John Carter was born on July 21, 1745 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States a few months after the death of his father, who was killed in a naval battle of the war of 1745; the youngest of the five children of John and Elizabeth (Spriggs) Carter.
John learned the printing-trade of Benjamin Franklin and David Hall, whom he served as an apprentice.
At the age of twenty-two, he came to Providence, and became associated with Sarah Goddard in the publication of the Providence Gazette. The next year the business came into his possession; from that time until ill health caused his retirement shortly before his death in 1814, he was the sole editor, and, during the same period, excepting for five or six years (Nov. 1793 - May 1799), when William Wilkinson was a partner, was the sole proprietor.
From July 1772 to June 1792 he was postmaster of Providence; a commission dated September 25, 1775, was signed by Benjamin Franklin.
The Gazette supported the Revolutionary cause; it opposed the paper-money party; it is said to have opposed the adoption of the Constitution. As the time approached of Rhode Island's final action, a paragraph in the issue of March 20, 1790, was made to conclude with the words: "In short, the State is as free as an Individual in a State of Nature, and there is no more Reason for an Adoption of the New Constitution, than there is for such Individual to enter into a State of Government. " The words in italics (so printed in the original) may hide a subtlety and imply that the writer held some reason to exist of a contrary tenor. In the obituary notice of Carter in the Gazette of August 20, 1814, the statement is made that he "was zealous in his endeavors to induce the people of this state to adopt the Present Constitution. " The opposition of the paper in 1812 to the declaration of war is unequivocal. Carter's valedictory was printed in the issue of February 14, 1814.
His name was continued in that of his great-grandson, John Carter Brown, the founder of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
Quotations: The Providence Gazette, he said, "since the dawn of our glorious revolution, has unceasingly disseminated the orthodox political principles of the Washington school. "
During the Revolutionary War, he was a member of the Committee of Correspondence.
Quotes from others about the person
Miss Gertrude S. Kimball speaks of him as "the admirable and sagacious John Carter, " and says that he was "possessed of that choleric and generous-hearted temperament that so frequently characterizes the Irish-American".
Carter was married on May 14, 1769, to Amey Crawford, by whom he had twelve children.
