Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) was an American publisher and author. He was active in the American Revolution and performed the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Worcester, Massachusetts. A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... A declaration of independence is a proclamation of the independence of a newly formed or reformed independent state, usually from a part or the whole of the territory of another nation, or a document containing such a declaration. ... Nickname: The Heart of the Commonwealth, The City of the Seven Hills, The Paris of the 80s. ...

Early life

Thomas was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January, 8 1749. He was apprenticed in 1755 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. City nickname: Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe), Athens of America Location of Boston within Suffolk County, Massachusetts. ... Events While in debtors prison, John Cleland writes Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure). ... 1755 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ...

Massachusetts Spy (1770-1802)

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. On the i6th of April 1775 (three days before the battle of Concord, in which he took part) he took his presses and types from Boston and set them up at Worcester, where he was postmaster for a time; here he published and sold books and built a paper-mill and bindery, and he continued the paper until about 1802 except in 1776-1778 and in 1786-1788. The Spy supported Washington and the Federalist party. In Boston Thomas published, in 1774, the Royal American Magazine, which was continued for a short time by Joseph Greenleaf, and which contained many engravings by Paul Revere; and in 1775-1803 the New England Almanac, continued until 1819 by his son. He set up printing houses and book stores in various parts of the country, and in Boston with Ebenezer T. Andrews, published the Massachusetts Magazine, a monthly, from 1789 to 1793. At Walpole, New Hampshire, he published the Farmer's Museum. About 1802 he gave over to his son, Isaiah Thomas, junr., his business at Worcester including the control of the Spy. 1771 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ...

Later life

Thomas founded in 1812 the American Antiquarian Society. He died in Worcester on the 4th of April 1831.

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.

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...