EDES, BENJAMIN

born Oct. 14, 1732, Charlestown, Mass. died Dec. 11, 1803, Boston founder and co-owner with John Gill of the anti-British New England newspaper the Boston Gazette and Country Journal. As editor and publisher of the Gazette, Edes made the paper a leading voice favouring American independence. Edes was 23 and had received only a modest education when he joined with a young Boston printer, John Gill, to found the Gazette as a patriots' voice in 1755. It was an immediate success. It is said that the rebellious colonists who took part in the Boston Tea Party (1773) assembled at Edes' home and then donned their Indian costumes and paint at the plant of the Gazette. From mid-1774 to April 1775 Edes was circulating some 2,000 copies of the Gazette a week, more than any other colonial paper. British authorities offered a bounty for his arrest, intending to execute him for Gazette stories about alleged British atrocities. To avoid arrest Edes, in April 1775, moved his press out of Boston, resuming publication later in Watertown. As Britishcolonial relations worsened, Edes began to carry articles by such famous proponents of independence as Samuel and John Adams and John Hancock. Edes published the paper until 1798, but it lost popularity after the Revolutionary War. Edes died in poverty.