author
Thaddeus Mason Harris
1768–1842
A Harvard librarian, Unitarian minister, and prolific early American writer, he moved easily between scholarship, religion, travel, and natural history. His best-known book, The Natural History of the Bible, helped make him a widely read voice in the early 1800s.
2 Audiobooks
Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe Founder of the Colony of Georgia, in North America.
by Thaddeus Mason Harris
André Michaux's Travels into Kentucky, 1793-96; François André Michaux's Travels West of Alleghany Mountains, 1802; Thaddeus Mason Harris's Journal of a Tour Northwest of Alleghany Mountains, 1803.
by André Michaux, Thaddeus Mason Harris, François André Michaux
About the author
Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on July 7, 1768, he grew up in difficult circumstances after his father died during the Revolutionary era. He studied at Harvard, graduating in 1787, and soon began building a career that joined books, learning, and ministry.
He served as Harvard's librarian and later became minister of the First Parish in Dorchester, where he remained a well-known religious and civic figure. Alongside his church work, he wrote extensively on theology, natural history, travel, and other subjects, showing the wide-ranging curiosity that shaped much early American nonfiction.
Among his most remembered works is The Natural History of the Bible, first published in Boston in 1793. He died on April 3, 1842, and is also remembered as the father of Thaddeus William Harris, the naturalist and librarian who carried the family's scholarly interests into the next generation.