Bradford, William, 1588-1657
Colonial governor; born in Austerfield, Yorkshire, England, in March, 1588; was a passenger in the Mayflower. At the early age of seventeen years he made an attempt to leave England with dissenters, for Holland, and suffered imprisonment. He finally joined his dissenting brethren at Amsterdam, learned the art of silk-dyeing, and, coming into the possession of a considerable estate at the age of twenty-one years, he engaged successfully in commerce. One of Mr. Robinson's congregation at Leyden, he accompanied the “Pilgrims” to America, [393] and was one of the foremost in selecting a site for the colony. Before the “Pilgrims” landed, his wife fell into the sea from the Mayflower, and was drowned. He succeeded John Carver (April 5, 1621) as governor of Plymouth colony. He cultivated friendly relations with the Indians; and he was annually rechosen governor as long as he lived, excepting in five years. He wrote a history of Plymouth colony from 1620 to 1647, which was published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1856. He died in Plymouth, Mass., May 9, 1657.
printer; born in Leicester, England, in 1658. A Friend, or Quaker, he came to America with Penn's early colonists in 1682. and landed near the spot where Philadelphia was afterwards built. He had learned the printer's trade in London, and, in 1686, he printed an almanac in Philadelphia. Mixed up in a political and social dispute in Pennsylvania, and suffering thereby, he removed to New York in 1693, and in that year printed the laws of that colony. He began the first newspaper in New York. Oct. 16, 1725--the New York gazette. He was printer to the government of New York more than fifty years, and for thirty years the only one in the province. He died in New York, May 23, 1752.
