Joseph Ames (author)

Joseph Ames (23 January 1689 – 7 October 1759) was an English bibliographer and antiquary. He purportedly wrote an account of printing in England from 1471 to 1600 entitled Typographical Antiquities (1749). It is uncertain whether he was by occupation a ship's chandler, a pattern-maker, a plane iron maker or an ironmonger. Though never educated beyond grammar school, he prospered in trade and amassed valuable collections of rare books and antiquities.

He was the eldest child of John Ames, a master in the merchant service and sixth son of Captain Joseph Ames, R.N. Joseph Ames was born at Yarmouth on 23 January 1689 and was educated at a small grammar school in Wapping. He lost his father at age 12 and three years later was apprenticed to a plane maker in King Street or Queen Street, near the Guildhall, City of London. He then moved to Wapping near the Hermitage, where his father had previously settled, and established a successful business there. In 1712 his mother died and was buried in Wapping church near her husband. Two years later Ames married Mary, daughter of William Wrayford, a merchant in Bow Lane. She died in 1734 after bearing six children, of whom only a daughter survived her.

Ames was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1736 and was appointed secretary five years later; he held the position until his death, the Rev. William Norris being associated with him in 1754. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1743, but his only contribution to the Society's Philosophical Transactions was a letter relating to a case of plica polonica in 1747.

After dining with his old friend Sir Peter Thompson, Ames was seized with an attack that brought about his death that evening, 7 October 1759, in the seventy-first year of his life. He was buried in the churchyard of St George-in-the-East.

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