Isaiah Thomas

Isaiah Thomas, oil on canvas by Ethan Allen Greenwood in 1818

Isaiah Thomas (January 8, 1749 - April 4, 1831), was an American newspaper publisher and author. He performed the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Worcester, Massachusetts and reported the first account of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. He was the founder of the American Antiquarian Society

Early life and publishing career

Thomas was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was apprenticed on July 7, 1756 to Zechariah Fowle, a Boston printer, with whom, after working as a printer in Halifax, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Charleston, South Carolina, he formed a partnership in 1770.^[1]

In Boston, in 1774, Thomas published the Royal American Magazine, which was continued for a short time by Joseph Greenleaf, and which contained many engravings by Paul Revere.

The Massachusetts Spy (1770-1802)

Masthead of July 7, 1774 issue

He issued in Boston the Massachusetts Spy three times each week, then (under his sole ownership) as a semi-weekly, and beginning in 1771, as a weekly which soon espoused the Whig cause and which the government tried to suppress.

Escape to Worcester

On the April 16, 1775 (three days before the Battle of Concord, in which he took part), Thomas took his presses from Boston and set them up in Worcester, where he was also postmaster for a time. There he published and sold books, built a paper-mill and bindery, and continued the paper until 1802 save for gaps in 1776-1778 and in 1786-1788. The Spy supported Washington and the Federalist Party.

Around 1802, Thomas gave his Worcester business over to his son, including the control of the Spy.

Later life

Thomas set up printing houses and book stores in various parts of the country.

From 1775 until 1803, Thomas published the New England Almanac, continued until 1819 by his son, Isaiah Thomas, Jr. In Boston he published the monthly Massachusetts Magazine, with Ebenezer T. Andrews, from 1789 to 1793. At Walpole, New Hampshire, he also published the Farmer's Museum.

In 1812, Thomas founded the American Antiquarian Society. He spent his final days in Worcester.

Books

His History of Printing in America, with a Biography of Printers, and an Account of Newspapers (2 vols., 1810; 2nd ed., 1874, with a catalogue of American publications previous to 1776 and a memoir of Isaiah Thomas, by his grandson B. F. Thomas) is an important work, accurate and thorough.

Legacy

In 1943, Publishers Weekly created the Carey-Thomas Award for creative publishing, naming it honor of Mathew Carey and Isaiah Thomas.^[2]

Sources

• unsourced biography from the University of Delaware
•  "Thomas, Isaiah". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 

References

External links

• A Brief History of the American Antiquarian Society

• Media related to Isaiah Thomas at Wikimedia Commons