Skip to main content

Author: Thomas, Frederick William

Biography:

THOMAS, Frederick William (1806-66: DAB)

Thomas was born in Providence RI but in his travels and various lines of work, he covered most of the country. His father, Ebenezer Smith Thomas, was a bookseller and newspaper editor; his mother was Ann (Fonerden) Thomas; they had eight children of whom Frederick was the eldest. He was injured and permanently lamed as a young child, so he was sent to live with relatives in Baltimore, where he studied law, was called to the bar, and began to practise. Meanwhile, the rest of the family passed from Baltimore to Charleston SC and then to Cincinnati OH. In 1831 Thomas joined them in Cincinnati where he assisted his father and did some work as a journalist himself, but also travelled widely in the West. His career as a writer began in Cincinnati with his poem The Emigrant (1833) and the first of several novels, which he published anonymously (Clinton Bradshaw, 1835). Over time he added biographies, history, and short stories. He met E. A. Poe (q.v.) in Philadelphia in 1840 and became a friend. In Washington DC as a clerk from 1841 to about 1847 he assembled a library for the Treasury Dept. In 1847-8 he was a Professor of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Alabama. He then resumed work as a journalist in Kentucky. But in 1850 he became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Cincinnati, still writing (an autobiography, in 1852) and still editing for newspapers in the South. He died in Washington DC of typhoid fever. (DAB; Appleton; ancestry.com)

 

Books written (1):