Tombstone Tuesday: Thurlow Weed

18 December 2018

Thurlow Weed

Thurlow Weed, yes, say that name a few times, and try not to giggle. What a great name and I repeated it out loud a few time while walking around Albany Rural Cemetery. I am sure Ed Mcginnis repeated it back to me every time I said it out loud. The Weed family plot dominates a corner lot with it large obelisk. A name like that you can only imagine that he became a political powerhouse!!! I couldn’t stop reading about him because I never heard his name before and he seems to have been a master at the manipulation. His nickname was “The Dictator”, and “Wizard Of The Lobby. He became the Editor and publisher of The Albany Evening Journal, the mouthpiece of the GOP. He was a close friend to Sectary of State William Seward and President Lincoln. Lincoln trusted him enough he sent him as an emissary to Britain and France to urge those countries not to support the Confederacy during the Civil War. He was instrumental in the presidential nominations of William Henry Harrison (1840), Zachary Taylor (1848), and John C. Frémont (1856).

Edward Thurlow Weed was born 15 November 1797 in Cario, Greene county NY. His parents both from Connecticut, Joel Weed (1756-1819) and Mary Elis (1774-1841) eak out a living as farmers. Having little education he worked various jobs, he was quite young at the time, when Weed served in the War of 1812 as quartermaster sergeant of the 40th Regiment of the New York State Militia, working under quartermaster officer George Petrie during operations in and around Sackets Harbor. He became press foreman at the Albany Register after the war. He married Catherine Ostrander (1799-1858) of Cooperstown 26 April 1818 and failed in his attempts to start a newspaper in Chenango County. In 1825 he was elected to the NY assembly and establisblished the Albany Evening Journal in 1830. Their Children; Harriet, James, Mary, Emily. When he retired he passed the newspaper over to Emily’s son, William Banes Jr. (1866-1930). In 1925, Barnes sold the Evening Journal to Stephen Carlton Clark. Williams brother Thurlow Weed Barnes (1853-1918), authored a biography of Thurlow Weed, and later became a world traveler and international businessman with railroad and mining interests primarily in China

Thurlow died in NY, NY on 22 November 1882, his interment did not take place until 21 June 1883. He and most of his family are buried at Albany Rural Cemetery, Albany, NY