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John Carter

(1745-1814) ~ Inducted 2000

John Carter was born in Philadelphia in 1745, the son of Elizabeth Spriggs and John Carter, a naval officer of Irish ancestry killed in battle two months before his son’s birth. During the late 1750s, Carter was apprenticed in the print shop of Benjamin Franklin and David Hall. In 1767, Carter moved to Providence where printer Sarah Goddard took him as a partner in publishing the Providence Gazette. Fourteen months later, Goddard withdrew from the enterprise and Carter continued publishing the Gazette on his own “at the Sign of Shakespear’s Head” on Meeting Street.

From 1767 until his retirement in 1814, Carter molded public opinion in Providence. His Gazette was a strong supporter of the Revolutionary cause and the ratification of the federal Constitution. Carter, among his many civic involvements, served as Providence postmaster for twenty years (1772-1792) and was a leader of the Federalist party.

During the two decades of Revolutionary ferment (1764-1783) Carter was one of the most productive American printers. In that era he published more than forty percent of all Rhode Island imprints and was a fervent advocate of individual and American liberty.

For his February 14, 1814 retirement issue, Carter wrote a retrospective of the Gazette in which he accurately described the paper as “open for the reception of temperate discussion of public affairs; respectful remonstrances to government . . . and appeals to the people when their independence has been endangered. It has . . . abounded with original essays on political, literary, moral, and religious subjects; and . . . has unceasingly disseminated the orthodox political principles of the Washington school.”

In 1769, Carter married Amy Crawford; they had twelve children. His daughter, Ann, married businessman-philanthropist Nicholas Brown II.

_{image c. Susan White Pieroth, RI Gen Web}

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John Carter

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