Daniel Fowle

Who was Daniel Fowle?

Daniel Fowle was an American printer before and during the American Revolution, and the founder of The New Hampshire Gazette. Fowle, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, was an active printer in the city beginning in 1740. Over the next fifteen years, Fowle would print or co-print publications such as the American Magazine and Historical Chronicle and The Independent Advertiser. Along with his business partner Gamaliel Rogers, Fowle was the first to print Samuel Adams and the New Testament in the American Colonies. In 1755, he was arrested on orders from the Massachusetts House of Representatives for printing a seditious pamphlet called "The Monster of Monsters." After his release from jail, he printed "A Total Eclipse of Liberty" in response to his arrest, and fled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

On October 7, 1756, Fowle, by this time a slave holder, began publication of the New Hampshire Gazette. The Gazette become the colony's sole newspaper at the beginning of the Revolution. In addition to the Gazette, Fowle published state laws, as well as the first book published in the colony, Reverend Samuel Langdon's The Excellency of the Word of God.