Benjamin Edes was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, 14 October 1732; died in Boston, 11 December 1803. His great-grandfather John came from England to Charlestown, Massachusetts, about 1674. Benjamin was educated in the public schools of Charlestown, and in 1755 he became, with John Gill, editor and proprietor of "The Boston Gazette and Country Journal," a patriotic sheet that exerted a powerful influence just before the Revolution and during that struggle. In its columns first appeared John Adams's "Novanglus" letters, and Quincy, Warren, and other patriots were among its contributors.

Mr. Edes, as one of the "Sons of liberty," took an active part in the politics of his time, and was a caustic writer on the political questions of the day. In his house the patriots comprising the "Boston Tea Party" assembled on the afternoon of 16 December 1773, and drank punch from a bowl that was subsequently given by Mr. Edes's family to the Massachusetts historical society, afterward disguising themselves as Indians in the "Gazette" office.

During the siege of Boston, Mr. Edes escaped to Watertown, where he continued the publication of the "Gazette." After forty-three years of editorship he discontinued it in 1798. Andrew Oliver, writing to England in 1768, says, referring to the Gazette, "The temper of the people may be surely learned from that infamous paper"; while Governor Bernard, in one of his letters to the Earl of Hillsborough, advised the arrest of both Edes and Gill as publishers of sedition. At the beginning of the war Mr. Edes possessed a comfortable fortune, but afterward lost it by the depreciation of the currency.