From spending 7 years in prison to battling a yellow fever epidemic, here's what the Founding Fathers were doing before their act of rebellion made them famous
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America's Independence Day is upon us.
For most of us, that means summer fun, fireworks, and lots of red, white, and blue decorations.
It also means that 241 years ago, the Second Continental Congress approved a resolution to declare independence from Britain — although historians believe that most of them didn't sign it until about a month later.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the signers worked as lawyers, physicians, merchants, and planters before being elected to the Continental Congress. A vast majority of them also owned slaves.
Here's a breakdown of the career paths of all 56 signers and what brought them to Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1776:
John Hancock
Wikipedia
The man with the most famous signature in American history led an allegedly illicit career before he entered the political realm.
On the surface, the president of the Second Continental Congress was a prominent New England merchant and a major financial backer of the revolutionary cause in Boston.
However, Hancock's mercantile fortune was allegedly bolstered through the illegal smuggling of products like Dutch tea, glass, lead, paper, and French molasses, according to the Boston Tea Party Historical Society.
He was charged with smuggling, but was acquitted thanks to his savvy lawyer — John Adams.
Samuel Adams
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The founding father — and inspiration behind the modern day beer company — had a rocky start to his career after graduating from Harvard in 1740.
His first few business ventures ended poorly, and he dropped out of studying law. Even worse, he was an incompetent tax collector, neglecting "to collect the public levies and to keep proper accounts," according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
He later achieved great influence in local politics, founding the Sons of Liberty, Boston's revolutionary group. This activity allowed Adams to become a driving force in the growing movement against England's series of new taxes, which ultimately snowballed into the Revolution.
John Adams
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John Adams established a reputation as a talented lawyer that would launch him on the path to the presidency. However, his first job mostly involved keeping order in the classroom.
After graduating Harvard, Adams took his first job as as a schoolmaster in Worcester, Massachusetts, according to the University of Groningen's biography of the second US president.
The career was not fulfilling for Adams and he was often filled with self doubt, as evidenced by the personal entries in his famous journal, which the Massachusetts Historical Society has posted online. To keep up with his own reading and writing, Adams would sometimes ask the smartest student to lead class.
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