High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Stephen Hopkins (March 7, 1707 – July 13, 1785) was an American political leader from Rhode Island who signed the Declaration of Independence. He served as the Chief Justice and Governor of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and was a Delegate to the Colonial Congress in Albany in 1754 and to the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1776. Hopkins was also the first chancellor of the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (predecessor to Brown University) in conjunction with the presidency of the Baptist Reverend James Manning.