Thomas Eddy (1758–1827), merchant and reformer, was a native of Philadelphia. Apprenticed about 1771–73 to a tanner in Burlington, New Jersey, by 1777 he had taken up mercantile pursuits in Philadelphia. Eddy was a Quaker and a Loyalist who moved in 1779 to New York City, where he partnered for a time with his brother Charles Eddy and later with him and Benjamin Sykes as Eddy, Sykes, & Company. Between 1784 and 1790 he ran a mercantile firm with another brother, George Eddy, in Philadelphia, leaving that city for an interval to run a store in Fredericksburg on behalf of the partnership. Eddy went bankrupt in 1790 and settled permanently in New York City about 1791, prospering as an insurance broker and underwriter and speculating in the public debt. He was appointed in 1810 to a New York state canal commission. Becoming involved in numerous areas of reform, Eddy sought to improve the city’s schools, hospitals, and insane asylums, and he promoted the abolition of slavery and the colonization abroad of former slaves. He had a particular interest in prison reform, working to build penitentiaries and end imprisonment for debt. Eddy died in New York City (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Knapp, Thomas Eddy; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 40 vols. description ends , 36:553–4; Scoville, New York Merchants description begins “Walter Barrett” [Joseph Alfred Scoville], The Old Merchants of New York City, 1863–69, repr. 1968, 5 vols. description ends , 2:342–6; Pennsylvania Ledger: or the Philadelphia Market-Day Advertiser, 13 Dec. 1777; New York Royal Gazette, 30 June 1781, 25 May 1782; Philadelphia Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, 22 Sept. 1784; Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, 29 Apr. 1790; New-York Daily Gazette, 9 Oct. 1790; The New-York Directory, and Register, for the year 1791 [New York, 1791], 39; Delaplaine’s Repository description begins Joseph Delaplaine, Delaplaine’s Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans, Philadelphia, 1816–18, 2 vols.; Poor, Jefferson’s Library, 4 (no. 139) description ends , 1:195; Madison, Papers, Pres. Ser., 3:480–1; New-York Evening Post, 17 Sept. 1827).