Author: Odiorne, Thomas
Biography:
ODIORNE, Thomas (1769-1851: WBIS)
A businessman who began in books and ended in ironmongery, Thomas Odiorne was born in Exeter NH, son of Joanna (Gilman) and Thomas Odiorne. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth in 1791 and set up business, with a partner, as a printer and bookseller in Exeter. In 1799 he married Mary Bartlett of Haverhill; in or about 1800 moved with her to Boston, where he ran a drygoods business until 1811. After the death of his first wife he married, in 1810, Mary Hussey of Nantucket, and with her moved to Malden MA. There he became an industrialist--by some accounts a wealthy one--in the iron manufactory, and there he remained for the rest of his life. There appear to have been at least two surviving children, but Thomas Odiorne of Boston (b 1807), publisher, was not one of them. (Appleton; Hart; George T. Chapman, Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth College [1867] 60) HJ