**** William Bradford was a grandson of William Bradford, the first printer who settled in the colony. * He went to England in 1741, and the next year returned with printing materials and books. In December, 1742, he published the first number of the Pennsylvania Journal, which was continued until about the close of the century, when his son Thomas, who was his business partner, changed its name to the True American. While carrying on the printing business, he opened, in 1754, at the corner of Market and Front Streets, "The London Coffee-house," and in 1762 a marine insurance office, with Mr. Kydd. His republican bias was manifested during the Stamp Act excitement; and when the war of the Revolution began, he joined the Pennsylvania militia. As a major and colonel, he fought in the battles of Trenton and Princeton, and was at Fort Mifflin, below Philadelphia, when it was attacked. After the British army left Philadelphia, he returned with a broken constitution and a shattered fortune. A short time before his death, a paralytic shock gave him warning of its approach. To his children he said, "Though I bequeath you no estate, I leave you in the enjoyment of liberty." He died on the 25th of September, 1791, aged seventy-two years. * His son, Andrew, was also a printer, and carried on business in Philadelphia after his father had retired to New York on a pension from government of sixty pounds a year. In a poetic effusion printed by Keimer, the first employer of Dr. Franklin, in 1731, is the following allusion to the Bradfords: "In Penn's wooden country type feels no disaster, The printers grow rich; one is made their postmaster. His father, a printer, is paid for his work, And wallows in plenty, just now, in New York. Though quite past his labor, and old as my gran'mum, The government pays him pounds sixty per annum." [[[The Pennsylvania Journal.--Repeal of the Stamp Act.--Rejoicings.--Dickenson's Letters.]]] {259}day preceding the one in which the law was to go in force, it contained the emblematic head and "doleful" communication seen in the engraving. * [Illustration: 0267]