Anthony Haswell (printer)
| Anthony Haswell | |
|---|---|
| Born |
6 April 1756 Portsmouth, England |
| Died | 26 May 1816 (aged 60) Bennington, Vermont |
| Occupation | printer, journalist, postmaster |
| Spouse(s) | Lydia Baldwin Betsey Rice |
| Children | William Pritchard, Anthony Johnson, Elizabeth, David Russel, Nathan Baldwin, Mary, William, Eliza, Susanna, Lydia, Eliza, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Clark, and Charles Salem Haswell, Alvah Rice (adopted), Betsy Rice/Haswell (adopted) |
| Relatives |
Susanna (Haswell) Rowson Robert Haswell |
Anthony Haswell (6 April 1756 – 26 May 1816) was an English immigrant to New England, where he became a newspaper, almanac, and book publisher, the Postmaster General of Vermont and one of the Jeffersonian printers imprisoned under the Sedition Act of 1798.
Anthony Haswell was born in or near Portsmouth, England on 6 April 1756, the second son of shipwright William Haswell and his first wife Elizabeth Dawes. The father had been employed at the royal dockyard, but in 1769 resigned his position with the intention of emigrating. He took Anthony and his brother William with him to Boston and likely immediately apprenticed Anthony with a potter while young William trained as a shipwright under his father. Within a year, the father decided to return to England, apprenticing William to a Boston shipwright. Anthony's brother would return to England for a visit on the eve of the Revolutionary War, the outbreak of which prevented his return to Boston, and he would serve for four decades in the Royal Navy. Also in the Boston area at this time was his father's cousin, Customs Service officer and Royal Navy Lieutenant William Haswell, who had a young daughter Susanna Haswell (later Rowson) and son Robert Haswell.
The cause by which Anthony's first apprenticeship came to a premature end is not known, but in August 1771 he was apprenticed by Boston's Overseers of the Poor until the age of 21 to printer Isaiah Thomas, who published the radical Massachusetts Spy at the Boston location currently occupied by the Union Oyster House. Anthony had witnessed the Boston massacre, and developed an interest in the politics of the time, becoming a member of the Sons of Liberty and composing ballads for the movement. In April 1775 Thomas was forced to evacuate his press from Boston, moving to Worcester where publication continued, but within a year Haswell bought his way out of his apprenticeship early. He served in the Revolutionary War although the details of this service have been lost. During Thomas's own service, the paper was leased, and from August 1777 to June 1778 Anthony Haswell published it under the banner of Haswell's Massachusetts Spy, and he would initiate a plan to buy the press from Thomas, but skyrocketing labor costs, and problems acquiring materiel and difficulties receiving timely payment from subscribers would force him to return the paper to Thomas, who then rehired Haswell as his assistant.
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