Peter Fleet (died later than 1743) is the earliest known Black American woodcut artist, typesetter, and newspaperman. Fleet was enslaved by Massachusetts printer Thomas Fleet. According to Isaiah Thomas, who wrote the first history of early American printers, Peter Fleet was "an ingenious man, and cut, on wooden blocks, all the pictures which decorated the ballads and small books of his master." [1] Fleet also typeset articles for Thomas Fleet's long-running newspaper, The Boston Evening-Post , which, according to recent scholarship, published an unusually high number of articles about slave revolts. [2] Also enslaved by Thomas Fleet were two younger men, Pompey Fleet and Cesar Fleet, sometimes identified as Peter Fleet's sons, both of whom were also printers in Thomas Fleet's shop. [2]
Around 1736, an illustrated pamphlet entitled "The Prodigal Daughter" was published from Thomas Fleet's address. It was reprinted at least two more times by Fleet or his son over the next 40 years. [3] The first illustration in the pamphlet includes the initials "PF," which were identified by print historian Sinclair Hamilton in 1958 as those of Pompey Fleet or "his father," [4] whose name was not known at the time of Hamilton's work; more recent scholarship identifies the work squarely as Peter Fleet's due to its date. This single print is currently the only known signed example of Peter Fleet's work, though there are believed to be many examples of his unsigned work throughout Thomas Fleet's imprints held in print ephemera collections. [5]
David Walker was an American abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist. Though his father was enslaved, his mother was free; therefore, he was free as well. In 1829, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, with the assistance of the African Grand Lodge, he published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, a call for black unity and a fight against slavery.
African-American art is a broad term describing visual art created by African Americans. The range of art they have created, and are continuing to create, over more than two centuries is as varied as the artists themselves. Some have drawn on cultural traditions in Africa, and other parts of the world where the Black diaspora is found, for inspiration. Others have found inspiration in traditional African-American plastic art forms, including basket weaving, pottery, quilting, woodcarving and painting, all of which are sometimes classified as "handicrafts" or "folk art".
Daniel Fowle was a colonial American printer and publisher before and during the American Revolution, and the founder of The New Hampshire Gazette. He printed Samuel Adams' newspaper, The Independent Advertiser. He was jailed for printing a damaging account on the conduct of various Massachusetts representatives and after his trial, he lost his license to print. Dismayed with the Massachusetts government he subsequently chose to remove from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and established The New Hampshire Gazette. During the course of his printing career Fowle employed several apprentices. Using his newspaper, he openly criticized the Stamp Act in 1765. After American independence was established he was commissioned to print the state laws of New Hampshire.
Isaiah Thomas was an early American printer, newspaper publisher and author. He performed the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Worcester, Massachusetts, and reported the first account of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. He was the founder of the American Antiquarian Society.
William Hubbard was a New England clergyman and historian, born in Ipswich, England.
TheNewport Mercury, was an early American colonial newspaper founded in 1758 by Ann Smith Franklin (1696–1763), and her son, James Franklin (1730–1762), the nephew of Benjamin Franklin. The newspaper was printed on a printing press imported by Franklin's father, James Franklin (1697–1735), in 1717 from London. The Mercury may be the first newspaper published by a woman in the colonial United States. The Mercury was the also first paper to publish poetry by an African American woman, Phillis Wheatley.
Nathaniel Appleton was a Congregational minister in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Merrill Greene Wheelock (1822–1866) was an artist and architect in Boston, Massachusetts in the 19th century. He served in the Massachusetts infantry in the American Civil War.
The Weekly Rehearsal or The Rehearsal (1731–1735) was a literary newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1730s. Jeremiah Gridley served as editor and publisher (1731-1733); other publishers/printers included John Draper and Thomas Fleet. In 1735 it was continued by Thomas Fleet's Boston Evening Post.
The Boston Evening-Post was a newspaper printed in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 18th century. Publishers included Thomas Fleet (d.1758), Thomas Fleet Jr. (d.1797), and John Fleet (d.1806).
The Constitutional Telegraphe (1799–1802) was a newspaper produced in Boston, Massachusetts, at the turn of the 19th century. The paper sympathized with the Democratic-Republican Party, and supported Thomas Jefferson. Publishers included Samuel S. Parker, Jonathan S. Copp, John S. Lillie, and John Mosely Dunham. The paper was originally called the Constitutional Telegraph. The "e" was added to Telegraphe with the 1 January 1800 issue. This issue included a new engraved masthead of an eagle and the motto "We advocate the rights of man."
