(By ISAIAH THOMAS, LL.D. PRINTER, LATB XBNIDBNT OF THB AXB...)
By ISAIAH THOMAS, LL.D. PRINTER, LATB XBNIDBNT OF THB AXBRICAN ANTIQUARIAN afX IBTY, MKM nKB OF TUB AMBUICAN PHIL080PIIICAL 80C1BTT, AND OF TUB MABSACUU itBTTB ND MBW TOBK HISTORICAL 80CIBTIB8. SECOND EDITION. i Zftiti) ti)e Euti)or sa( Corrections anDf EUU ttions, AND A CATALOGUS OF AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS PKKVI0U8 TO TUB llEVOLUTION OP 1T7B. PUBLISHED UNDER THE MUPERVI8I0N OP A ISPECIAL OOMMIITKE OP TUB AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY. Attention Patron: This volume is too fragile for any future repair. Please handle with great care. UNIVERS nYOF mCHIGAN UBRARY -CONSERVATION BOOK JEPAIR lt 74. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org
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Thomas was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1749. He was the son of Moses and Fidelity (Grant) Thomas and great-great-grandson of Evan Thomas who came to Boston from Wales in 1640. Isaiah's grandfather, Peter Thomas, was a local merchant of some ability and means, but his father was an unsuccessful dabbler in many occupations. He died in 1752, leaving a penniless widow and five children who, with the aid of friends and a small shop, managed to escape poverty.
With but six weeks of indifferent schooling Isaiah began at the age of six his real education before the type cases of a printing office. In 1756 he was apprenticed to Zechariah Fowle of Boston, an ignorant and shiftless printer and peddler of ballads and chapbooks, by whom he was misused.
He received the honorary degree of A. M. from Dartmouth in 1814 and that of LL. D. from Allegheny College in 1818.
Having learned much of his trade from one of Fowle's short-time partners, Samuel Draper, and from another local printer, Gamaliel Rogers, Thomas took over, while still in his early teens, the management of Fowle's shop. By the age of seventeen he was considered an excellent printer. He read much, wrote plain English with a dash of satire, and attempted occasional verses to fill out a column.
In 1766 Thomas had a "serious fracas" with his master and left Boston secretly for Halifax, whence he hoped to reach London in order to perfect his knowledge of printing. He found immediate employment with the Halifax Gazette but soon got into trouble because of his opposition to the Stamp Act, returned via Portsmouth, N. H. , to Fowle's shop in Boston, and secured a final release from his unexpired apprenticeship.
He then started south with the hope of reaching England by way of the West Indies. After various adventures he found himself in Charlestown, S. C. , where he worked for a time on the South Carolina and American General Gazette. He failed to reach England or to establish a business of his own and finally, in the spring of 1770, returned to Boston. He became Fowle's partner in July, established the Massachusetts Spy, which was destined to live until 1904, soon bought out his partner, and made his paper famous for its support of the liberties of the people.
He was in constant conflict with the royal government and every effort was made to suppress his fearless and dangerously successful Whig newspaper. The British occupation of Boston in 1775 finally drove him from the city. Escaping with his press and type on the night of April 16, Thomas sent his equipment before him to Worcester while he, two nights later, joined Paul Revere and others in alarming the countryside. As a minute-man he took part in the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord and on the 20th arrived in Worcester; here he reëstablished his newspaper and did the official printing for the patriots of the colony.
In the spring of 1776 Thomas leased his paper and moved to Salem, where he made an unsuccessful attempt to carry on the printing business; he returned to Worcester in the spring of 1778 and resumed publication of the Spy. These were trying days for the young printer but by the end of the war his business was on a firmer footing and he began the publishing of books. His printing establishment in Worcester eventually employed 150 persons and included seven presses, a paper mill, and bindery. Many of his former apprentices were sent out as his partners to establish other newspapers and bookstores. He had branches in Boston, Walpole, Brookfield, Portsmouth, Windsor, Newburyport, Baltimore, and Albany and employed a line of messengers connecting his various establishments. In 1774-75 for fifteen months Thomas published the Royal American Magazine, in 1786-88 the Worcester Magazine, and from 1789 to 1796 the Massachusetts Magazine.
In 1771 he published his first almanac, the title of which was changed to Thomas's New England Almanack in the issue for 1775; the last to bear his name appeared in 1822. His more than 400 titles included a handsome folio Bible, the first printed in English in the United States, and many other religious volumes. His scores of educational works included Caleb Alexander's Greek grammar, the first written and published in America, Nicholas Pike's arithmetic, the first dictionary printed in America, William Perry's, of which he sold 54, 000 copies, and fourteen editions and 300, 000 copies of Perry's spelling book. He was the first American publisher to do extensive printing from musical type. Blackstone's Commentaries came from his press as well as many other works in law, medicine, and agriculture. He reprinted the best English literature of his day and issued the first edition of The Power of Sympathy (1789), attributed to William Hill Brown and earlier to Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, the first novel by a native American. He is still famous for his more than a hundred children's books of which he published tens of thousands of copies. Of these his first American edition of Mother Goose's Melody (1786) is the most famous but he also printed inexpensive but attractively illustrated editions of the New England Primer, The History of Little Goody Twoshoes, The Pilgrim's Progress, and Travels of Robinson Crusoe. He may be regarded as the greatest early publisher of juveniles in the country. Franklin called him "the Baskerville of America, " and an examination of the products of his busy presses bears out this high praise from the only other American printer of his day who had anything like his success as a publisher.
By 1802 Thomas had become rich and so was able to retire in favor of his son and devote the rest of his life to scholarship. His personal library, perhaps the best in the country in the field of American history, furnished the source materials for The History of Printing in America (2 vols. , 1810), which is still (1935) the recognized authority on the subject.
(By ISAIAH THOMAS, LL.D. PRINTER, LATB XBNIDBNT OF THB AXB...)
Quotations: "But, to my great disappointment, I soon found that people were not to be reasoned out of measures, that they never reasoned themselves into. "
Realizing the need for a national society for the preservation and study of the materials of American history, Thomas founded and, on October 24, 1812, incorporated the American Antiquarian Society of which he became the first president. His gifts to the society, including books, manuscripts, building, land, and endowment, amounted to $50, 000.
Thomas was the first master of the first Masonic lodge in Worcester and later master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.
He was apparently a member of every learned society in America.
He was tall, handsome, and always neatly dressed.
Quotes from others about the person
One of his old friends, Gov. Levi Lincoln of Worcester, has left this picture of Thomas in his later years: "With a strong and vigorous mind and a cultivated intellect, enterprise, energy and industry, in early life, gave him wealth, and possessed of this, he lived in courtly style, and with beneficent liberality. . In his person, he was tall and slender, stooping somewhat in his gait. His address was courteous, his conversation frank, but something conventional, and his attention to appearance and dress singularly precise and studied. He was a public spirited citizen, generous in his contributions to all worthy objects, and a most efficient co-operator with others in promoting the growth, improvement and prosperity of the place. "
Thomas was married three times: first, December 25, 1769, in Charlestown, S. C. , to Mary, daughter of Joseph and Anne Dill of Bermuda, from whom he was divorced in 1777; second, May 26, 1779, in Boston, to Mary Fowle, daughter of William and Rebecca (Bass) Thomas and widow of Isaac Fowle; third, August 10, 1819, in Boston, to Rebecca Armstrong (1757 - 1828), daughter of John and Christian (Bass) Armstrong, a cousin of his second wife. Two children by his first wife survived, Mary Anne and Isaiah.
1751–1818
He was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and later served as the third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809.
He was an American statesman and soldier who served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797 and was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
He was an American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
1757–1828
