Gazetteer
A flat A-Z of every notable person and place in the canon, with dates, Wikidata anchors, and a one-paragraph gloss. Use this as the index when reading a work surfaces a name you don't recognize.
People
Abbe Sieyes
Defender of constitutional monarchy in 1791. Paine challenged him to public debate; Sieyes declined.
Achille du Chastellet
Co-author with Paine of the Republican Proclamation, July 1, 1791. Convention deputy; arrested with the Girondins; took his own life in prison rather than face the guillotine.
Benjamin Franklin
Sponsored Paine's emigration to Philadelphia in 1774 with a letter of introduction. Their last visit was at Franklin's Philadelphia home in 1787, the year before Paine sailed for France.
Edmund Burke
Author of Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), the work that prompted Rights of Man. They had been friends; the public dispute ended that.
Elihu Palmer
Founded the New York Deistical Society and Temple of Reason. Closest American freethought ally during Paine's last years; Paine published in his Prospect.
George Washington
Read Crisis #1 to his troops at McKonkey's Ferry; later froze Paine out during his French imprisonment, prompting the bitter Letter to George Washington.
Georges Danton
Recipient of Paine's prescient May 1793 warning about the Paris violence. Followed Paine to the Luxembourg; from prison sent word: 'I will go gaily.' He was guillotined three weeks later.
Gouverneur Morris
Did nothing to free Paine from the Luxembourg, despite repeated entreaties. The Memorial to Monroe is essentially the formal indictment.
Henry Laurens
Friend and patron during Paine's Philadelphia years; helped secure his Foreign Affairs clerkship and corresponded with him through the war.
James Cheetham
Wrote the libelous 1809 biography that fixed the Roosevelt-era image of Paine as drunk and abandoned. The book is still cited; almost everything in it is false.
James Monroe
Negotiated Paine's release from the Luxembourg in November 1794 and sheltered him in his Paris house for eighteen months while Paine recovered.
Jean-Paul Marat
Denounced Paine from the Convention gallery during the king's trial. Stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday six months later.
Joel Barlow
Saved the Age of Reason manuscript when Paine was arrested -- Paine handed it to him on the way to the Luxembourg.
Marguerite de Bonneville
With her husband Nicolas (a Paris journalist Paine boarded with) she came to America in 1803; Paine left her his New Rochelle farm and named her his executrix.
Marquis de Condorcet
Co-drafted with Paine, Brissot, Petion, and Sieyes the Plan of a Declaration of the Natural, Civil, and Political Rights of Man (1793). Died evading the Jacobins; his Esquisse was published posthumously the year Paine left Luxembourg.
Marquis de Lafayette
Gave Paine the Bastille key to deliver to Washington. Saved Paine from the lamppost in October 1789 by escorting him out of the Hotel de Ville.
Mary Wollstonecraft
London circle. Her A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) was published a month before Paine's Rights of Man Part I.
Maximilien Robespierre
Signed the order that arrested Paine on December 28, 1793. The note in his pocketbook the morning of his fall: 'Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation.' He was guillotined the next day.
Theodore Roosevelt
Coined the slur this site reclaims -- 'filthy little atheist' -- in his 1888 Gouverneur Morris biography. Roosevelt was 30; Paine had been dead 79 years.
Thomas "Clio" Rickman
Lewes friend and lifelong loyalist. Sheltered Paine in his Marylebone house in 1792 while the Rights of Man prosecution was pending. Wrote the first biography (1819).
Thomas Jefferson
Drafted Paine's return passage on a US warship in 1801. Their correspondence ranges from iron-bridge designs to the Louisiana Purchase.
William Blake
Allegedly warned Paine to flee London hours before his Rights of Man arrest warrant was issued in September 1792.
William Cobbett
Disinterred Paine's bones at New Rochelle in 1819 and shipped them to England, intending a national monument. The bones were lost; the project failed; Cobbett's son inherited the trunk.
Places
Bordentown, New Jersey
Owned a small farm and house here from 1783, the gift of New Jersey for his wartime service. Built his iron-bridge model in the workshop. The house still stands.
Calais, France
Elected deputy to the National Convention from the Pas-de-Calais department, September 1792. Cheered through the streets on his arrival.
Greenwich Village, New York City
Died at 59 Grove Street, June 8, 1809, age 72. Six mourners at the funeral; turned away from the Quaker burying ground; interred at the New Rochelle farm.
Le Havre
Sailed for America from Le Havre in October 1802 aboard the USS Maryland; the warship Jefferson sent.
Lewes, Sussex
Excise officer, 1768-74. Lodged at the Bull House on School Hill, kept by Samuel Ollive, whose daughter Elizabeth he married. The Headstrong Club at the White Hart Inn -- where Paine reportedly never lost an argument.
London
Returned 1787 to lobby for the iron bridge; stayed to write Rights of Man in response to Burke. Convicted in absentia of seditious libel, December 1792.
Luxembourg Prison
December 28, 1793 -- November 4, 1794. Arrested at the White's Hotel; held in the converted Luxembourg Palace. Survived the daily winnowing for the guillotine; finished Age of Reason Part I and began Part II in his cell.
New Rochelle, New York
Lived on the 277-acre farm given him by New York State for his Revolutionary service, 1802-1809. Disinterred from this farm by Cobbett in 1819.
Newark, New Jersey
Convalesced after his 1802 return from France while Robert Patterson nursed him through the journey south to Bordentown.
Paris
September 1792 to October 1802. Citizen-deputy in the Convention; co-author of the Girondin draft constitution; eleven months in the Luxembourg Prison; wrote Age of Reason and Agrarian Justice while there.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Arrived November 30, 1774. Edited the Pennsylvania Magazine; wrote Common Sense and the Crisis papers; clerked for the Continental Congress's Committee of Foreign Affairs. The center of the American operation.
Sandwich, Kent
Excise officer 1764. Married Mary Lambert here in 1759 (his first wife; she died young in 1760).
Thetford, Norfolk
Birthplace, January 29, 1737 (Old Style). Stained-glass window of Paine in the Bury Road Quaker meeting house, 1949.