87

business. He was a shrewd business man - apparently
few printers left an estate of over eleven thousand
dollars. He was benevolent - took active parts and held
offices in the Maryland Society for Promoting the
Abolition of Slavery⁴⁵ and the Society of St. George;⁴⁶
his name occasionally appeared in the newspapers
among contributors for charitable causes.⁴⁷ He be-
lieved in the future of Baltimore as a commercial
city, otherwise he would not have invested heavily in
turnpike stocks.

He operated a printing business in Baltimore from
1783 through 1801, with the possible exception of the
period from February 1792 through February 1794, After
William Goddard's retirement from the Baltimore pub-
lishing field in 1792, Hayes may be called the city^fs
senior printer. Although his career contains nothing
of the spectacular, the excellency of his work, the
newspaper which he published for nearly nine years, and
the wide variety of books, pamphlets and broadsides
which he contributed to Baltimore imprints, make him
worthy to be ranked among the more important of Mary-
land's early printers.

45 Maryland Journal. January 27, 1796.

46 Appendix A. Imprint bibliography, item 539
(manuscript notes in NN copy)

47 e.g. Federal gazette. October 14, 1800.