Hezekiah Niles (1777–1839), journalist, was a native of Chester County, Pennsylvania. At age seventeen he was apprenticed to Benjamin Johnson, a printer, bookbinder, and bookseller in Philadelphia. Niles soon established a reputation as an efficient typesetter in Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. He moved to Baltimore in 1805 and there edited the Baltimore Evening Post, 1805–11, and the Weekly Register, 1811–36 (Niles’ Weekly Register from 1814). The Register rejected advertising and undertook to be less a periodical than a national reference work on politics and current events. It had a wide circulation and counted TJ, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson among its patrons, with TJ maintaining his subscription until his death. A passionate nationalist, Niles favored political isolationism, economic protectionism, and gradual emancipation and opposed states’ rights and nullification, although he scrupulously accorded space to opposing viewpoints in his papers. He also served as Wilmington’s town clerk, sat on the Baltimore city council, and was a leader of the Baltimore Typographical Society (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 ; Brigham, American Newspapers description begins Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690–1820, 1947, 2 vols. description ends , 1:81, 230–1; TJ to Niles, 22 Aug. 1817, 6 May 1826; Niles’ National Register, 6, 13 Apr. 1839; Baltimore Sun, 3 Apr. 1839).