Faneuil Hall lottery ticket, nicely signed at the bottom, "John Hancock," 3.5 x 1.75, dated June 1765. The ticket reads, in full: "Faneuil-Hall Lottery, No. Five. The possessor of this ticket (No. 4134) is intitled to any Prize drawn against said Number, in a Lottery granted by an Act of the General Court of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay for Rebuilding Faneuil-Hall; subject to no Deduction." In very good to fine condition, with light staining from old mounting residue on the back.
In colonial times, lotteries were a highly regarded method of financing worthwhile projects—such as the rebuilding of Faneuil Hall, the famous Boston marketplace and meeting hall that had been destroyed in a 1761 fire. At the time, such money-making efforts were viewed as being akin to investments, and were endorsed by local leaders—as evidenced here, with Hancock signing as one of Boston's five selectmen. Interestingly, Hancock came to disdain a public lottery as a method of fundraising, concluding that it encouraged gambling while producing meager results. Although thousands of such tickets were printed in Colonial America, not all were signed by Hancock, and only a small percentage of those signed examples have survived the centuries.
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