A  Brief  Chronology  of        
THOMAS  PAINE

   January 29, 1737-- June 8, 1809

1737   Thomas Pain(e) born January 29 in Thetford, Norfolk, England to Joseph and Frances Cocke Pain(e).

1750   At age 13, young Paine apprenticed to father to learn trade of stay-making.

1753   Tries to run away to sea, on ship Terrible commanded by Captain Death, but prevented by father. A year or two later, Paine does take ship for a short enlistment on another merchant vessel.

1757   Practices trade of stay-making in a London shop and attends lectures about Newtonian astronomy; acquainted with Scott and Ferguson. 

1759   Opens shop as master stay-maker in Sandwich, Kent.  Marries Mary Lambert, who dies a year later. 

1762  Enters customs service as unattached officer (gauger of brewers' casks), at Alford, Lancashire.

1764   Receives appointment as officer of customs.

1765   Dismissed from position (in August) for stamping without inspecting.

1766   In London, teaches English at an academy operated by Mr. Noble, and also does preaching. 

1768   Reappointed to excise service, district of Lewes, Sussex. 

1771   Marries Elizabeth Ollive (in March), daughter of a tradesman.

1772   Writes Case of the Officers of Excise, his earliest known prose composition and first important pamphlet.

1773   Solicits Oliver Goldsmith's aid in getting cause of excisemen before Parliament, which ignores the petition.

1774   Discharged from excise service. Secures legal separation from wife. Arrives in America (November 30), bearing letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. 

1775   Becomes editor of Robert Aitken's Pennsylvania Magazine. Anti-slavery essay,  African Slavery in America, published in Pennsylvania Journal, is attributed to Paine, who receives praise for it from Dr. Benjamin Rush, a leading abolitionist.  Also anticipates Declaration of Independence in his essay, A Serious Thought, in which he also rebukes Britain and America for the slave trade and slave holding (in Pennsylvania Journal, October 18, 1775, signed "Humanus.")  

1776   Publishes Common Sense (January 9-10). Enlists and serves as aide de camp to General Nathaneal Greene, and sees action at Fort Lee NJ.  Publishes The Forester's Letters (April-May) and expands Common Sense. Produces American Crisis I (first of 16 Crisis Papers) December 19, 1776.  Crisis I (its famous opening lines:  These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the thanks of man and woman.…) is read to troops and is a morale-builder that helps the Americans to win the battle of Trenton NJ on Christmas day, December 25, 1776.

1777   Writes Crisis II and Crisis III. Congress appoints Paine its Secretary to Committee on Foreign Affairs and appoints him to help commissioners for an Indian treaty. He produces Crisis IV  (Opens with, Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.  And near the close, it states,  We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.)

1778   Produces Crisis V (March), Supernumerary I (June), Crisis VI (October) and Crisis VII (November).

1779   Paine resigns as Foreign Affairs Secretary as result of Silas Deane affair (in which Paine is eventually exonerated). He is appointed Clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly.

1780   Writes Crisis VIII (February) and Crisis IX (June). University of Pennsylvania confers honorary degree. Publishes Crisis Extraordinary and essay Public Good, which refutes Virginia's claims to western lands. Contributes three hundred dollars toward establishment of the Bank of Pennsylvania.

1781   Accompanies Colonel John Laurens, on Laurens' request, and at Paine's own expense, to France on diplomatic mission.

1782   Publishes Crisis X (March) and Crisis XI (May), Supernumerary Crisis (June), Letter to Abbe Raynal and Crisis XII (October).

1783   Publishes Crisis XIII (April) and Supernumerary Crisis (December).

1784   State of New York presents Paine with a farm at New Rochelle NY, for his eminent services in the cause of independence.

1785  Paine works on his design of a single-arch iron bridge;  also invents a smokeless candle.

1786   Writes Dissertation on Government,  the Affairs of the Bank; also, Paper Money, which supports the Bank of North America.

1787  Takes bridge proposal and design to France to the Academy of Sciences. Writes Prospects on the Rubicon.

1788   Returns to England to promote his bridge, and to visit his parents. Visits former wife; continues to support her. Meets Charles Fox, Lord Landsdowne, Mary Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke.

1790   Receives key to Bastille, in France, from the Marquis de Lafayette, for presentation to George Washington.

1791   Publishes Rights of Man, part 1, Paine's democratic-republican reply to Edmund Burke's denunciation of the French Revolution. Also writes A Republican Manifesto, in which Paine denounces monarchy -- as he had already done in Common Sense and in Rights of Man.

1792   Writes part 2 of Rights of Man and Letter Addressed to the Addressers. Returns to France, takes seat in National Convention to which he was elected as a member from Calais.  Paine is one of the four major writers of a Constitution for the Republic of France.

1793   As a member of the National Convention (January 1793), Paine urges banishment, not death, of Louis XVI and family. Paine is  not heeded, even though he states the view that the Republic should abolish monarchy but spare the life of  the man. Paine's plea is clearly the general idea to eliminate capital punishment.

1793   Writes The Age of Reason, part 1.  Paine is arrested and imprisoned in Luxembourg Prison (November), a political prison, in Paris.  His transgressions presumably are his moderation regarding Louis XVI and his determination for a written French constitution.  He continues his writing while in prison.

1793   After 11 months in prison and without the intercession of the American President, George Washington, or the Ambassador to France, Gouvernour Morris, Paine is at last released (in November) from Luxembourg Prison through the good offices of the new Ambassador to France, James Monroe.

1794 et seq.   Paine returns to the National Convention, in spite of  previous difficulties there.  Paine continues to be known as "the republican" among Irish, English other European patriots and  republicans living  in Paris. Paine also writes numerous letters and essays espousing republican values. 

1795   Publishes Dissertation on First Principles of Government, and The Age of Reason, part 2.

1797   Publishes Agrarian Justice, his treatise on social welfare proposals, continuing his ideas in Rights of Man, part 2.

1800   Writes Maritime Compact, consisting of 10 articles proposing an Association of Nations that shall remain neutral during armed conflict between any other warring nations.

1802   Returns to America, resides off and on at his farm in New Rochelle NY and in New York City.

1804   Writes To the French Inhabitants of Louisiana, a rebuke for asking for continuation of the slave trade in the Louisiana territory.

1805   Moves to New York City permanently.

1809   Dies in New York City, June 8, 1809.  His remains were buried on his farm in New Rochelle. The burial site was ill-tended, however.

1819   Paine's remains were removed by the English 18^{th -} 19^th century democrat, William Cobbett, with others, in a plan to give Paine a fitting burial in England and to use the occasion of the re-burial to garner support for a democratic-and-workers movement among the British.  The scheme to re-bury Paine's remains did not materialize and his remains became lost to history.   

1839   The first Thomas Paine memorial in this country was erected near the site of Paine's neglected  burial site in New Rochelle NY, through the efforts of New York liberal publisher Gilbert Vale, who also wrote the first fair biography of Paine. With renowned sculptor James Frazee, Vale raised donated funds for an impressive marble pylon, engraved with Paine's words, near the burial site.  Later, in 1889, a bronze bust of  Paine fashioned by Wilson MacDonald, and funded by the newly formed Thomas Paine Historical Association, was placed at the top of the marble pylon.  This monument continues to have attraction for Paine admirers, and  is still a place where they gather on the anniversary of the birth of the great patriot-author-political philosopher.