William Bradford (1663-1752)

William Bradford (1663-1752), American printer, born in Barnwell, Leicestershire, England. With other Quakers he immigrated to Philadelphia in 1682. Three years later he established the first printing press there, and in 1690 he, William Rittenhouse, and others built a paper mill, the first in America, on the Schuylkill River. In 1692 Bradford was arrested and tried by the authorities for printing the work of the Scottish missionary George Keith, which was condemned as “seditious libel.” Bradford was not convicted, but his press and publications were confiscated. He moved to New York in 1693 and in the same year established the first press in that colony. He was long the only printer in New York and held the office of public printer for 50 years. On October 16, 1725, he began the first newspaper in New York City, and the fifth in America, the New York Gazette. His son, Andrew Sowles Bradford, published in 1719 the first Pennsylvania newspaper, the American Weekly Mercury. Andrew's nephew, William Bradford, voiced his opposition to the Stamp Act and other British measures in the Weekly Advertiser or Pennsylvania Journal, which he established in 1742; still later, he was chosen the official printer of the Continental Congress.