Priestley in America, 1794–1804

Abstract

PROF. EDGAR SMITH, of the University of Pennsylvania, in studying the lives of early American chemists, naturally encountered the name of Priestley, who, as is well known, left this country for America in 1794. The odium and insult he had met with as a Dissenter culminated in the Birmingham Riots of 1791, when, to the cry of “Church and King,” his house was wrecked and set on fire “with the most savage and determined fury,” and the books and apparatus which it had been the business of his life to collect and use were utterly destroyed. What Pitt termed “the effervescence of the public mind” was kept alive by the implacable resentment of the great body of the clergy of the Established Church, aided by the speeches in Parliament of Burke, and by what were then known as “Treasury newspapers” controlled by the political party in power. Priestley's position in this country became so insecure that eventually he determined to leave it and to join his sons, who with certain other persons, mainly Englishmen, were projecting a settlement near Northumberland at the confluence of the north-east and west branches of the Susquehanna. On April 8, 1794, he and his wife sailed from London, and arrived at the Old Battery, New York, on the evening of June 4.

Priestley in America, 1794–1804.

By Prof. Edgar F. Smith. Pp. v + 173. (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son and Co., 1920.) 1.50 dollars net.