Author: Searson, John
Biography:
SEARSON, John (fl 1757-1800)
He is described in catalogues as being born about 1750 but a more likely date is 1730 or even earlier. His parents and place of birth are unknown but he lived in Londonderry and the “Author’s Address” in The Art of Contentment states that he was educated by two uncles, ministers in the Church of England, and was sent first to the West Indies as an apprentice to a merchant before he travelled to New York. In May 1757 he advertised in the New-York Gazette as having opened a shop “near the Exchange” where he offered miscellaneous articles for sale, writing services, and teaching. Within a few years he moved to Philadelphia where, in January 1759, he married Mary Lord. Their daughter, Sarah, was born in 1760. Mary had inherited land in Philadelphia county from her father, and Searson advertised this for sale in the Pennsylvania Gazette. His wife died in 1762 and Searson returned to New York where he married Elizabeth Holland. (Paul Holland Searson, a comic actor, was almost certainly their son.) In November 1766 a column headed “Mr Searson to the Publick” appeared in the New-York Gazette; it was intended to repudiate rumours of his violent abuse of his wife. The column is followed by a copy of Elizabeth’s attestation to the mayor that she had not been beaten. By 1768, he was back in Philadelphia where, in the Pennsylvania Chronicle of 4 Dec. 1769, he issued another notice “to the Publick,” this time detailing “malicious persecution” from a Mr. Kay which had landed him in prison. From prison he published his Two Discourses Delivered in the Prison of Philadelphia (1770) as by “a Lay-Man of the Church of England,” and a political broadside, Seven Hints for all who will Take Them (1770). In 1772 he returned to Ireland; in a letter to George Washington he claimed to have been master of an academy there and the title page of his Poem on Down-Hill identifies him as “late master of the Freeschool in Colerain.” His first books of poetry were published by subscription in Ireland and their dedications and content establish a pattern he later pursued in America of seeking to propitiate men who might assist him. In 1796 he returned to Philadelphia but soon left for New York because of an outbreak of yellow fever. His letters to George Washington and John Adams, seeking their assistance in finding work or buying his books, are dated 1796-99. Thereafter the trail goes cold and no record of his death has been found. The Boston Athenaeum copy of Poem on Down-Hill encloses a four-page leaflet of his 1796 “A Poem being a Cursory View of Belfast Town” but no other copies are known to exist. WorldCat identifies him as the author of the anonymous Disinterested Advice to the People Called Methodists (1793) but this is unlikely to be by him; his authorship of Advice to the Protestant Clergy of Ireland (1787; Boston Athenaeum catalogue) is more certain. (New-York Gazette 16 May 1757, 10 Nov. 1766, 25 Dec. 1769; Pennsylvania Gazette 3 Jan 1760, 30 June 1768; Pennsylvania Chronicle 4 Dec. 1769; “From John Searson to George Washington, 9 Apr. 1798,” Founders Online 23 Sept. 2020; Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, vol. 3 [1871]) HJ