Auction Closing: December 14, 2024 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time
Lot Number: 36
Estimate Range: $800 - $1,000
1763 Thomas Hutchinson Signed Massachusetts-Bay Legal Document as Governor Regarding a Woman’s Property Estate at a Time when very few Women Owned Property

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THOMAS HUTCHINSON (1711-1780). Appointed Chief Justice of Massachusetts in 1760, and Royal Governor of American Colonial Massachusetts who was a staunch defender of the King’s English Colonial policies, Jurist and Historian.

April 15th, 1763-Dated French and Indian War Era, Partially-Printed Document Signed, “T(homas) Hutchinson” at Court of Probate, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts-Bay, Choice Very Fine. This pleasing, very clean well printed fully executed legal document is completed and signed in rich brown ink on laid period paper which still retains significant press text embossing within the paper. Document is 1 page, measures 11” x 7.75” and retains its original embossed paper seal at upper left, having natural even tone and only a couple pinholes on one fold. Also Signed by Jonathan Cotton at bottom left. This Probate Document is executing the Will for the Estate of “Elizabeth Brewer of Roxbury, late of said Roxbury, Widow” to go to Joseph Brewer, comprising of all her estate, the seal of the court applied. The signature “T Hutchinson” is boldly presented and nicely written measuring 2.5” long and perfectly signed at bottom right. A rare document in that it involves the estate of a Woman at a time when very few women had any substantial assets.
Thomas Hutchinson was a historian, Chief Justice, and Royal Governor of Massachusetts, was born in Boston to a wealthy merchant family. Always an advocate for Massachusetts, Hutchinson disapproved of the Tax legislation Parliament imposed on the colonies, but once the laws were enacted, he believed that they should be enforced and obeyed.

Hutchinson served in the Massachusetts Assembly almost continuously from 1737 until 1749 and as speaker from 1746 to 1748. In 1758 he became Lieutenant Governor, and in 1760 he was appointed Chief Justice of Massachusetts. He became Acting Governor in 1769 and received his official commission from the king in 1771.

While Royal Governor, Hutchinson maintained that if British authority were reaffirmed and strengthened, peace would be restored to Massachusetts. When his home was ransacked by a mob on 26 August 1765, in the midst of the Stamp Act crisis, his position hardened.

After the Boston Tea Party, Hutchinson was summoned to London to consult with the King about the state of the province. Hutchinson hoped to return to his beloved Massachusetts, but he never did. In 1776, living as an exile in England, he wrote a rebuttal to the Declaration of Independence. Four years later in 1780 during the Revolutionary War, he died of a stroke while living in London.

Thomas Hutchinson irritated other Colonial leaders, most notably the Patriot Revolutionary spokesman James Otis, who turned the people of the Massachusetts-Bay Colony against him as governor.

Hutchinson was deeply Loyalist and resisted the gradual movement toward Independence from the British crown. He was convinced that the rebellious spirit was only the work of such Patriot hotheads as Samuel Adams, for whom he developed a deep enmity.

Because many Bostonians considered that he had instigated the repugnant “Stamp Act” of 1765, a mob sacked his splendid Boston residence that year, destroying a number of valuable documents and manuscripts.

Barely escaping with his life, the embittered Hutchinson from that time on increasingly distrusted the "common sort" and secretly advised Parliament to pass repressive measures that would emphasize that body's supremacy over the American colonies. It then fueled the feelings for Independence from the Crown. He ultimately fled Boston returning to England.