John Bushell (March 18, 1715 January 22, 1761) was the first
printer
Printer may refer to:
Technology
* Printer (publishing), a person or a company
* Printer (computing), a hardware device
* Optical printer for motion picture films
People
* Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist
* James ...
in what is now
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
.
Biography
Bushell was born in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
and was apprenticed as a printer there. He subsequently worked for a number of different printers and had his own printing business until 1751, when he left for
Halifax,
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
Most of the population are native Eng ...
.
A partner of Bushell's,
Bartholomew Green, following a century-long family tradition in the trade, had left Boston for Halifax in October 1751 and brought all the necessary equipment to set up a printing shop.
He died shortly after his arrival and Bushell went to Halifax to continue the business.
Bushell's first publication was issued from his shop on Grafton Street on March 23, 1752.
[ The '']Halifax Gazette
The ''Halifax Gazette'' was Canada's first newspaper, established on March 23, 1752, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was published weekly by John Bushell, who had been carrying out a project that had been initiated by his partner Bartholomew Green ...
'' was published as a subscription newspaper and was a single broadside sheet, printed on both sides. This probably was the first work of any kind printed in Canada. He went on to print the ''Gazette'' and became the King's printer until his death, when the Gazette and the role of King's printer were taken up by Anthony Henry. The paper's content ranged from elegies
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
, to excerpts from notable publications of the day, notices of upcoming dramatic productions around Halifax, and advertisements from booksellers about newly arrived books.
Bushell's paper also advertised the availability of his press for miscellaneous printing jobs. This was not enough to keep him out of insolvency, and he was in debt during most of his life in Halifax.[
Bushell died in February, 1761, leaving one son and a daughter. The son was sent to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the British colonies in America, and entered into an apprenticeship with Daniel Fowle, an accomplished printer who owned and published the '']New Hampshire Gazette
''The New Hampshire Gazette'' is a non-profit, alternative, bi-weekly newspaper published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Its editors claim that the paper, which all but disappeared into other publications until the late 1900s, is the oldest news ...
''.[ Thomas, 1784, pp. 357-358]
See also
* Early American publishers and printers
Early American publishers and printers played a central role in the social, religious, political and commercial developments in colonial America, before, during, and after the American Revolution. Printing and publishing in the 17th and 18th ce ...
References
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bushell
1761 deaths
Canadian printers
Canadian newspaper publishers (people)
18th-century Canadian newspaper publishers (people)
1715 births
People from colonial Boston
People of colonial Massachusetts
Colonial American printers