Background
Bartholomew Green was born on October 12, 1666, in Cambridge, Massachusets. He was the son of Samuel Green by his second wife, Sarah Clark.
Bartholomew Green was born on October 12, 1666, in Cambridge, Massachusets. He was the son of Samuel Green by his second wife, Sarah Clark.
Green served his father and assisted his half-brother Samuel when the latter managed Sewall’s press in Boston after 1682. When Sewall was released from the license in 1684, the Greens continued to print, and on his brother’s death, in July 1690, Bartholomew assumed charge.
He was burned out two months later and rejoined his father in Cambridge, where his name shares in some dozen of the elder’s last imprints. When the father retired in 1692 Bartholomew returned to Boston, undoubtedly taking the material of the Cambridge establishment.
Printing ceased in Cambridge for a century, and Green continued to print for the college. Though several of his Boston works are of 1692, yet the permit “to Set up his Press within. Boston” is dated June 6, 1693.
He remained the chief printer in New England for “near Forty Years, ” enjoying the patronage of Government during the whole period. John Allen’s name is on some of the imprints, but there was no formal partnership.
Green printed the Boston News-Letter from the start, April 24, 1704, except for the period November 10, 1707 - October 1, 1711, and succeeded Campbell as publisher on January 7, 1723.
It was not his policy to print all the news; he announced on March 7, 1723, that he intended to publish “those Transactions only, that have no relation to any of our Quarrels, and may be equally entertaining to the greatest Adversaries” and to “extend his Paper to the History of Nature among us. ”
On January 5, 1727, he promised up-to-date news, instead of carrying on “a Thread of Occurrences of an Old Date. ”
He was a follower of the Mathers and was involved in their quarrel with Colman in 1700, printing Mather’s unlicensed pamphlet but refusing to print the reply without an imprimatur, and then putting out a handbill justifying his stand.
He became a deacon of the South Church, on April 17, 1719, and may have been a tithingman in 1703, but was excused from serving as clerk of the market in 1709.
Green's “Philosophical Transactions” were usually accompanied by moral or religious reflections; piety was his outstanding trait.
Quotes from others about the person
“Green began to be Pious, in the Days of his Youth; And he would always speak of the wonderful Spirit of Piety that then prevailed in the Land, with a singular Pleasure. ”
Green was married in 1690; his wife Mary bore him nine children by 1706; she died Mar. 26, 1709.
On June 16, 1710, he married Jane Toppan, presumably a niece of Samuel Sewall, who performed the ceremony and recorded the birth of the first son of his “cousin Green”; but a Toppan genealogy says that this niece died in 1728.
By his second wife he had two more children, yet when he died, “after a long and painful Languishment of a Sore that broke inwards”, his will mentioned only the widow and four children.