University of Virginia Library

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192

ANTIGUA.

I cannot determine the year when printing was introduced
to Antigua, but believe it was about 1748.

I have not discovered that any press was erected on this
island prior to the time when Benjamin Mecom opened a
printing house, about 1748. He has been taken notice of
in the course of this work, as a printer in Boston, New
Haven and Philadelphia. It was at St. John that he first
began business, and published a newspaper, entitled

Mecom continued this publication six or seven years,
and then removed to Boston, Massachusetts, his native
place.

Alexander Shipton, published the Gazette, before and
after 1767, which was by him printed weekly, on Wednesday,
on a crown sheet, folio, chiefly with small pica types;
and had, in the title, a small cut of a basket of flowers.

A newspaper with this title was published in 1769; but
how long it was printed before or after that time, I am not
able to say.[10]