Governor Berkeley, when reporting in 1671 on the condition of the colony: "Thank God, we have no free schools nor printing; God keep us from both."[1]
Express orders were given to Lord Effingham, on his appointment as Governor in 1683, not to allow the use of a printing press in the colony. It was not until 1766 that the colony had more than one printing press. This belonged to William Parks, who had established a paper in Maryland, but finding Virginia a more profitable field, had left Annapolis and moved to Williamsburg, where he established in 1736, under the patronage of the Governor, the colony's first newspaper, the Virginia Gazette.
If the South lagged behind, Pennsylvania forged ahead. In 1742 William Bradford, grandson of the publisher of the New York Gazette, brought out the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser. The publication came out as a strong Whig paper, devoted to the interests of the colonists. On the 31st of October, the day before the Stamp Act was to go into effect, it appeared in mourning, with a skull and cross-bones over the title. On the border of the first page was an engraving of a coffin, under which was this epitaph:
The last Remains of
THE PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL
Which departed this life, the 31st of October, 1765,
of a stamp in her Vitals
Age 23 years.
Thomas Bradford, son of the publisher, was taken into partnership in 1766. The Bradford family distinguished themselves not only in printing and in journalism, but on the field as well. Bradford was a major of Militia at Trenton, was at Fort Mifflin, and came but of the Princeton fight a Colonel.
- ↑ Gordon, History, i, 53.
