Benjamin Bussey Thatcher

Background

He was born in 1809, at Warren, Knox County, Maine. He was the son of Sarah (Brown) and Samuel Thatcher and a first cousin of Henry Knox Thatcher. His father, a graduate of Harvard and a descendant of Samuel Thatcher who was admitted freeman at Watertown, Massachussets, in May 1642, served as representative to the General Court of Massachusetts, as congressman, and as sheriff of Lincoln County, Maine.

Education

Benjamin attended Warren Academy, of which his father was a founder, and in 1826 was graduated from Bowdoin College. He also studied law in Boston.

Career

He was admitted to the bar, and nominally practised law until his death. His deepest interest was in writing, however, and perhaps his greatest mistake in life was "an overestimate of literature as a profession and source of reputation". He became a prolific author, contributing critical articles and verse to the leading magazines, especially the North American Review and the Essayist.

In 1833 he edited the Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom, the organ of the Young Men's Colonization Society, of which he was corresponding secretary. Upon the lecture platform he constantly urged that African colonization should be supported "as offering the most effectual and unexceptionable proposal for promoting the welfare of our fellow-men now held in bondage". To further this project he wrote a Memoir of Phillis Wheatley (1834), and a Memoir of S. Osgood Wright (1834), the Liberian missionary. He strove continually to restrain the more extreme reformers in his society, and to prevent the colonizationists from being identified with William Lloyd Garrison and the abolitionists. In 1834 he abandoned the Colonizationist in the belief that a magazine was not an effective vehicle for his cause. Despite the failure of the American Colonization Society, his faith in the Liberian venture never wavered, and he increasingly devoted more time and energy to the work of the local Massachusetts organization.

In 1836 he was forced to go abroad to recover his health. In England he contributed an article on "Atlantic Steam Navigation" to the Quarterly Review of June 1838 – sufficient evidence of his reputation as an author – and on his return to America published in the reviews sketches of his travels, with intimate vignettes of eminent people whom he had visited. His health, never robust, became increasingly poor, and in 1840 he died, it is said, from overwork.

Achievements

• Thatcher was prominent in philanthropic work in Boston, and wrote occasional verse to aid charity. His "Prayer for the Blind, " printed on a piece of satin (5" x 8"), was widely sold for the benefit of the Institution for the Blind. He numbered most of the prominent authors of America among his friends. He was best known for his Indian Biography, which received flattering comment in the journals and was the first work of its kind to seek accuracy of portrayal. In general, his writings were ephemeral, and have little interest for the present-day reader. Among his more important works are seven articles in the North American Review, the first of which appeared in April 1832; Indian Traits, in Harper's Family Library; Traits of the Tea Party (1835); and The Boston Book (1837), a local literary anthology. He is said to have left an unpublished manuscript of his travels. His portrait, painted in England, now hangs in the Bowdoin Gallery.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Indian Biography, or an Historical Account of Those Individuals Who Have Been Distinguished, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

    (Indian Biography, or an Historical Account of Those Indiv...)

  • Indian Biography, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)

    (A ceoimt of the (O ttawa Their tint Chtef-S aehea known t...)

Membership

He was the Young Men's Colonization Society.

Connections

Father:

Samuel Thatcher

Mother:

Sarah (Brown) Thatcher