Benjamin Edes (October 14, 1732–December 11, 1803),
along with his partner John Gill, printed one of the most
important anti-British newspapers in pre-revolutionary
America, the Boston Gazette. Edes and Gill took over the
Gazette from printer Samuel Kneeland and published their
first issue of Massachusetts’s second oldest paper on April
7, 1755. They continued to print the paper together until the
British occupied Boston in 1775.
Born in Charlestown on October 14, 1732, Edes learned
the printing trade as an apprentice in Boston. In 1754, Edes
and Gill opened their own print shop and printed a prospectus for a new paper, the Country Journal. Before they
could print their first issue, Kneeland offered the Gazette
to the pair since Gill had served as an apprentice in Kneeland’s shop and had married the printer’s daughter. The pair
called their paper the Boston Gazette, or Country Journal.
In 1756, they altered the name, substituting and for or in the
nameplate. It continued to operate under that name until the
American Revolution.
Edes was the principal member of a group called the
Loyal Nine, which organized following Parliament’s passage of the Stamp Act in March 1765. The act required
newspapers and other important documents to be printed
on stamped paper. The Loyal Nine, along with similar ones
in other cities, soon became known collectively as the Sons
of Liberty. Realizing the power of the press, Edes turned
his into a mouthpiece of opposition to the tax and Britain.
The Loyal Nine organized a series of protests that led to
anti-Stamp Act riots in August.
The repeal of the Stamp Act did not diminish Edes’
involvement with the Patriot cause. He took the lead in the
printing partnership, turning the Gazette into a mouthpiece
of revolution. Fellow Boston printer Isaiah Thomas called
Edes a “warm and a firm patriot.” John Adams, who wrote
under pseudonyms in the paper, said that Edes, Gill, and
Samuel Adams spent hours in the Gazette office “cooking up paragraphs, articles, occurrences, &c., working the
political engine.”
After the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775,
publication of the paper ceased. Edes escaped the city with
his printing wares and resumed publication of the Gazette
in Watertown in June. There he also published works for the
provincial congress of Massachusetts. In November 1776,
after British troops left Boston, Edes returned to the city
to publish the Gazette, and the partnership with Gill, who
went in hiding when Boston was occupied, was dissolved.
In 1779, Edes formed a partnership with his sons, both of
whom began papers that folded. Edes continued to publish
the Boston Gazette until 1798.
Inflation, depreciation of paper currency, and his sons’
failed newspaper attempts soon left Edes with little capital.
His monetary woes, coupled with the rise of new printing
offices in Boston and old age, ended the Gazette’s run. Edes
died on December 11, 1803. According to Thomas, “No
publisher of a newspaper felt a greater interest in the establishment of the United States than Benjamin Edes; and no
newspaper was more instrumental in bringing forward this
important event than The Boston Gazette.”
Further Reading
Copeland, David A. Debating the Issues in Colonial Newspapers.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Davidson, Phillip. Propaganda and the American Revolution,
1763–1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1941.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain 1764–1776. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1957.
The Boston Gazette: 1774. Introduction by Francis G. Walett.
Barre, MA: The Imprint Society, 1972.
Thomas, Isaiah. The History of Printing in America. New York:
Weathervane Books, 1970, originally published 1810.
David A. Copeland