22 Facts About Harry Croswell

Harry Croswell was a crusading political journalist, a publisher, author, and an Episcopal Church clergyman.

Harry Croswell was a key figure in first amendment battles over freedom of the press and religious freedom.

Harry Croswell was one of eight children of Caleb Croswell and Hannah Kellogg.

Harry Croswell's father, the sea captain and merchant Captain Caleb Harry Croswell, was a member of the Connecticut militia at the time of the Revolutionary War.

Harry Croswell fought in the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn and was captured by the British, who imprisoned him on one of the infamous British prison-ships.

Thomas O'Hara Harry Croswell was apprenticed to the law school founder Tapping Reeve, though he later became a physician.

Harry Croswell was then tutored by the Rev Dr Nathen Perkins, the West Haven Congregationalist minister, before being sent to Warren, Connecticut, as apprentice clerk in a store in the small town.

Harry Croswell left Warren and joined his brothers as an apprentice printer.

Harry Croswell's contributions were well written, satiric, partisan and very popular.

Harry Croswell was a staunch Federalist, one of those who opposed Jefferson.

When Connecticut newspaper editor Charles Holt moved to Hudson and founded the Democratic-Republican Party paper The Bee, Harry Croswell countered by founding the Federalist paper The Wasp.

The renowned case of the People v Croswell began when Croswell published on September 9,1802, an attack on Jefferson.

Harry Croswell's lawyers based their case on the precept that "Truth is a defense against libel".

Harry Croswell was repeatedly sued not for seditious libel but for civil libel in a series of less well-known cases.

The Federalist, an Albany, New York, lawyer, sued, and Harry Croswell was incarcerated until he could pay the debt.

The Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church on the Green in New Haven, the Rev Henry Whitlock, was stricken with a fatal illness, and Deacon Harry Croswell was asked to preach.

Harry Croswell took the pulpit on January 1,1815, and five months later on June 6,1815, he was consecrated a priest in Christ Church, Middletown, Connecticut, by Bishop Griswold.

The church was consecrated at a public ceremony in 1816, which saw Harry Croswell installed as Rector of the church.

However, in taking over the parish, Harry Croswell had stepped into a major denominational controversy.

In 1818, Governor Wolcott instead chose the Episcopalian and ex-Federalist Harry Croswell to deliver the sermon.

Harry Croswell's 5,300 page diary, begun in 1821 when he was 41, is a largely untapped treasure found in manuscript form at the Yale library.

Harry Croswell was a trustee and secretary of the General Theological Society.