Sons & Daughters of Liberty 

     As British-colonial relations worsened, Edes began to carry articles by such famous proponents of independence as Samuel Adams, John Adams, and John Hancock. Edes thus played an important role in the Revolutionary War by fostering the increasingly independent American identity and anticolonial sentiment. His newspaper, which lost popularity after the war, ceased publication in 1798.

 

     Benjamin Edes, born October 14, 1732 in Massachusetts, was a patriot printer that aided the Sons of Liberty by printing material that aided them throughout the Revolution. He also took a large part in the Boston Tea Party, even allowing the use of his print shop as a dressing room for the numerous participants.

 

     From mid-1774 to April 1775, Edes circulated some 2,000 copies of the Gazette each week—more copies than any other colonial paper. British authorities offered a bounty for his arrest, intending to execute him for Gazette stories about alleged British atrocities. To avoid arrest, Edes moved his press out of Boston in April 1775, resuming publication later in Watertown.