Hanover Resolves
East Hanover Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The earliest resolves for independence in the State. Drawn June 4, 1774, by Col. Timothy Green and eight Hanover Township patriots. They committed their cause to "Heaven and our Rifles."
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On June 4, 1774, Col. Timothy Green and eight fellow patriots of Hanover Township drew up what the marker calls the earliest resolves for independence in Pennsylvania. Written more than two years before the Declaration, their bold pledge to commit their cause to "Heaven and our Rifles" captured the defiant mood spreading through the colonial countryside. Such local resolves gave voice to ordinary communities determined to resist British authority.
Why it matters
The Hanover Resolves show how independence was imagined in rural townships well before Philadelphia's Continental Congress made it national policy.
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Related people
- · Col. Timothy Green
Related events
- · Hanover Resolves (1774)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hanover Church
East Hanover Township, PA · est. 1947
Two miles north stood one of the region's pioneer Presbyterian congregations, founded in 1736 under its first pastor, Richard Sankey. Its graveyard became the resting place of the valley's earliest settlers alongside men who fought in the frontier wars and the Revolution that followed. A country churchyard like this is a layered record of the community that grew up around it.
Derry Churchyard
Derry Township, PA · est. 1948
This churchyard, the oldest pioneer burial ground in Dauphin County, holds the first generations of the region's Scots-Irish settlers. Among the graves lie the early pastors William Bertram and John Roan, alongside men who fought in the French and Indian Wars and the Revolution. One of them, Col. John Rodgers, put his name to the Hanover Resolves of 1774, an early pledge of resistance to Britain.
Paxton Riflemen
Lower Paxton Township, PA · est. 1947
When the Revolution called, a company of riflemen from Paxton Township answered. Under Captain Matthew Smith and Lieutenant Michael Simpson, they marched hundreds of miles north to join General Richard Montgomery's daring assault on Quebec on December 31, 1775. That midwinter attack — one of the war's first major campaigns — ended in bloody failure, but the sharpshooting frontiersmen of Pennsylvania had already earned a fearsome reputation.
Revolutionary War Gun Factory
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