154
of seventeen, he was apprenticed to Benjamin Johnson,

a printer in Philadelphia, and was fortunate enough to
be in that city while it was the capital of the United
States. He set up his own printing establishment in
Wilmington in 1797; and during that year and the next
published books of sermons and political essays. It
may be interesting to note that his first work in Wil-
mington was an almanac published with John Adams, for-
merly of Baltimore.⁸⁸ Niles was active in Wilmington
politics during his partnership with Bonsai,⁸⁹ and on
his return to Baltimore in 1805 he assumed the editor-
ship of the Evening Post, a Democratic Republican

newspaper.⁹⁰

In June of 1811, Niles issued his prospectus for
Ma Weekly Register,⁹¹ which continued until June 27,
1849, and is the publication upon which Niles' fame
rests. Two noteworthy doctoral dissertations have
been written on the Weekly Register; Richard Gabriel
Stone's Hezekiah Niles as an Economist, accepted by
Jofans Hopkins University and published in 1933 as
Series LI, number 5 of the Johns Hopkins University
Studies in Historical and Political Science; and Norval
Neil Luxon's Niles' Weekly Register, accepted by the

88 Ibid. p. 33-37.

89 Luxon, N.N. Niles' weekly register, p. 40.

90 Stone, R.G. op. cit. p. 40.

91 Ibid. p. 43.