The Details:
The Lawer’s Pedigree. Boston: Zechariah Fowle, 1755. [catalog record]
Bequest of Isaiah Thomas, 1831.
The Story:
As a child, Isaiah Thomas received only six weeks of schooling before Boston’s Overseers of the Poor placed him with printer Zechariah Fowle. Thomas’s first type composition, done at age 6, was The Lawer’s [i.e., Lawyer’s] Pedigree, a broadside ballad sung to the tune Our Polly is a Sad Slut. Thomas inscribed a copy: “This is a copy from the first types that I set for the press. It was in the summer of 1755.”
>> view the next item in the case
>> Related item:
A Poem on the Late Distress in Case 5
