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| Thomas Fleet | |
|---|---|
| Name | Thomas Fleet |
| Birth date | c. 1685 |
| Birth place | Leicester |
| Death date | 1758 |
| Death place | Boston, Massachusetts |
| Occupation | Printers, publisher |
| Years active | 1718–1758 |
| Known for | Founding The Boston Evening-Post |
| Spouse | Molly Fleet (née Howard) |
| Children | Hannah Fleet, Ann Fleet, John Fleet |
Thomas Fleet was an English-born printer and publisher who became a leading figure in the colonial press of Boston, Massachusetts in the early 18th century. He established one of the city’s influential newspapers and played a role in shaping public discourse during the administrations of governors such as William Shirley and Samuel Shute. Fleet’s shop served as a hub for printers, booksellers, and correspondents involved in the circulation of pamphlets, broadsides, and newspapers throughout the Province of Massachusetts Bay and beyond.
Fleet was born near Leicester in England and apprenticed in the book trades before emigrating to the American colonies. Early trajectories of English apprentices often led to connections with printers in port cities such as London and Bristol, and Fleet’s movement to New England followed patterns established by other tradesmen seeking opportunity in the colonies. He arrived in Boston, Massachusetts during a period of expanding print culture after the repeal of the Licensing Act 1695 which had previously restricted publishing in England. Fleet’s arrival in Boston placed him among contemporaries such as Benjamin Franklin, John Holt, and Bartholomew Green who were active in colonial printing networks.
Fleet established a printing shop in Boston where he produced books, pamphlets, advertisements, and newspapers. In 1735 he founded The Boston Evening-Post, which he published with varying title-styles and collaborators including printers connected to the New England Courant and the Boston News-Letter traditions. The Evening-Post competed with journals like the Boston Gazette and carried news from shipping reports, mercantile notices, parliamentary intelligence from London, and local announcements related to the Massachusetts General Court and the Superior Court of Judicature. Fleet’s operation employed journeymen and apprentices who later became notable printers, intersecting with networks linked to Philadelphia and New York printing houses.
Fleet’s shop printed works ranging from sermons by ministers such as Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards to legal documents and parliamentary pamphlets by figures associated with Whig and Tory circles in Great Britain. The Evening-Post’s layout commonly included reprints of dispatches from transatlantic correspondents, essays on trade in the Caribbean, advertisements for voyages to West Indies ports, and notices regarding shipping associated with Boston Harbor. Fleet adapted to technological and commercial shifts, sourcing type and presses through connections with suppliers in London and importing paper via merchants engaged with the Triangular trade.
Through his editorial choices and the content published in The Boston Evening-Post, Fleet articulated positions on imperial policies, taxation, and local administration that placed him within colonial debates. His pages printed critiques of actions by officials aligned with the Dominion of New England era and later commentaries on the conduct of governors such as William Shirley and Sir William Phips. Fleet’s press published letters and essays that engaged with political controversies involving representatives of the Board of Trade and the Privy Council in London as they affected the rights and privileges of colonists in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. At times his publications intersected with commercial interests represented by Boston merchants who negotiated with firms in Bristol and Liverpool.
Fleet’s political posture resembled that of moderate opponents of overreaching imperial measures; his pages often reprinted materials by pamphleteers and commentators from London and Edinburgh who addressed questions about liberties, trade regulation, and standing armies. Fleet’s newspaper became a forum for debates that also involved other colonial printers such as James Franklin and Samuel Kneeland, and it contributed to the evolving public sphere that would later shape revolutionary discourse.
Fleet married Molly Howard, and the couple raised children who were connected to Boston’s civic and commercial circles. His daughters made alliances through marriage with families involved in Boston’s mercantile and professional communities, linking Fleet to networks that circulated printed matter, legal notices, and commercial intelligence. Apprentices and journeymen in his shop formed part of an extended household common to colonial printing establishments; these relationships fostered the transmission of technical skills and editorial influence across generations of printers associated with places such as Salem, Massachusetts and Newport, Rhode Island.
Fleet maintained ties with ministers, merchants, and legal professionals who both patronized and critiqued his press, including contacts in the Massachusetts Historical Society milieu that documented the colony’s civic affairs. His personal papers and imprints—while not surviving in full—are cited in the work of antiquarians and bibliographers tracing the development of New England printing.
In his later years, Fleet continued to publish The Boston Evening-Post and to print a variety of legal and religious works until his death in 1758. His press influenced successors in the colonial and early federal periods by establishing editorial practices, commercial distribution networks, and apprenticeship models later echoed by printers in Philadelphia, New York City, and Charleston, South Carolina. Historians of American printing and media such as those associated with the American Antiquarian Society and scholars of early American journalism reference Fleet’s contributions when mapping the rise of periodical culture in the colonies.
Fleet’s legacy is preserved in surviving issues of The Boston Evening-Post, imprints held in collections at institutions like the Library of Congress and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and in the genealogies of Boston families tied to his household. His career illustrates the role of colonial printers in mediating transatlantic information flows and shaping public opinion on matters involving Parliament of Great Britain, imperial administration, and the social life of Boston.
Category:Colonial American printers Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts Category:1685 births Category:1758 deaths