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Isaiah Thomas, Jr.
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ISAIAH THOMAS, JR. (1773-1819), March 1818
Ethan Allen Greenwood (1779-1856)
oil on panel
framed: 31 x 26 3/4 (80.010 x 67.9450)
signed l.l.: 'Greenwood/1818'
Gift of Francis Peabody Abbot, Agnes Ann Abbot, and Mary Perkins
Abbot,
1945.
Weis #124
Hewes #122
More
information
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Born in Boston, the only son of Isaiah Thomas, Sr., Isaiah
Thomas, Jr.
was one of the incorporators of the American Antiquarian Society
in 1812.
He also served as the Society's treasurer from 1813 until his
death in
1819. He was remembered as 'a man of large intelligence and fond
of books,
wrote with ease and rapidity, of excellent conversational powers,
fond
of and devoted to his home and family.'(1) Thomas was taught the
business
of printing by his father and started his career as a bookseller
in 1792
at the age of nineteen. Five years later he married Mary Weld, the
daughter
of a wealthy Boston merchant.
In 1799 he became the co-publisher of the Massachusetts Spy,
sharing
the masthead with his father until 1801, when he was made the sole
publisher
and editor. Thomas bought out his father's large printing,
papermaking
and publishing business in 1802 when Isaiah Thomas, Sr., retired.
In 1810
the younger Thomas moved to Boston, and continued to issue the Spy
and
the family's almanac, as well as to print books such as Bernhard
Faust's
A New Guide to Health (1810) and Charles Robbins's The Drum &
Fife
Instructor (1812). Thomas's business interests were adversely
affected
by the War of 1812. He sold the Spy in that year and tried to
expand his
bookselling business by opening shops in Connecticut, Maine, and
Maryland.(2)
He continued to issue a variety of almanacs and books. Copies of
many
of his publications are preserved in the imprint collection of the
American
Antiquarian Society.
Thomas died in Boston in the summer of 1819 following an
accident. His
father noted in his diary on June 25th, 'My son died, aged 45
years, occasioned
by the wounds he received by a Fall the Evening before.'(3) Two
days later,
Isaiah Thomas, Jr., who left a widow and nine children, was buried
in
Worcester. His father wrote, 'My son's remains were deposited in
my tomb
in the North burying ground this morning at 8 o'clock. Prayers by
Dr.
Freeman at the house of Eben T. Andrews - from whence the corpse
was carried
to the burying ground.'(4)
This portrait was painted the year before his death by the
Boston artist
Ethan Allen Greenwood.(5) In the midst of a financial crisis,
Thomas was
able to find the $60.00 the artist usually charged for such
images. Given
the sitter's untimely death, the portrait was certainly cherished
by the
family as the last likeness of Isaiah Thomas, Jr. It was kept by
his father
and hung in the best bedroom of his home in Worcester, until his
death,
when it was inherited by Benjamin Franklin Thomas, the sitter's
youngest
son.(6) It was loaned to the American Antiquarian Society in 1940
and
was donated by the family five years later.
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1) Levi Lincoln, 'Isaiah Thomas, Jun.' Reminiscences of
the Original
Associates of the Worcester Fire Society (Worcester: Edward R.
Fiske,
1862): 55.
2) Printer's Biography Index, Imprint Card Catalog,
American
Antiquarian Society.
3) Isaiah Thomas Diary, June 25, 1819, Isaiah Thomas
Papers 1748-1874,
American Antiquarian Society Manuscript Collection.
4) Isaiah Thomas Diary, June 27, 1819.
5) Ethan Allen Greenwood Papers 1801-1839, American
Antiquarian
Society Manuscripts Collection. According to Greenwood's
memorandum book,
he painted Isaiah Thomas, Jr., on March 11, 1818, one of
fifty-eight likenesses
he completed that year. For more on Greenwood see Georgia Brady
Bumgardner,
'The Early Career of Ethan Allen Greenwood,' in Itinerancy in New
England
and New York (Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 1984):
212-25;
and Georgia Brady Barnhill, 'Extracts from the Journals of Ethan
Allen
Greenwood: Portrait Painter and Museum Proprietor,' Proceedings of
the
American Antiquarian Society 103 (April 1993): 91-178.
6) Probate Inventory of Isaiah Thomas, Sr., Worcester
County
Probate Records, 1831, copy in the Thomas Family Papers 1815-1887.
The
inventory lists items in the North Front Room, including, a
'Portrait
of I. Thomas, Jr.,' valued at $20.00, as well as one bureau, a
washstand,
the 'Best Bed and Pillows,' and two drawings with needlework.
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Society
Last updated December 10, 2004
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