Francis Hopkinson was one of the most versatile men of his age. Born in Philadelphia and educated in what became the University of Pennsylvania, Hopkinson studied law and served as a customs collector but struggled to establish himself in the 1760s. He even traveled to England, hoping to use family connections to obtain a more important colonial office. In 1773 he moved to Bordentown, New Jersey, where his wife's father was prominent, and finally began to have some success as a lawyer and was even appointed to the colonial council. However, as an ardent Whig, he resigned his royal offices in 1776.

Hopkinson's opposition to the king's authority led to his being selected as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In addition, he served on the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation and sat on the navy board. During the Revolutionary War (1775-83), he held a number of national and state offices, including supervising the continental loan office and sitting on the Pennsylvania Admiralty Court. In both positions he ran into trouble for the way he seemed to mix private and public business. After the war, he opposed the democratic Pennsylvania state constitution and supported the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. President George Washington appointed him a federal district judge in Pennsylvania in 1790.

A summary of Hopkinson's legal and political career, however, does not do his multifaceted life credit: He was also a talented writer, an amateur inventor, an expert musician, an important composer, and a competent artist. Before the Revolutionary War, he wrote a number of wellreceived essays on science and education, and during the last stages of the imperial crisis, he turned his pen to poetry and satire to lambast British policy and support the resistance movement (1764-75). He was a prominent member of the American Philosophical Society and even won a prize from that organization for his invention of a navigational device. Skilled on the harpsichord and organ, Hopkinson participated in concerts throughout his adult life. In addition, he composed music, writing what is probably the first opera by a North American composer--The Temple of Minerva (1781). Although derivative from English and European styles, his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord and Forte Piano (1787) marked an important milestone in musical composition in the United States. As an artist, Hopkinson claimed to have been the principal designer of the stars-and-stripes flag, although this has not been officially recognized. Hopkinson also used his talents in the planning for the Philadelphia procession celebrating the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. He died just a few years later, on May 9, 1791.

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