Samuel Keimer

Samuel Keimer. An English-born printer and publisher who played a significant, if often overshadowed, role in the early print culture of colonial America. He is best remembered for his complex professional relationship with the young Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia and for establishing one of the city's first newspapers. His career, marked by both ambition and misadventure, illustrates the competitive and precarious nature of the printing trade in the early 18th century.

Early life and background

Little is definitively known about Samuel Keimer's early years. He was born around 1688 in London, Kingdom of England, during a period of significant political change following the Glorious Revolution. He was raised as a Baptist and was apprenticed to a printer, learning the trade that would define his life. His early adulthood in London coincided with the vibrant, and often contentious, world of Grub Street journalism and pamphlet publishing. Before his departure for the colonies, Keimer experienced financial difficulties and was briefly imprisoned in the Fleet Prison for debt, a common fate for struggling printers of the era.

Printing career in London

In London, Keimer established himself as a printer of religious and political tracts, often with a dissenting or Nonconformist perspective. He printed works for the Camisards, also known as the French Prophets, a group of Protestant exiles from France whose ecstatic preaching attracted both followers and ridicule. This association likely influenced his own later religious writings. His business in the competitive London market was unstable, and his continued financial troubles, including another stint in debtors' prison, ultimately prompted his decision to seek a fresh start abroad. The print landscape of London, dominated by figures like John Dunton, was fiercely competitive, pushing many artisans to look toward the American colonies.

Relocation to Philadelphia

Seeking opportunity, Keimer emigrated to Philadelphia in 1722 or 1723, bringing with him a press and types. He was among only a handful of printers in Pennsylvania at the time, with Andrew Bradford being his main competitor as publisher of The American Weekly Mercury. Keimer quickly set up shop and began taking on general printing work. His early projects in the colony included printing Quaker pamphlets and other religious materials, capitalizing on the city's founding ethos. He also began work on a large, idiosyncratic project: a folio edition of the Bible with elaborate marginal commentaries, a venture that demonstrated his ambition but also his poor business acumen.

Partnership and rivalry with Benjamin Franklin

Keimer's most famous association began in 1723 when he hired the seventeen-year-old Benjamin Franklin, newly arrived from Boston, as a journeyman printer. Franklin, in his Autobiography, provided a famously unflattering portrait of Keimer, depicting him as a poor craftsman and an eccentric businessman. Franklin improved the operations of Keimer's shop before a quarrel led to his dismissal. The rivalry intensified in 1728 when Franklin, in partnership with Hugh Meredith, opened a competing printing house. Keimer responded by launching The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette in 1728. This newspaper, overly ambitious in its scope, struggled. In 1729, Franklin and Meredith shrewdly acquired the failing publication, shortening its name to The Pennsylvania Gazette and turning it into a highly successful and influential paper.

Later years and legacy

Following the loss of his newspaper, Keimer's fortunes declined. In 1730, he sold his printing business and left Philadelphia for the island of Barbados in the British West Indies. There, he established the first printing press on the island and began publishing the Barbados Gazette in 1731, one of the earliest newspapers in the Caribbean. His later years in Barbados are obscure, and he is believed to have died there in poverty around 1742. Samuel Keimer's legacy is that of a pioneering but flawed figure in colonial printing. While ultimately bested by the genius of Benjamin Franklin, his efforts established important early vehicles for public discourse in both Philadelphia and Barbados, contributing to the development of a public sphere in the British Empire.

Category:American printers Category:18th-century American businesspeople Category:People from Philadelphia Category:American people of English descent