Details
Title Adams, Thomas F.
Date ca. 1815-ca. 1880
Description Thomas F. Adams, born ca. 1815 in South Carolina, worked as a printer, typographer, and "master chemist" for a lamp black (i.e., black pigment) manufactory in Philadelphia from about 1837 to 1880. Adams also authored the seminal work Typographia: A Brief Sketch of the Origin, Rise, and Progress of the Typographic Art (1837) and was a member of the Art Union of Philadelphia, serving as its Secretary in the late 1840s. During the 1840s and 1850s, Adams resided at 18 Jacoby, 8 Carlton Square, and 409 Green Street before settling in 1855 at 1520 Girard Avenue until 1880.
Primarily a card printer who used the "Fly Press," his printing establishment also executed lithographic and engraved labels, tickets, bill hands and circulars. Between 1837 and 1850, he relocated his business several times in the vicinity of Old City, including Chestnut & Third Streets (1837); 20 South Fourth Street (1841-42); 118 Chestnut, below Fourth Street (1843); 8 Franklin Place (1844-1845); 85 Dock Street (1846-1847); and 73 North Third Street (1850-1851).
By 1850, Adams married Margaret E., with whom he had a son, Charles T., also a chemist. The same decade, Adams entered the allied trade to lithography of lamp black manufacturing when he established a factory circa 1852 at Twenty-Fifth and Coates Street (i.e., Fairmount Avenue). By the early 1860s, Adams associated with L. Martin & Co., the largest manufacturer of printing inks in the United States, and by 1863, worked at their factory at 138 South Delaware Avenue.
Is part of Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers
Call number Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers
Bibliographic citation Census 1850, 1860
North American, March 9, 1846 and June 1, 1848
Philadelphia City Directories, 1837-1880
Philadelphia Inquirer, August 13, 1841; May 6, 1842; and June 22, 1842