Happy Birthday, Mr. Paine! In Luxembourg prison, he began to write “The Age of Reason”. Thomas Jefferson read it and invited Paine to return to America, which he did and where he was reviled. Paine made friends with Madame Marguerite de Bonneville and her three children who were “stranded” in America. In 1808 he wrote his last will. He asked to be buried in the Quaker cemetery, which was refused. Mrs. De Bonneville, executrix of his will, buried him in a corner of his farm in New Rochelle, and carried out his wishes for his gravestone to state, “Author of Common Sense.”

In 1819, some William Cobbett, alleged foe turned disciple, had Paine exhumed and brought back to England where he planned to have him reburied under a monument still to be built. Cobbett died reputedly bankrupt, the bones were assigned to a receiver who didn’t consider them to be tangible enough of an asset, and today we know of the existence of a jawbone than can definitively attributed to Thomas Paine. But perhaps as devastating as having lost his bones, we’ve lost Paine’s unpublished manuscripts and letters. Bequeathed to Benjamin de Bonnevilles they were stored in a box in a barn in St. Louis, Missouri. (I recently tried to use the Paine connection to explain to people in St. Louis why they would be interested in the town called Lewes that I now live in, but they failed to acknowledge Paine sufficiently to draw parallels.) The barn in St. Louis burnt down before anyone thought to have a look inside the box of papers. I want to know why you didn’t think women should have the vote, Mr. Paine? The answer is in the box.
For he’s a jolly good fellow. AM