Samuel Turell Armstrong

Background

Samuel Turell Armstrong was born on April 29, 1784 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, United States. His parents, John and Elizabeth, both died before he was thirteen.

Education

The new century found the youth a printer's apprentice with Manning & Loring in Boston.

Career

His appenticeship completed, he formed a partnership with Joshua Belcher and conducted a printing business at 70 State St. After a few years the partnership was dissolved and he moved to Charlestown, where from his printery appeared monthly the Panoplist and Missionary Magazine United (still current as the Missionary Herald) beginning with June 1808.

Returning to Boston in 1811, he located his business at 50 Cornhill. His publications were generally of a religious character, such as Thomas Scott's The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments, with Explanatory Notes (1824), Worcester's edition of Watts's Psalms and Hymns, and Claudius Buchanan's Christian Researches in Asia (1811). Of a religious nature, too, was the publisher himself, a deacon in the Old South Church, and member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. His connection with the Old South Church accounts for his discovery, in 1816, in the tower of the church, of "the third volume of the History of New England in the original MS. of the author, John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay. "

A man of civic spirit as well, Armstrong headed the subscription list "for the preservation of the Plymouth Rock, " June 1835. This same spirit led him to accept public office; he was representative to the General Court from the City of Boston (May 1822 to May 1823; May 1828 to May 1829), lieutenant-governor (1833 - 35) and governor succeeding Gov. Davis after March 4, 1835, when the latter went to the United States Senate.

Hence in the gubernatorial election of November 1835 Armstrong ran unsuccessfully as an Independent in the same field with Edward Everett, Webster's nominee. In the municipal election of the following month, however, his fellow citizens of Boston elected him mayor for the ensuing year.

His administration was marked by the erection of an iron fence for the enclosure of three sides of the Common, and the extension of the mall through the burial grounds of Boylston St. His last public office was that of state senator in 1839.

He continued his connection with his publishing business in the latter years of his life, but the moderate fortune he had amassed (Abigail, née Walker, his widow, is mentioned by Forbes and Green, Rich Men of Massachusetts, 1852, as being worth $150, 000) enabled him to give considerable time to European travel.

Achievements

• As a printer he published an early stereotype edition of Scott's Family Bible, which was very popular, and The Panoplist, a religious magazine devoted to missionary interests. He also became a prominent figure in politics.

Politics

A Whig in politics, he had Anti-Masonic support, but he was not in the favor of Daniel Webster, Massachusetts Whig leader, who scorned this self-made man "of the common people. "

Connections

There is no record of his own family.

Father:

John Armstrong

Mother:

Elizabeth (Williams) Armstrong