Thaddeus Mason Harris

Thaddeus Mason Harris (1768–1842) was a Harvard librarian, Unitarian minister and author in the early 19th Century. His most noted book was The Natural History of the Bible first published in Boston in 1793.[1]

Harris's father was killed fighting on the colonists side in the American Revolutionary War. Harris had been born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, but after his father's death he was sent to live on a farm in Stirling, Massachusetts. Harris went on to study at Harvard University from which he graduated in 1788. He then was a school teacher at Worcester, Massachusetts, before becoming the librarian of Harvard in 1781 and then being appointed the minister of the First Unitarian Church of Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1791. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1806.[2] Harris was also a founding member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1812,[3] and served as corresponding secretary from 1812-1831, and as secretary of foreign correspondence from 1831-1832.[4]

Harris's son Thaddeus William Harris would also serve as a librarian at Harvard and be one of the leading American naturalists in the first half of the 19th century.

References

  1. ↑ Alfred Claghorn Potter, Charles Knowles Bolton (1897), The Librarians of Harvard College 1667-1877, Cambridge, Mass.: Library of Harvard University
  2. ↑ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter H" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  3. ↑ American Antiquarian Society Members Directory
  4. ↑ Dunbar, B. (1987). Members and Officers of the American Antiquarian Society. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society.

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