John B. Pendleton was born in 1798 in New York, New York City, United States. He was the youngest son of Capt. William Pendleton, a native of Liverpool, England, and the commander of a New York and Liverpool packet, who came to America about 1789 and resided in New York City, where he married a widow, and where John and his brother, William S. Pendleton, were born. The father was lost at sea the year John was born, and both boys were early sent to work.
William Pendleton was apprenticed to a copper-plate engraver, and in 1819 went to Washington, D. C. , where he practised his craft and the following year was joined by his brother John. Both young men then set out to seek their fortunes in the West, but proceeded no further than Pittsburgh, Pa. Before they had been long in that city, John was invited by Rembrandt Peale to exhibit his large painting, "The Court of Death, " which was shown in many cities of the country for more than a year. In 1824 William returned to New York but soon went to Boston, where he resumed his business of engraving. About this time John was sent to Europe in the interests of John Doggett, a bookseller, and while he was in Paris, his brother wrote him that he had purchased some lithographic materials and equipment from a merchant named Thaxter, who had imported it, but was unable to use the process successfully. The younger brother's response was to study lithography in Paris, where he purchased abundant supplies which he brought with him upon his return to the United States in 1825. With him he brought also two workmen, Bischbou and Dubois, the latter said to have been the first real lithographic printer in the United States.
The firm of W. S. & J. B. Pendleton, Boston, began to print lithographs that same year. Their first work was evidently for the Boston Monthly Magazine, December 1825. John continued a member of this firm for five years. In 1826 Rembrandt Peale went to Boston, apparently at the suggestion of John Pendleton, to study lithography, and there drew upon the stone a portrait of Washington which gained a medal in the Franklin Institute exhibition in 1827. In 1829 John Pendleton with Francis Kearny and Cephas Grier Childs founded a lithographing firm in Philadelphia under the style of Pendleton, Kearny & Childs, from which the senior partner withdrew in the same year to found a lithograph house in New York City. Thenceforth until his death, he was a resident of New York. In 1832 he was engaged as a lithographer, and also, in partnership with a man named Hill, as a bookseller and publisher.
John B. Pendleton died on March 10, 1866 in New York.
John B. Pendelton was twice married: in 1830 to Eliza Matilda Blydenburgh, who died in 1842; and in 1846 to Hester Travis, who survived him.
