Joseph Gales Jr. (1786 - 1860)

Born 10 Apr 1786 in Eckington, Derbyshire, England

Ancestors

Died 21 Jul 1860 at age 74 in Eckington, District of Columbia, United States

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Biography

Joseph Gales Jr. is Notable.

Joseph was born in 1786 in Eckington, Derbyshire, England ^[1], the eldest son of Joseph Gales Sr. and Winifred (Marshall) Gales.^[2] He was baptized on 19 May 1786 at Sheffield, Yorkshire, England.^[3] "In 1795, the family fled England for America, victims of the political unrest afflicting England during the French Revolution. Settled in Philadelphia, young Joseph resumed his education. In 1799 the family moved to Raleigh, when the elder Gales accepted an offer to publish a Jeffersonian newspaper in the new capital city of North Carolina."^[2]

"In 1807, Joseph Gales moved to Washington, D. C., where he joined the National Intelligencer newspaper and began reporting congressional proceedings. When the Intelligencer's founder, Samuel H. Smith, retired in 1810, Gales took over as editor of the paper, in partnership with his brother-in-law, William Winston Seaton. At first, Gales was the Senate's sole reporter, and Seaton reported on the House of Representatives. The Intelligencer supported the Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe administrations, and Gales and Seaton were selected as the official printers of Congress from 1819 to 1829. In addition to printing government documents, they began compiling their reports of floor debates and publishing them in the Register of Debates, a forerunner of the Congressional Record.^[4]

Joseph Gales was elected Mayor of Washington on July 21, 1827 and was elected to his own two-year term in 1828.^[5]

Joseph Gales passed away a "few minutes after seven o'clock on Saturday evening last, at Eckington, his late residence, near this city." (21 July 1860).^[6]

Sources

1. ↑ "Death of the Venerable Joseph Gales," The Evening Star, Washington, D. C., July 23, 1869
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} NCpedia, Elliot, Robert N., 1986
3. ↑ "England and Wales Non-Conformist Record Indexes (RG4-8), 1588-1977," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FQYF-F47 : 11 December 2014), Joseph Gales, 19 May 1786, Baptism; citing p. 38, Sheffield, Yorkshire, record group RG4, Public Record Office, London.
4. ↑ U. S. Government Printing Office, Joseph Gales, Jr.
5. ↑ Clark, Allen C., "Joseph Gales, Junior, Editor and Mayor," Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., Volume 23 (1920), page 101.
6. ↑ "Death of the Venerable Joseph Gales," The Evening Star, Washington, D. C., July 23, 1860

• Wikipedia contributors, "Joseph Gales," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (accessed April 1, 2021).
• "Joseph Gales" by George Peter Alexander Healy (1813 - 1894) ca 1844. Medium Oil on canvas. US Senate Art & Artifacts Collection. Accession Number 31.00016.000

See Also:

• Robert N. Elliott, "Gales, Joseph, Jr", Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 volumes, edited by William S. Powell. University of North Carolina Press, via NCpedia (1986).
• William E. Ames, A History of the National Intelligencer (1972).
• Clarence C. Carter, "The United States and Documentary Historical Publication," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 25 (1938).
• Robert N. Elliott, Jr., The Raleigh Register, 1799–1863 (1955).
• Joseph and Winifred Gales, Reminiscences (Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill).
• Frederick Hudson, Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872 (1873).
• Frank L. Mott, American Journalism (1940).
• Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of the "National Intelligencer " (1871).