Relatives.

William Bradford III was born on 19 January 1719 in Hanover Square, New York City. His grandfather, William Bradford I, had established a press in Pennsylvania, the second in America. Because of an argument with the ruling Quaker hierarchy (a rift that would plague the Bradford family for generations), he moved his print shop to New York in 1693 and founded that colony's first newspaper. In 1733 William Bradford III was apprenticed to his wealthy uncle Andrew Sowle Bradford, founder of the American Weekly Mercury in Philadelphia. Having no children of his own, Andrew looked upon William as a son and heir, providing him with fine clothes and a good education. At the age of twenty William became his uncle's partner, but when he refused to an arranged marriage with a cousin, his uncle wrote him out of the will.

Interlude in England.

Bradford traveled...