the Confederation Congress, in existence and two of these entities go out of existence all in an eight-month period in 1781. This must have confused many people at the time and certainly does today. A clear delineation of the bodies, the reasons for the creation of each, and the means of transition from one to another are detailed in Remembering John Hanson.

The Factual Perspective on John Hanson

So John Hanson’s family line has died out, much of his personal papers went missing, his bio- graphical record until now is thin and misinterpreted, John Hanson House no longer stands, the Internet sows wild misinformation on the president, he escaped an attempt in 2011 to remove his statue from National Statuary Hall, and, until the completion of the John Hanson National Memorial in 2011, the nation had no place to honor John Hanson. These are tragic turns for the man to whom, at the birth of his country, our nation’s founders and early heroes looked to lead them and to symbolize their new nation, the man the young nation’s stellar array of leaders thought best for the job, the one to whom as Commander-in-Chief they had Washington report. Reading the Hanson record, it is conspicuous that one does not find criticism but only gratitude and high praise for Hanson from his contemporaries. In his long political career, John Hanson seems to have altogether avoided any major personal controversy other than from the British perspective.

It is difficult to fathom the coincidences of history that have nearly obliterated the legacy of one who as much as any other deserves our lasting gratitude for his pivotal role in founding the United States and being the first to lead it. The reader is asked to help in dispelling the recent modern myths about John Hanson and to help in reintroducing the first United States president to his nation.