It may be surprising to learn that a small but determined coterie of women published newspapers in the American colonies, before the states declared independence from Britain.

By the start of the American Revolution (1765), there were more than a dozen women printer-publishers operating on their own in the colonies. Most of them, called “widow-printers,” inherited their presses and newspapers after their husbands’ deaths.

Even so, it was rare for any woman to run a newspaper on her own. Not until much later could American women own property. They were property, though not to the extreme degree as their slaves and servants. Read More→