For 140 years the Bradford family played a significant role in the printing and publishing history of early America, particularly in Philadelphia. Here Andrew Bradford, pioneer printer and founder of the first newspaper outside Boston, contributed to the wealth, political growth, and enlightenment of the Quaker colony. He was printer to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1712 to 1730, established the American Weekly Mercury in 1719, and launched the first magazine in America, the American Magazine, in 1741.

Bradford was born in Philadelphia in 1686, the first of two sons of William and Elizabeth Sowle Bradford. His brother, William Bradford II, was born in 1688. The boys inherited from both sides of their family the tradition of the press, their grandfathers being printers in England. The elder Bradford had met Elizabeth Sowle when he was apprenticed to her father, Andrew Sowle, a well-known printer and publisher in London during the period of the Commonwealth and...