A Brief Chronology of the Life of Thomas Paine

(January 29, 1737 - June 8, 1809)

• 1737 - Thomas Pain(e) born January 29 in Thetford, Norfolk, England to Joseph and Frances Cocke Pain(e).
• 1750 - At age 13, young Paine apprenticed to father to learn trade of stay-making.
• 1753 - Tries to run away to sea, on ship Terrible commanded by Captain Death, but prevented by father. A year or two later, Paine does take ship for a short enlistment on another merchant vessel.
• 1757 - Practices trade of stay-making in a London shop and attends lectures about Newtonian astronomy; acquainted with Scott and Ferguson.
• 1759 - Opens shop as master stay-maker in Sandwich, Kent. Marries Mary Lambert, who dies a year later.
• 1762 - Enters customs service as unattached officer (gauger of brewers' casks), at Alford, Lancashire.
• 1764 - Receives appointment as officer of customs.
• 1765 - Dismissed from position (in August) for stamping without inspecting.
• 1766 - In London, teaches English at an academy operated by Mr. Noble, and also does preaching.
• 1768 - Reappointed to excise service, district of Lewes, Sussex.
• 1771 - Marries Elizabeth Ollive (in March), daughter of a tradesman.
• 1772 - Writes Case of the Officers of Excise, his earliest known prose composition and first important pamphlet.
• 1773 - Solicits Oliver Goldsmith's aid in getting cause of excisemen before Parliament, which ignores the petition.
• 1774 - Discharged from excise service. Secures legal separation from wife. Arrives in America (November 30), bearing letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin.
• 1775 - Becomes editor of Robert Aitken's Pennsylvania Magazine. Anti-slavery essay, African Slavery in America, published in Pennsylvania Journal, is attributed to Paine, who receives praise for it from Dr. Benjamin Rush, a leading abolitionist. Also anticipates Declaration of Independence in his essay, A Serious Thought, in which he also rebukes Britain and America for the slave trade and slave holding (in Pennsylvania Journal, October 18, 1775, signed "Humanus.")
• 1776 - Publishes Common Sense (January 9-10). Enlists and serves as aide de camp to General Nathaneal Greene, and sees action at Fort Lee NJ. Publishes The Forester's Letters (April-May) and expands Common Sense. Produces American Crisis I (first of 16 Crisis Papers) December 19, 1776. Crisis I (its famous opening lines: These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the thanks of man and woman.…) is read to troops and is a morale-builder that helps the Americans to win the battle of Trenton NJ on Christmas day, December 25, 1776.
• 1777 - Writes Crisis II and Crisis III. Congress appoints Paine its Secretary to Committee on Foreign Affairs and appoints him to help commissioners for an Indian treaty. He produces Crisis IV (Opens with, Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it. And near the close, it states, We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.)
• 1778 - Produces Crisis V (March), Supernumerary I, (June), Crisis VI, (October) and Crisis VII (November).
• 1779 - Paine resigns as Foreign Affairs Secretary as result of Silas Deane affair (in which Paine is eventually exonerated). He is appointed Clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly.
• 1780 - Writes Crisis VIII (February) and Crisis IX (June). University of Pennsylvania confers honorary degree. Publishes Crisis Extraordinary and essay Public Good, which refutes Virginia's claims to western lands. Contributes three hundred dollars toward establishment of the Bank of Pennsylvania.
• 1781 - Accompanies Colonel John Laurens, on Laurens' request, and at Paine's own expense, to France on diplomatic mission.
• 1782 - Publishes Crisis X, (March) and Crisis XI, (May), Supernumerary Crisis (June), Letter to Abbe Raynal and Crisis XII (October).
• 1783 - Publishes Crisis XIII (April) and Supernumerary Crisis (December).
• 1784 - State of New York presents Paine with a farm at New Rochelle NY, for his eminent services in the cause of independence.
• 1785 - Paine works on his design of a single-arch iron bridge; also invents a smokeless candle.
