The series From Colony to Commonwealth steps back in time to the dank taverns, fledgling newsrooms and spy routes of colonial Massachusetts. As the United States commemorates its 250th anniversary, we’re tracing the commonwealth’s tumultuous path to self-governance.
Just over 250 years ago, 26-year-old Isaiah Thomas was in danger. The young printer of The Massachusetts Spy, a newspaper hostile to the British crown, packed up his printing press in Boston.
British spies had fanned out into neighboring towns, searching for illicit arms and evidence of unapproved militia activity.
“When the British took over Boston, they had a list of people they wanted to arrest. Thomas was one of them,” said Vince Golden, who curates the newspaper collection at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester — a society that Thomas himself founded.
Because that’s where he fled: 40 miles west to Worcester. Thomas smuggled with him his press and his heavy trays of type.
“Between Boston and Worcester, that’s all hostile territory to British soldiers,” Golden said. “So he felt safe out here, that the British couldn’t just easily march up to Worcester and get him. He was able to set up a shop here.”
A mere three days later, on April 19, 1775, Thomas was an eyewitness to fighting at the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
“AMERICANS! Forever bear in mind the BATTLE of LEXINGTON! – where British Troops, unmolested and unprovoked, wantonly, and in a most inhuman manner fired upon and killed a number of our countrymen, then robbed them of their provisions, ransacked, plundered and burnt their houses!” he wrote in his recollection.
His printed accounts in the Massachusetts Spy are considered among the earliest pieces of war reporting in American history. That news spread along post roads designed by revolutionaries to carry mail and vital communications, including newspapers.
But in the years before that urgency reached a deadly fever pitch on the battlefield, Thomas was one of a small group of New England publishers to stoke it. Historians today credit Boston’s printing presses — the Massachusetts Spy, the Boston Gazette and others — that helped build strong sentiments among colonists against the imperial power.
“At the end of the day, it was really the printing presses of Boston that are going to really move this thing forward,” said Gary Gregory, an enthusiast of colonial-era printing who helps preserve the stories of publishers at Haverhill’s Museum of Printing. “This network of printers, this group called the Sons of Liberty, who are fomenting a revolution.”
“This press was the most lethal weapon of the American Revolution."Frank Romano, The Haverhill Printing Museum
The young Thomas was precocious by necessity, said Joseph Adelman, a professor of American history at Framingham State University.
“His father had run away from the family, and his mother had apprenticed him at the age of 7 to a printer, which is very, very young,” he said. “Usually an apprentice starts at about 14.”
Thomas was progressing so quickly, Golden said, that he went to Nova Scotia to find a better master than what he could find in Boston. Working for the Halifax Gazette in Nova Scotia in the 1760s, Thomas often inserted images that lambasted oppressive and unfair actions from England. One was a woodcut of a devil with a pitchfork stabbing at the royal stamp levied by the king as a tax on newspapers.
By his teen years, Thomas had mastered the trade and revealed a subversive streak. His columns needled the British on issues like unfair taxation. Then, in 1770, he started the Massachusetts Spy at the age of 21 near Boston’s Fanueil Hall.
“The Massachusetts Spy is one of a few newspapers in Boston that is really central to creating a narrative about an imperial crisis that then turns into the Revolution,” Adelman said.
The Spy’s masthead featured a block-cut of a severed snake facing off against a dragon.
The symbolism was clear: the snake represented the colonies, while the dragon was a reference to King George III. The British passed legislation following the Boston Tea Party that blocked commerce from coming into Boston’s ports.
“The snake device is really fascinating that he adds after the Boston Port Act in 1774,” Adelman said. “It’s created by Paul Revere. And it really pops off the page of showing the urgency of the situation.”
In the palatial library of Worcester’s Antiquarian Society, Golden and his assistant rolled out a cart stacked with with original issues of the Spy and the Boston Gazette. These early newspapers were the “bulwark of liberty” that convinced the founders that freedom of the press — and freedom of speech — needed constitutional protection.
“This press was the most lethal weapon of the American Revolution,” said Frank Romano, director of the Haverhill Museum of Printing, pointing to a replica in his collection. “It was the newspapers and the pamphlets that really riled up the population. When you get right down to it, it was printing press that created the hue and cry for American independence.”
