Thomas Greenleaf was an American printer and journalist.
Background
Thomas Greenleaf was born about 1755 at Abington, Massachusetts. A descendant of Edmund Greenleaf who settled at Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1635, he was the fourth child and second son of Joseph Greenleaf and Abigail Payne, youngest daughter of Rev. Thomas Payne. His father was a justice of the peace for Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who had “some talents as a popular writer, ” which he devoted to the patriot cause by contributions to Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy. One of his papers brought him into special disfavor with the royalist government and caused his dismissal from office.
In 1773 he purchased an outfit and established a printery in Boston. In the brief period before the war put an end to the business the Greenleaf printing-house issued a few pamphlets and volumes, and continued the Royal American Magazine, or Universal Repository of Instruction and Amusement, which Isaiah Thomas had begun.
Education
Thomas studied printing art in the Boston shop of Isaiah Thomas.
Career
In 1785 Thomas Greenleaf removed to New York City, where in September he became manager for Eleazer Oswald of the New-York Journal, or the Weekly Register. Greenleaf became owner of the paper on January 18, 1787, and modified its title to the New York Journal, and Weekly Register.
On November 19, 1787, it became a daily newspaper, with the title, New York Journal, and Daily Patriotic Register. The last daily issue was July 26, 1788, and the coordinate weekly or country paper was continued from July 3, 1788, with a modified title, until May 4, 1790. After that date it became a semi-weekly, with title, New-York Journal, & Patriotic Register, under which it was published until December 28, 1793, when it adopted the name, Greenleaf’s New-York Journal, continuing as a semi-weekly. On May 11, 1795, Greenleaf established the Argus, & Greenleaf s New Daily Advertiser.
In September 1798, during a devastating scourge of the yellow fever which was raging in New York City and Philadelphia, his apprentices forsook him and two-thirds of his customers fled the city. From “a too sedulous attention” to his duties, and already weakened by “a slow wasting consumption, ” he fell a victim to the disease and died on September 14.
His widow continued her husband’s papers until March 8, 1800, when the Argus came to an end and the New-York Journal was sold to David Denniston.
Achievements
Greenleaf was a prominent printer who published Anti-Federalist letters including those by the Federal Farmer in the New York Journal. He also published the laws of the state of New York.
Politics
He supported Aaron Burr’s party against the Federalists, and did not spare even “the venerable Washington” from “a great degree of virulence”.
Personality
An obituary in his own newspaper extolled him for his domestic, neighborly, and friendly virtues, and characterized him as “a warm friend to Civil and Religious Liberty, unawed by persecution or prosecution. ” “He loved his country; and, if at any time . .. he dipped his pen in gall, and exercised it with unusual severity, ” it was because he hated “political apostacy” and wanted “to preserve the Constitution from encroachment. ” In the judgment of Isaiah Thomas, he was “well acquainted with the business, enterprising, and amiable in manners”ю
Connections
On October 13, 1791, Greenleaf was married to Ritsana or Anna Quackenbos, a daughter of Johannes and Catherina DeWitt Quackenbos and a grand-niece of Gov. George Clinton. They had three daughters and a son.
