Background
John Draper was born on Octrober 29, 1702. He was the seventh child of Richard and Sarah (Kilby) Draper. His father was a shopkeeper, selectman, and deacon.
John Draper was born on Octrober 29, 1702. He was the seventh child of Richard and Sarah (Kilby) Draper. His father was a shopkeeper, selectman, and deacon.
Draper held no offices and evidently took no part in town affairs beyond that of the ordinary good citizen.
Draper served his apprenticeship under Green, but seems to have done some independent work before his father-in-law’s death, since he printed the first forty-seven numbers of Jeremiah Gridley’s Weekly Rehersal, a political paper which appeared in September 1731. Draper succeeded Green as printer for the governor and Council and passed the position on to his son; for about thirty years his imprint appeared on law and other official publications, as well as upon numerous broadsides and some more permanent output, such as Ames Almanac. He subscribed for six copies of Prince’s Chronology. Under his control the News-Letter kept step with colonial progress. Interest in colonial news as well as in European; the growth of information from other colonies; new features, such as “letters to the publisher, ” clippings, some verse; and a steady enlargement of the space devoted to advertisements: these, and an increase in size, are features of the development. Under him, as under Green, the paper had a distinctly religious tone.
John married Deborah (or Dorathy) Green on May 24, 1726, and their one child, Richard, was born on February 24, 1727.