Nathaniel Ames

[3][4] At this time, he was still living at home in Bridgewater, and although the almanac bears on the title-page "by Nathaniel Ames, Jr.," it may well be that the boy, then only seventeen years old, received some help from his mathematical parent.

However, two of the eleven Superior Court of Judicature justices were against him, leading the normally amiable Ames to an especially vituperative stance against lawyers for the rest of his career.

[12] In addition to his duties as local doctor, as publisher of the almanacs, and as amateur astronomer, Ames for many years ran the well-known "Sun" tavern, which brought him an economically and politically strategic position; as taverns often doubled as courthouses, Ames was also a common lawyer, a business that aroused the anger of trained legal practitioners.

The contemporary entry in John Whiting's Diary reads "Jan. 25, 1750, Dr. Ames began to keep tavern”, although Briggs and Kittredge provide different dates for the commencement of this venture.

[15] In 1775, during the Siege of Boston, Jabez Fitch, a young officer in the Colonial Army, visited Ames' tomb in the Old Village Cemetery in Dedham.

[17] His chief importance is as founder and editor of his almanacs, the publishing of which his son, Nathaniel third (a Harvard graduate and physician), continued for ten years after his father's death.

Ames must have been a household word throughout New England, for it is said that the circulation of his almanac, with its sharp-tongued commentary on Massachusetts politics, religion, and social life ran to 60,000 copies.

Besides the astronomical observations, Ames published short articles, extracts from the English poets, such as Milton and Pope, and used the same pithy and witty maxims as made the reputation of Franklin, such as: "All men are created equal, but differ greatly in the sequel."

He had taste for good literature and considerable wit, though some of it seems a trifle forced today, and the quality rather improved when the almanac was continued by his somewhat abler son, who nevertheless was not the genial gentleman his father was, genuinely liking only farmers and despising printers.