HOPKINSON, FRANCIS (1737-1791), American author and statesman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Inde pendence, was born in Philadelphia (Pa.), Sept. 21, 1737. By his father, Thomas Hopkinson, a lawyer, first president of the Ameri can Philosophical Society, and a trustee of the college, he was enrolled as the first student in the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), from which he received his bachelor's degree in 1757, his master's in 1760, and the degree of LL.D. in 1790. He aided the revolutionary movement and the later struggle for the adoption of the Constitution by a series of prose and poetic satires, which were widely reprinted and most effective. Perhaps the best known are A Pretty Story A Prophecy; The Battle of the Kegs; and The New Roof, A Song for Federal Mechanics. He died on May 9, 1791. His Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional Writings was published in 1792. Much of his work has never been reprinted from con temporary magazines.
His son JOSEPH HOPKINSON (177o-1842), also a lawyer, legis lator and judge, is best known as author of the patriotic anthem Hail Columbia.
See G. E. Hastings, The Life and Works of Francis Hopkinson (1926), which contains an excellent bibliography ; and 0. G. Sonneck's Francis Hopkinson, the First American Poet-Composer (1905).