Portal:Rhode Island/Selected article/23

Stephen Hopkins (1707–1785) was a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, a Chief Justice on the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He began his public service at age 23 as a justice of the peace in the newly established town of Scituate, Rhode Island. He soon became a justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, while also serving at times as the Speaker of the House of Deputies and President of the Scituate Town Council. In May 1747, Hopkins was appointed as a justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and he became the third Chief Justice of this body in 1751. In 1755, he was elected to his first term as governor of the colony and served a total of nine of the next 15 years in this capacity. Hopkins had become well known in the Thirteen Colonies when he published a pamphlet entitled "The Rights of Colonies Examined," which was critical of British Parliament and its taxation policies. Hopkins signed the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776, with palsy in his hands; he held his right hand with his left, saying, "my hand trembles, but my heart does not." He died in Providence in 1785 at age 78 and is buried in the North Burial Ground there. He has been called Rhode Island's greatest statesman.