Thomas's Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode-Island, New-Hampshire and Vermont almanack, with an ephemeris for the year of our Lord 1784: ... Calculated for the meridian of Boston, but will serve without any essential variation for either of the beforementioned states...

Format:

Book

Contributor:

West, Benjamin, 1730-1813.

Gleason, Ezra, 1748-1808?

Series:

Early American imprints. First series ; no. 17956.

Language:

English

Genre:

Almanacs -- Massachusetts -- 1784.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (36 unnumbered pages)

Place of Publication:

Worcester [Mass.]: : Printed and sold by Isaiah Thomas. Sold also, by B. Edes and Sons, printers, E. Battelle, and W. Green, booksellers, in Boston., [1783]

System Details:

text file

Notes:

Though Evans attributes this series of almanacs through 1795 to Ezra Gleason, the present one is the work of Benjamin West. The ephemeris (pages [5]) is identical, and the eclipse predictions (pages [4]) and the astronomical and related notes on the calendar pages practically so, with those in West's The North-American calendar for 1784 (Providence). The last two columns on the calendar pages, containing calculations for the moon's place and for its rising and setting, duplicate those in West's almanac, as do the times for the moon's phases at the head of these pages. The remainder of the calculations vary slightly for the most part, reflecting the difference in meridian between Providence and Boston.

The preface by "Philomathes" states that "this almanack ... is my seventh," but the content of this and the other prefaces in the series shows them to be by the publisher rather than by the calculator. The preface states further that the calculator of the present almanac also calculated Bickerstaff's Boston almanack, "published yearly before the war." West calculated this almanac from 1768 to 1775.

In his "Notes on the almanacs of Massachusetts" (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s., v. 22 (1912): 34) C.L. Nichols states that "letters to Isaiah Thomas, in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society, prove that the calculations for these almanacs, from 1775 to 1786, were made by Benjamin West." Here Nichols erred in haste. AAS has two letters to Thomas from West, written in 1784 and 1785. The former discusses the sale of his calculations for 1785 to Thomas; the latter states his inability to provide them for 1786. None of the Thomas almanacs before 1784 bears any resemblance to those of West, and most significantly resemble the work of other identifiable calculators.

Advertised in the Massachusetts spy, Worcester, Oct. 30, 1783.

Electronic text and image data. [Chester, Vt. : Readex, a division of Newsbank, Incorporated, 2002-2004. Includes files in TIFF, GIF and PDF formats with inclusion of keyword searchable text. (Early American imprints. First series ; numbers 17956).

Cited in:

Evans 17956

Drake, M. Almanacs, 3334

Access Restriction:

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