Author: Wells, Thomas
Biography:
WELLS, Thomas (1790-1861: ancestry.com)
Newspaper reports after the deaths of Wells and his wife Anna Maria Wells (q.v.) generally mention two things about him: that he was a grandson of the Founding Father Samuel Adams (1722-1803), and that both husband and wife wrote poetry. In the words of one Massachusetts paper, their work was "marked by good taste and touches of genuine power" (Palladium). Under the circumstances, it is surprising that so little of any certainty is known about him. He was a native of Boston; he married Anna Maria Foster in 1821; he is said to have worked for the US Revenue Service. He wrote occasional verse but published very little of it. There was a bookseller and publisher named Thomas Wells in Boston between about 1813 and 1828 with premises first on Hanover Street and later on Union Street, who produced mainly educational and religious books. It is tempting to believe that they are one and the same and that perhaps Wells began as a publisher and turned to tax-collecting later, but no firm evidence has come to light. (The publisher lost his only son, an infant, in Jan. 1820 but that does not rule him out since at least one of the records suggests that the groom might have been a widower at the time of his marriage in 1821.) Wells died in Boston on the 10th or 11th of March, 1861; the circumstances of his death are not known. (ancestry.com 19 Jan. 2021; findmypast.com 19 Jan. 2021; WorldCat; Boston Herald 13 Mar. 1861; Worcester Palladium [Worcester MA] 30 Dec. 1868) HJ