Author: Child, William
Biography:
CHILD, William (1777-1840: ancestry.com)
William Child (or Childs) was born on 4 Jan. 1777 in Woodstock CT, the son of Captain Increase Child and his wife Olive Pease. On the title-page of his first publication, A Collection of Hymns (1795), published in Providence RI, he is identified as a resident of Johnston RI, but by 1805 he had moved to Johnstown NY and set up as a printer. There he established a newspaper, the Monterey Republican, in 1806; his brother Asa took over as editor until 1823. From 1808 to 1818 he was also the editor of The Independent American. He served as a corporal in the state militia in the War of 1812. On 5 Feb. 1820 he married Polly Weed, with whom he had six children. He died on 31 Mar. 1840 at Jefferson MI and was buried at Maple Grove cemetery, Mason MI. For some of the publications attributed to him, such as a Gothic tale (The Cavern of Death, 1805) and a prose exposition of scripture, The War in Heaven (1821, sometimes attributed to his business partner Darius Wells), he may have been only the printer. (ancestry.com 31 July 2025; WorldCat 7 Mar. 2018) HJ