Maturin Murray Ballou
Maturin Murray Ballou was an influential American journalist and publisher born in Boston in the early nineteenth century. The youngest of nine children in a religious family, Ballou began his career as a clerk at the Boston post office before marrying Mary Anne Roberts in 1839. He gained initial writing experience through religious journals and published his first secular work in a local magazine. His travels, especially to the West Indies, fostered a habit of letter writing that evolved into published travel pieces. Throughout his career, Ballou founded several publications, including the Illustrated News and Ballou's Monthly, and contributed to the establishment of the Boston Globe. Although his writing was often criticized for its lack of narrative skill, Ballou played a significant role in shaping popular culture through his work in pictorial journalism, which laid the groundwork for future media formats. He also authored a biography of his father and a history of Cuba. Ballou passed away in Cairo, Egypt, shortly before his seventy-fifth birthday.
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Subject Terms
Maturin Murray Ballou
Biographer
- Born: April 14, 1820
- Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
- Died: March 27, 1895
- Place of death: Cairo, Egypt
Biography
Maturin Murray Ballou was born in Boston during the early nineteenth century. He was the youngest of nine children born to Reverend Hosea Ballou and Ruth Washburn Ballou. His namesake was Maturin Ballou, who shared ownership of the Providence Plantations with Roger Williams during the seventeenth century. Even though Ballou completed high school and passed the Harvard entrance examination, he did not enter the university. In 1839 he became a clerk at the Boston post office, and, later that year, he married Mary Anne Roberts. During this same time, Ballou gained considerable experience working with the religious journals edited by his father and cousin. Ballou’s first secular writing was published in a local miscellany called the Olive Branch.
Ballou and his wife traveled a lot, particularly in the West Indies. His travels put him in the habit of sending letters to Boston, and these letters were published as travel pieces. When Ballou returned to Boston, he became deputy navy agent at the Boston Custom House. His knowledge of the sea and the navy provided material for many adventure tales in decades to come. In 1844 Ballou joined a Boston printer, Frederick Gleason, to form F. Gleason’s Publishing Hall and the pretentiously named United States Publishing Company.
In 1851, Ballou decided to establish a weekly picture paper, one of the latest journalistic novelties in England, with a woodcut engraver known as Frank Leslie. In 1853, Ballou and Leslie, with financial backing from P. T. Barnum and A. E. and H. D. Beach, started a news pictorial called the Illustrated News in New York. However, despite a circulation of seventy thousand, Ballou’s backers gave up and sold the new paper to Gleason’s after a year. In 1855, Gleason’s began a new illustrated newspaper called Ballou’s Dollar Monthly. The paper had a fairly long life, as story papers went; it became Ballou’s Monthly in 1866 and continued, under other owners, into the 1890’s.
Ballou’s other venture, The Welcome Guest, did not succeed; the public did not want more sea stories or Turkish spy tales as the Civil War was looming over the country. Ballou sold his publications to a new Boston publishing house, Elliott, Thomes and Talbot, in 1863. He traveled, turned to civic affairs, and built the St. James Hotel in south Boston. In 1872, Ballou and other Boston leaders established the Boston Globe. The paper was capitalized at one hundred fifty thousand dollars, with Ballou as editor, but most of the money was gone by early 1874; Ballou was not suited to daily newspaper journalism. He was more successful, though, with two other ventures. In 1879 he started the Boston Budget, a Sunday paper that lasted into the twentieth century, and Ballou’s Magazine, a fifteen- cent miscellany which ran until 1893. In addition to these publications, Ballou also lectured, wrote plays, and continued to write travel books. He took a trip around the world in 1882 and visited the polar regions in 1886. He died in Cairo, Egypt, a few weeks short of his seventy-fifth birthday. Ballou is also known for his biography of his father and his History of Cuba.
As a journalist, Ballou deserves minimal credit. He did not hesitate to write fanciful tales and present them to a gullible public as fact. He is not due much credit as a writer, either; his work lacks a certain narrative skill, and while his travel books were better written, they tended to be full of surface observations and first impressions. However, Ballou made significant contributions as an instrument of popular culture. His work with pictorial publications provided the public with glimpses of faraway places, and created a tradition of informing by image rather than by word. This tradition went on to take the American people into the realm of photos, movies and television.