• 1786 - Writes Dissertation on Government, the Affairs of the Bank; also, Paper Money, which supports the Bank of North America.
• 1787 - Takes bridge proposal and design to France to the Academy of Sciences. Writes Prospects on the Rubicon.
• 1788 - Returns to England to promote his bridge, and to visit his parents. Visits former wife; continues to support her. Meets Charles Fox, Lord Landsdowne, Mary Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke.
• 1790 - Receives key to Bastille, in France, from the Marquis de Lafayette, for presentation to George Washington.
• 1791 - Publishes Rights of Man, part 1, Paine's democratic-republican reply to Edmund Burke's denunciation of the French Revolution. Also writes A Republican Manifesto, in which Paine denounces monarchy -- as he had already done in Common Sense and in Rights of Man. 1792 - Writes part 2 of Rights of Man and Letter Addressed to the Addressers. Returns to France, takes seat in National Convention to which he was elected as a member from Calais. Paine is one of the four major writers of a Constitution for the Republic of France.
• 1793 - As a member of the National Convention (January 1793), Paine urges banishment, not death, of Louis XVI and family. Paine is not heeded, even though he states the view that the Republic should abolish monarchy but spare the life of the man. Paine's plea is clearly the general idea to eliminate capital punishment.
• 1793 - Writes The Age of Reason, part 1. Paine is arrested and imprisoned in Luxembourg Prison (November), a political prison, in Paris. His transgressions presumably are his moderation regarding Louis XVI and his determination for a written French constitution. He continues his writing while in prison.
• 1793 - After 11 months in prison and without the intercession of the American President, George Washington, or the Ambassador to France, Gouvernour Morris, Paine is at last released (in November) from Luxembourg Prison through the good offices of the new Ambassador to France, James Monroe.
• 1794 - et seq. Paine returns to the National Convention, in spite of previous difficulties there. Paine continues to be known as "the republican" among Irish, English other European patriots and republicans living in Paris. Paine also writes numerous letters and essays espousing republican values.
• 1795 - Publishes Dissertation on First Principles of Government, and The Age of Reason, part 2.
• 1796 - Paine wrote the poem-letter Contentment; or, If You Please, Confession, inscribed to the wife of Paine's friend, Joel Barlow, then living in Paris, as was Paine.
• 1797 - Publishes Agrarian Justice, his treatise on social welfare proposals, continuing his ideas in Rights of Man, part 2.
• 1800 - Writes Maritime Compact, consisting of 10 articles proposing an Association of Nations that shall remain neutral during armed conflict between any other warring nations.
• 1802 - Returns to America, resides off and on at his farm in New Rochelle NY and in New York City.
• 1804 - Writes To the French Inhabitants of Louisiana, a rebuke for asking for continuation of the slave trade in the Louisiana territory.
• 1805 - Moves to New York City permanently.
• 1809 - Dies in New York City, June 8, 1809. His remains were buried on his farm in New Rochelle. The burial site was ill-tended, however.
• 1819 - Paine's remains were removed by the English 18th - 19th century democrat, William Cobbett, with others, in a plan to give Paine a fitting burial in England and to use the occasion of the re-burial to garner support for a democratic-and-workers movement among the British. The scheme to re-bury Paine's remains did not materialize and his remains became lost to history.
• 1839 - The first Thomas Paine memorial in this country was erected near the site of Paine's neglected burial site in New Rochelle NY, through the efforts of New York liberal publisher Gilbert Vale, who also wrote the first fair biography of Paine. With renowned sculptor James Frazee, Vale raised donated funds for an impressive marble pylon, engraved with Paine's words, near the burial site. Later, in 1889, a bronze bust of Paine fashioned by Wilson MacDonald, and funded by the newly formed Thomas Paine Historical Association, was placed at the top of the marble pylon. This monument continues to have attraction for Paine admirers, and is still a place where they gather on the anniversary of the birth of the great patriot-author-political philosopher.