53. John Hancock's Commonplace Book

This commonplace book in the hand of the Presbyterian minister (grandfather of the signer of the Declaration of Independence) contains chiefly religious material including notes for sermons, excerpts from essays and the Bible, and other material roughly organized into topics, such as drunkenness and gluttony, death, God, Christ, prayer, marriage, vanity, and others. The inside of the binding serves here to collect highlights from the notes, many of them further outlined by boxes, and more than one bookplate, including one printed with John Hancock's name, possibly removed from another source.