Daniel Fowle (printer)

Daniel Fowle was born in Charlestown, and served his apprenticeship with Samuel Kneeland, a prominent printer in Boston. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and became an active printer in that city beginning in 1740. He married into a very respectable family in Boston, but his marriage produced no children. Renown printer and historian Isiah Thomas said of Fowle, that he was exacting and articulate in his printing and industrious in his method. He bore a mild disposition and was agreeable in his manners, liberal in his sentiments, and was devoted to the cause of his country. ==Life in Massachusetts==

Over the next fifteen years, Fowle printed and co-printed publications such as the American Magazine and Historical Chronicle and The Independent Advertiser. The first issue of The Independent Advertiser was printed on January 4, by Rogers and Fowle. Among its writers were Jonathan Mayhew, a controversial Congregationalist and the eventual founder of Unitarianism in America, and an outspoken critic of the Stamp Act. Fowle became the junior business partner with Gamaliel Rogers in 1742. They manufactured their own ink used in the printing of their works, and are supposed to be the first printers in America who were successful in that effort. Fowle and Rogers were the first to print the New Testament in the American Colonies, for Daniel Henchman, and the first printer to publish the revolutionary writings of Samuel Adams. In 1755 Fowle was approached and asked by a few gentlemen, who were opposed to the measures of the general court, and in particular, an excise act on rum. They employed him to assist his brother, Zechariah Fowle to print a pamphlet entitled, The Monster of Monsters, deriding and criticizing this act, while also severely admonishing several members of the court. Joseph Russell, his apprentice, then nearly of age, worked at the case, and a negro man (probably Primus Fowle) at the press. After publication of the affair Fowle was promptly arrested while at his dinner table on orders from the Massachusetts House of Representatives for printing a seditious pamphlet called "The Monster of Monsters." He was brought before the House and was questioned by the Speaker. Fowle did not cooperate with the Speaker and repeatedly responded to questions in an evasive manner. After the hearing he was jailed at a place that held thieves and murderers and was denied visitation from his wife. Fowle subsequently lost his license to print. After his release from jail, he printed "A Total Eclipse of Liberty" in response to his arrest and fled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. ==Life in New Hampshire==

After leaving Massachusetts Fowle arrived in and established his residence in Portsmouth. He opened his printing shop on Anne Street, where, in addition to performing various small printing jobs on his press, he sold books and pamphlets. Shortly after arriving at Portsmouth, Fowle received the commission of the town's magistrate. The Gazette became that colony's sole newspaper at the beginning of the Revolution. Fowle took on his nephew Robert as a partner and employed him as the editor, while they also taught a slave on how to operate and maintain the printing press. Among the printing material Fowle brought with him to Portsmouth was a set of wood and metal cuts of emblems, which included one of the Crow and the Fox, which was used to adorn the heading of his newspaper. Following this, the newspaper heading used a cut of Jupiter and the Peacock. Then the Royal Arms was used, however, as the revolution drew near and the spirit of independence became commonplace throughout the colonies, all signs of royalty steadily disappeared from newspapers and other such printings. The opening passage of the Gazette article read: The Gazette article went on to reference the effect of the Stamp Act as an act of slavery and a threat to commerce, and that its enforcement would amount to nothing less than a loss of liberty. In the years leading up to, and during the course of the Revolutionary War, the people of Portsmouth largely had strong loyalist sympathies. Subsequently the Gazette was published irregularly and only mildly supported the American cause for independence. In 1776 Fowle printed an issue urging the Provincial Congress not to establish an independent government out of concern that this would likely be taken by the royal colonial government as a desire to throw off British rule. Fowle was promptly summoned before the Congress, severely censured, for the "ignominious, scurrilous, and scandalous piece". After being warned to never publish articles reflecting upon the Congress or the cause for independence in such a manner he ceased printing the paper until his nephew Robert L. Fowle in effect revived it on May 22 at Exeter. Fowle lived long enough to see the principles of Samuel Adams and the Caucus Club, which were enumerated in The Independent Advertiser in 1752, put forward and incorporated into the young independent nation. ==See also==