ROBERT BAILY THOMAS (1766-1846)

The Farmer's Almanac, today called The Old Farmer's Almanac, was certainly not the first, or only, or favorite American almanac, but on a national scale it was and remains the best known of all almanacs. The first number of The Farmer's Almanac, for the year 1793, appeared late in 1792, and publication has continued every year without a break to the present day. The Almanac consists of all kinds of practical, useful, trivial, and sometimes nonsensical information, including the "Farmer's Calendar," weather forecasts, planting, gestation and reproductive tables, fish and game laws, anecdotes, poems, recipes, and other curious bits, all appropriately adorned with woodcuts.

The first issue of 1793 sold 3,000 copies, the following year's was increased to 9,000 copies, and by the time of Thomas' death nearly a quarter of a million copies were being sold annually. Thomas harvested a tremendous fortune from the publication of his annual, and after his death two nephews continued the operation, changing the name to Old Farmer's Almanac in 1848. The Almanac remained a family business until 1904 and is still offering advice to farmers and everyone else almost 200 years later.

The issues exhibited are numbers one through ten, spanning the years 1793 to 1802. The change in the title-page ornament in 1797 reflects the change in printer from Joseph Belknap to Manning & Loring, and the change in copyright ownership from Thomas to John West, a bookseller in Boston.