Jonas Green: The Maryland Printer Who Defied the Stamp Act
In 1765, Jonas Green, the official printer for Maryland, initiated opposition to the Stamp Act by halting The Maryland Gazette and covering the protests. Born in 1712, he was appointed Maryland's official printer in April 1738 and revived The Maryland Gazette in 1745, focusing on social and civic matters. A Freemason and member of the Tuesday Club, he became a councilman in 1755 and an alderman in 1767. In August 1765, he reprinted a condemnation from the New York Gazette. Following the protests, he stopped publication in October 1765 but later released supplements. Green passed away on April 16, 1767, and his wife Anne took over, reporting on the Boston Tea Party in 1774. Their son Frederick ran the paper until 1839.
Key facts
- Jonas Green became Maryland's official printer in April 1738 after Governor Samuel Ogle recognized his skills.
- Green revived The Maryland Gazette in 1745, publishing civic, military, religious, and social news along with poems and essays.
- He was a member of the Tuesday Club, founded by Dr. Alexander Hamilton, who called him an 'Improver and encourager of wit.'
- Green protested the Stamp Act by reporting on colonial opposition and shutting down The Maryland Gazette in October 1765.
- Maryland's stamp distributor Zachariah Hood was burned in effigy in August 1765 and fled after his rented house was torn down in September.
- Green renamed his paper The Maryland Gazette, Reviving in January 1766 and reverted to the original name in March.
- Green died on April 16, 1767, at age fifty-five; his wife Anne Catherine Hoof Green succeeded him as official printer.
- The Maryland Gazette continued under the Green family until 1839, with a suspension from 1777 to 1779 due to a paper shortage.
Entities
Artists
- Jonas Green
- Anne Catherine Hoof Green
- Samuel Green
- Timothy Green
- Andrew Bradford
- Samuel Ogle
- Gordon S. Wood
- Alexander Hamilton
- Zachariah Hood
- Andrew Oliver
- Deborah Franklin
- Benjamin Franklin
- Jane Wilson McWilliams
- Frederick Green
- Thomas Jefferson
- Nathaniel Currier
- Charles Willson Peale
- Francis Blackwell Mayer
Institutions
- Kneeland and Green
- Maryland Assembly
- The Maryland Gazette
- Tuesday Club
- New York Gazette
- The Gentlemen's Magazine
- University of North Carolina Press
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- The University of Tennessee Press
- Vintage Books
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Springfield Museums
- Historic Annapolis, Inc.
- Museum of Historic Annapolis
- The John Work Garrett Library of The Johns Hopkins University
Locations
- Cambridge
- Massachusetts
- Boston
- Connecticut
- Philadelphia
- Maryland
- Annapolis
- Netherlands
- New York
- Caribbean
- London
- Lexington
- Concord