Background
John Fleming was born about 1764, he was of Scottish descent, and about his early life no records are available.
John Fleming was born about 1764, he was of Scottish descent, and about his early life no records are available.
Fleming arrived in Boston in 1764, and was first a partner of William M'Alpine and then of John Mein. Thirty-odd publications by him in these connections have been listed, mostly religious in character, but including Fleming's Register for New England and Nova-Scotia and an Almanack for 1772 (1771), John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer (1768), and William Knox’s The Controversy Between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed (1769).
On December 21, 1767, Mein & Fleming began to publish the Boston Chronicle, patterned after the London Chronicle and at first a weekly periodical rather than a newspaper.
Mein was the efficient editor, and the paper featured selections from foreign journals and works of popular English authors rather than colonial news. Volume I had an index!
The Chronicle was well patronized, becoming a semi-weekly in its second year, the first regular one in New England; but with the development of the political controversy it became the chief Tory organ, subsidizing being hinted, and Mein was obliged to leave Boston before the end of 1769 - Fleming continued the Chronicle. Mein had, independently, a bookshop, and an assignment of English debts for this shop coming into the hands of Boston Radicals, they tried, according to James Murray, to levy on the printing-office as well, in order to put an end to the newspaper.
This attack was frustrated by a pledge for the value of Mein’s interest, but lack of patronage caused a suspension of the paper with the issue for June 25, I770 - Fleming continued the printing-office during 1770 - 1773, issuing the register and almanac, and a few other works, including the report of the Boston Massacre trial and William Gordon’s plan for life insurance.
According to Isaiah Thomas who was a contemporary Boston printer, Fleming left for England in 1773. If this was the case, he seems to have returned. The name John Fleming appears among the signers of a loyal petition to King George III in July 1776.
John Fleming, variously described as a high Scotch Tory, a printer, and a stationer; and Church’s treasonable correspondence was carried on with this "brother, " then in besieged Boston. There is little doubt that this Fleming was the earlier printer, who may have returned as a civil official of the army. His name does not appear in the partial list of those who left at the evacuation, or in that of the disaffected who remained.
He was proscribed and banished by the Act of September 1778; but no proceedings concerning his estate or application for English pension have been found.
Thomas adds that he returned to the United States several times after 1790 as agent of a French commercial house, and that he died in France after 1800.
On August 8, 1770, John Fleming married Alice Church, daughter of Boston merchant Benjamin Church.