John Peter Zenger, printer, was born in Germany and immigrated to New York at the age of thirteen with his parents, his younger brother and sister, and a large group of Palatine Germans. His father died en route. In 1711 his widowed mother, Johanna, indentured him to printer William Bradford for a term of eight years. After the expiration of his indenture, Zenger lived first in Philadelphia, where he married Mary White on 28 July 1719, and then in Chestertown. Kent County. Maryland. In 1720 he successfully petitioned the Maryland assembly to be allowed to print the session laws. Soon thereafter he returned to New York. By then a widower, he married Anna Catherina Maulin on 11 September 1722.

After a short-lived partnership with his former master (Bradford). Zenger entered into his own printing business in 1726. In the course of his career he printed polemical tracts, some theological works, and books in the Dutch...