Samuel Kneeland (c.1696–1769) was an American printer and publisher of The Boston Gazette and Weekly Journal. Kneeland obtained much of his work printing laws and other official documents for the Province of Massachusetts Bay colonial government for about two decades. He printed the first Bible in the English language ever produced in the American colonies, along with many other religious and spiritual works, including the Book of Psalms. He was also noted for introducing a number of innovations to newspaper printing and journalism. He was one of many colonial printers who were strongly opposed to and outspoken against the Stamp Act in 1765. Kneeland, primarily, along with his sons, were responsible for printing the greater majority of books, magazines and pamphlets published in Boston during his lifetime.
John Foster was an early American woodcut printmaker and letterpress printer who operated a printing shop in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony when the colony was still in its infancy. He is credited with printing the first image in British colonial America, from a woodcut he carved of the Puritan minister Richard Mather. He also printed the first map in the colonies, also from a woodcut that he carved. Foster graduated from Harvard University, but was a self-taught pioneer in American printmaking in woodcut, and also learned the art of typography from the Boston printer Marmaduke Johnson. He subsequently printed many works by prominent religious figures of the day in Massachusetts, and for a few years printed and published an annual almanac. His woodcuts were also used for the printing of official seals of the Massachusetts Bay Colony used by the provincial government.
Thomas Johnston was an American engraver, japanner, and heraldic painter in Colonial Boston. Johnston engraved the first print of an historical event in the Colonial America and was also the first manufacturer of church organs in the colonies. The pipe organ he built in 1758–1759 for Boston's Old North Church was in use for over a hundred years until another organ replaced it in 1886.
Early American publishers and printers played a central role in the social, religious, political and commercial development of the Thirteen Colonies in British America prior to and during the American Revolution and the ensuing American Revolutionary War that established American independence.
Robert Bell (1732–1784) was a Scottish immigrant to the British colonies in America and became one of many early American printers and publishers active during the years leading up to and through the American Revolution. Bell became widely noted for printing Thomas Paine's celebrated work, Common Sense, a highly influential work during the revolution that openly criticized the British Parliament and their management and taxation of the British-American colonies. Bell and Paine later had a falling out over profits and publication issues. As a dedicated patriot, Bell printed many pamphlets and books before and during the revolution, many of which "glowingly" expressed his patriotic views. He also reprinted a number of popular English works, presenting them to the colonies for the first time. He ran an auction house which sold rare books in Lancaster, and in later life he toured the colonies selling off his massive book collection. After Bell's death, his printing press and other items were sold at a Philadelphia auction house to another prominent printer at an unusually high price.
Bibliography of early American publishers and printers is a selection of books, journals and other sigmass devoted to these topics covering their careers and other activities before, during and after the American Revolution. Various works that are not primarily devoted to those topics, but whose content devotes itself to them in significant measure, are sometimes included here also. Works about Benjamin Franklin, a famous printer and publisher, among other things, are too numerous to list in this bibliography, can be found at Bibliography of Benjamin Franklin, and are generally not included here unless they are intensely devoted to Franklin's printing career. Single accounts of printers and publishers that occur in encyclopedia articles are not included here.
Thomas Fleet was an English printer who came to the British colonies in America and established himself as a printer and publisher in Boston. His decision to come to the colonies was prompted by people seeking retribution for what was considered his public display of disrespect for a popular member of the English clergy. Fleet produced works for various booksellers, printed pamphlets, ballads, children's stories and later established the Boston Evening Post. In his earlier years fleet compiled his own version of Mother Goose from stories told by his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Vergoose, to his children. When he published various controversial accounts about the colonial government and the clergy he was admonished, threatened with prosecution and subsequently became one of the first American printers to challenge royal authority and defend the idea of Freedom of the Press. Through his newspaper Fleet played an active role in the Christian revivalist controversy that occurred in the colonies during the early eighteenth century.
Samuel Hall (1740-1807), was an Early American publisher and printer, newspaper editor, and an ardent colonial American patriot from Bedford, Massachusetts who was active in this capacity before and during the American Revolution, often printing newspapers and pamphlets in support of American independence. Hall was the founder of The Essex Gazette, the first newspaper published in Salem, Massachusetts in 1768. He often employed his newspaper as a voice supporting colonial grievances over taxation and other actions by the British Parliament that were considered oppressive, and ultimately in support of American independence.