William Hancock was a colonial resident of Bath County. In about 1703, he claimed land near Haruta, a Tuscarora village near the mouth of the Neuse River. There, he and several other colonists submitted a petition requesting the colony's support against a group of American Indians who opposed their settlement. Though Hancock complained of his American Indian neighbors, the Tuscarora complained about him too, naming him specifically as a troublesome colonist during Christopher von Graffenried and John Lawson's trial in 1711. In 1716 William Brice and Hancock, then a major in the militia, attempted to start a war with the Cheraw, but the effort failed when the colonial government discovered the plot. He died sometime after April 1721.