PORT TOBACCO — For most of the last two centuries, nobody could say with confidence where John Hanson was buried. On Sunday, a Charles County group will put a marker on the spot where researchers now believe the Port Tobacco-area native lies, beneath a tombstone that reads “Unknown.”
The Port Tobacco Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution will dedicate a DAR commemorative plaque at the gravesite Nov. 15 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Fort Washington, in Prince George’s County. A statue of Hanson will be unveiled at the same ceremony, which begins at 2 p.m. The chapter is hosting the event with the John Hanson Memorial Association and the church.
Hanson is among the best-known figures Charles County has produced. He was born at Mulberry Grove, his family’s plantation near Port Tobacco, and represented the county in the colonial assembly before moving to Frederick County. In November 1781 the Confederation Congress elected him its president, and he served a one-year term as the war with Britain wound down. His name is on U.S. 50 between Washington and Annapolis and on a middle school in Waldorf, and his statue is one of two representing Maryland in the U.S. Capitol.
Three burials in 234 years
Hanson died in November 1783 at Oxon Hill Manor in Prince George’s County. According to the organizers’ account, what happened to his remains afterward is the reason the grave was lost:
- 1783: He was buried in a brick hillside crypt at Oxon Hill Manor.
- 1878: As the crypt deteriorated, his remains and those of three members of the Addison family were quietly moved to the nearby private Addison Cemetery.
- 2017: Land development forced the exhumation of the roughly 40 sets of remains in that cemetery, which were reburied together in the graveyard at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
The identification came later. Peter Michael, a Hanson descendant who is president of the John Hanson Memorial Association, led the effort with independent researcher Mark Kennedy, who contacted him in 2023 to ask whether the remains had ever been found.
Kennedy’s archival work established that the Oxon Hill crypt had been emptied before 1900, which supported the idea that Hanson had been moved to the Addison Cemetery. Michael then matched that finding against records from a 2017 Smithsonian Institution forensic examination of the remains taken from the cemetery. That examination had documented the skeleton of an elderly man who was never positively identified.
Taken with the burial records, the organizers said, the evidence “strongly indicated” the skeleton was Hanson’s, and the conclusion was reached in 2024. The announcement describes an identification built on archival and forensic records. It does not cite DNA testing.
What Hanson was, and was not
Hanson’s admirers have long called him the nation’s first president, and the dedication announcement describes his post as America’s first national executive presidency. Historians draw a narrower line. Hanson presided over Congress under the Articles of Confederation, the country’s first governing charter. The office carried no executive power, and the Articles created no separate executive branch.
He was the first to serve a full one-year term after the Articles took effect in 1781, though Samuel Huntington and Thomas McKean each presided briefly before him that year. George Washington became the first president under the Constitution in 1789. Hanson remains the only Marylander elected to preside over Congress under the Articles for a full term.
The Port Tobacco chapter said it received permission from the national society to mark the grave. Regent Elaine Lawton’s announcement said the plaque is meant to recognize Hanson’s role in the founding era and to give future generations a place to learn about it. Descendants, historians and patriotic organizations are expected to attend.
St. John’s Episcopal Church is at 9810 Livingston Road in Fort Washington, about 25 miles north of Port Tobacco.
