Background
He was born in Philadelphia, in 1748. He was the son of James and Susanna (Assheton) Humphreys. His father was a conveyancer who served as clerk of the orphans court and as justice of the peace in Philadelphia.
He was born in Philadelphia, in 1748. He was the son of James and Susanna (Assheton) Humphreys. His father was a conveyancer who served as clerk of the orphans court and as justice of the peace in Philadelphia.
Young Humphreys entered the College of Philadelphia in 1763, but did not graduate, and was subsequently placed under the care of an uncle to study medicine. Disliking the profession of physic, however, he was apprenticed by his father to William Bradford the younger to learn the printer's trade
He became the own master of William Bradford the younger in 1770. In 1773 he printed Wettenhall's Greek Grammar, corrected for the use of the College of Philadelphia, probably the first Greek text to be printed in the American colonies. The following year he published one of the first sets of books to be printed in what is now the United States, the Works of Laurence Sterne, in five volumes; and in January 1775 he began the publication of a newspaper, The Pennsylvania Ledger: or, The Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey Weekly Advertiser. He announced that his journal would be conducted with political impartiality, but since he had previously taken the oath of allegiance to the British king, he refused to bear arms against his government.
In 1776 he published a pamphlet, Strictures on Paine's Common Sense, which went through two editions "of several thousand copies" in a few months. Although Humphreys managed to keep his newspaper going for a time, a writer in Towne's Evening Post (November 16, 1776) attacked him as a Tory, and on other occasions Towne had pointed the finger of suspicion against him. Humphreys, accordingly, feeling that he might get himself into serious trouble with the patriots, discontinued his paper with the issue of November 30, 1776, and retired to the country, returning to Philadelphia only when the British took possession of the city.
Reestablished, December 3, 1777, as The Pennsylvania Ledger or the Philadelphia Market Day Advertiser, the paper was issued twice a week on market days until its final suspension, May 23, 1778. When the British troops left Philadelphia, Humphreys accompanied them to New York, where he engaged in merchandising. On the return of peace, he went to the Loyalist colony of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where he attempted to establish another paper, the Nova Scotia Packet. Success did not favor this enterprise, however, and he again became a merchant. In this capacity he continued until 1797, when, having suffered severe losses through the operations of French privateers, he decided to return to Philadelphia. There he again opened a printing house, and from that time until his death, according to Isaiah Thomas, he "was employed in book printing. " Thomas adds, "A number of valuable works have come from his press. He was a good and accurate printer, and a worthy citizen. " He died in Philadelphia, in 1810, and was buried in the graveyard of Christ Church in that city.
His wife was Mary Yorke.