John was born in 1765 in Reading, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Jasper Scull, of well-to-do Quaker stock. His great-grandfather, Nicholas Scull, emigrated to Philadelphia with his brother John in 1685; his grandfather, Nicholas Scull, II, was the first surveyor-general of the province of Pennsylvania; and his father held offices in Northampton and Berks counties, Pennsylvania. His father's sister, Mary Scull, was the mother of Nicholas Biddle, 1750-1778
Opportunities for his formal education were doubtless limited, but John Scull evidently acquired a command of good forthright English.
In the summer of 1786, young John Scull journeyed over the mountains with his partner, Joseph Hall, to establish in Pittsburgh the first newspaper west of the Alleghenies.
Apparently he had been induced to go partly through the persuasions of Hugh Henry Brackenridge. Press, types, ink, and paper were brought over the mountains by pack-horse, and the first issue of the Pittsburgh Gazette appeared on July 29, 1786. There was no mail-route, and at first the young editor delivered his papers by hand within the village and relied on chance travelers to serve his outlying subscribers. The paper had apparently two chief objects - to attract immigrants to the region, and to support the Federalist party. In the former purpose Scull was aided by Brackenridge's articles praising the western region; but over the latter he and Brackenridge had by 1800 developed bitter antagonism.
Scull had published the third volume of Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry (1793).
Scull's public service to Pittsburgh was considerable aside from his printing. He helped secure a post-route to Pittsburgh and was postmaster from 1789 to 1796; he was president, from 1814 to 1819, of the second bank established in Pittsburgh; in 1819; and he was a member of the first council of the borough of Pittsburgh in 1804. During the Whiskey Rebellion, under threat of personal violence, he opened his columns to communications denouncing the excise, but he refrained from editorial endorsement of the insurgents.
In 1816 he retired from the publication of the Gazette, and in 1826 he moved to his farm near the present town of Irwin, Pennsylvania, where he died.
John Scull was the editor of Pittsburgh Gazette, published the third volume of Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry, the first book, aside from hymn books, almanacs, and the like, to be printed west. He also was one of the incorporators of the Western University of Pennsylvania, now the University of Pittsburgh.
Being the editor of Pittsburgh Gazette, Scull supported Federalist party.
In 1789 Scull was married to Mary, the daughter of Colonel John Irwin of Westmoreland County, and he had two sons and one daughter.
