Sinclair Tousey

Background

Sinclair was born on July 18, 1815 at New Haven, Connecticut. He was the son of Zerah and Nerissa (Crane) Tousey, and a descendant of Richard Tousey who settled in Saybrook in 1679.

Education

Having lost his parents in early childhood, he had very limited schooling and at the age of ten years went to work in a cotton factory in central New York. Later he was bound out to a farmer in the same section. Becoming dissatisfied, he walked back to Connecticut, and worked first as a farm hand and then as an apprentice to a carpenter.

Career

Afterwards he sought to make a fortune by going to New York City, where he began as a grocery clerk. After working as a carrier boy for the New York Herald, he became a news agent in New Haven for the New York Transcript, and then circulation promoter in Philadelphia for the New York Sun. When the opportunities in this field seemed to him still too limited, he went to the Middle West as an agent for a patent medicine company; in 1836 he appears in Louisville, Ky. , city directory in that capacity.

He is said to have established in Louisville a short-lived penny daily newspaper, the Daily Times (Appletons' Annual and Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner, post), the first of its kind west of the Alleghanies. From 1840 to 1853 he operated a farm in New York but in 1853 he entered the firm of Ross, Jones, and Tousey, wholesale news agents and booksellers, in New York City.

Seven years later, through the retirement first of one and then of the other of his partners, he became the sole proprietor of the business, which had grown in volume until it amounted, it is said, to a million dollars a year.

At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in the 14th New York Regiment of Volunteer Engineers and served until 1863. In 1864 he published Life in the Union Army, an account in verse of the difficulties and hardships of the soldiers, which, together with a long introduction in prose, was frankly critical of army officers and of the War Department.

Early in 1864 his business was combined with that of some other companies engaged in the same field to form the American News Company, of which he became president, a position that he continued to fill until his death twenty-three years later.

Letters he wrote to his family and friends during a six months' tour through Europe in 1867-68 were published as Papers from over the Water (1869). His letters to newspapers and his articles in magazines he published privately in 1871 under the title Indices of Public Opinion, 1860-1870.

He died in New York.

Achievements

• Sinclair Tousey is remembered as the Founder & President of "American News Company".

Works

More photos

• book

  • Papers from over the water ; a series of letters from Europe

    (This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)

  • Indices of Public Opinion 1860-1870 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Indices of Public Opinion 1860-1870 Campaig...)

Politics

Tousey joined the Republican party at its inception and took an active part in the antislavery agitation. During the draft riots in New York City he had fences and sidewalks placarded with posters bearing the words, "Don't Unchain the Tiger, " by which he hoped to warn the rioters against an aroused public opinion. Besides his activities against slavery, his humanitarian interests included membership in the societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals and children, and the chairmanship of the executive committee of the Prison Association, to which he devoted much time and effort.

Connections

He was married first to Mary Ann Goddard, second to Amanda Fay.

He was survived by his second wife and four sons of his first marriage.

Father:

Zerah Tousey

Mother:

Nerissa (Crane) Tousey

child:

William Tousey

(1845–1913)

child:

John Evart Tousey

(d. 1906)

child:

Charles Goddard Tousey

(1840–1912)

Spouse (2):

Mary Ann Goddard

Spouse (1):

Mary Ann Goddard

References

• The Tousey Family in America (Classic Reprint)