TIMOTHY, ELIZABETH
Elizabeth Timothy (c. 1700–1757) was the first woman
newspaper publisher and editor in colonial America. Like
many other women printers who followed her, she entered
the business out of necessity, following the accidental death
of her husband. She published the South-Carolina Gazette
from 1739 until 1746, when she turned it and the print shop
over to her son, Peter. During those years, the newspaper grew and prospered with the growing community of
Charleston and reflected many of the issues of the day.
Elizabeth Timothy was born in Holland and immigrated
to America in 1731 with her husband, Louis, and four small
children, settling in Philadelphia. After striking up a fortuitous acquaintance with Benjamin Franklin, Louis briefly
held a post editing the short-lived German-language newspaper, Philadelphia Zeitung. In 1734, after that paper had
failed, Franklin recruited Louis to publish the South-Carolina Gazette, which he had started up with a partner the
year before. Franklin would get Louis started financially
and would receive one-third the profits for six years, while
Louis would put in the labor and time. After that, the paper
would be his, or his oldest son’s in the case of his death. His
duties included publication of the Charleston newspaper,
the state printing contract, and distribution, all of which
Louis fulfilled successfully until his accidental death at the
end of 1738.
The fate of the family fell to Elizabeth. Though she was
well-educated for the period, she had never received formal training either as a printer or newspaper publisher. Left
with six children to feed and clothe as well as one year to
go on Louis’s business contract, she took up her husband’s
burden and began publishing the paper, though in the name
of her oldest son, Peter, who at thirteen, had started apprenticing in the print shop.
The newspaper faltered in the first year as Elizabeth Timothy learned the trade. Eventually, she changed its day of
publication from Saturday to Thursday, increased the number of woodcuts in the layout to give the newspaper a lively
appearance, increased the number of advertisements, and
won Franklin’s praise for her meticulous record-keeping.
Under her management, the four-page newspaper published
reprints from other newspapers, reports and commentaries
on life in Charleston, reprints of addresses by colonial officials, poems and literary essays, and at least one-and-a-half
pages of advertisements. In addition, the print shop published colonial documents and publications, sermons, and
occasional historical treatises. Elizabeth also sold a variety
of commodities, including Franklin’s Almanac, beer, and
flour.
Like most colonial newspapers of the day that were
published under the censorious eye of colonial, church,
and royal authorities, the South-Carolina Gazette under
Elizabeth Timothy generally avoided controversy. In 1739
and 1740, for example, it did not publish any news about
the numerous slave revolts that were breaking out in South
Carolina, whose economy by this time was heavily dependent on slave labor and where whites were outnumbered
two to one by slaves. It did, however, print the news when,
in response to the Stono Rebellion of 1740, the colony
passed strict laws banning slaves from congregating for any
purpose. Elizabeth, who owned eight slaves at the time of
her death, also frequently ran advertisements for the sale of
slaves or concerning escaped slaves.
Religion was also a topic of some controversy and here
Elizabeth was not so careful, publishing letters and sermons
from a variety of opposing preachers that made the pages
of the Gazette lively and occasionally rancorous. Between
1740 and 1742, for example, the Gazette published a series
of pro and con essays over the controversial Reverend
George Whitefield and his fundamentalist interpretation of
Anglican doctrine. These essays sometimes skirted official
censorship and in 1741, Elizabeth’s fifteen-year-old son,
Peter, was brought to court on a charge of seditious libel for
publishing a letter in which the writer compared the local
clergy unfavorably to the fiery evangelist Whitefield.
When Peter Timothy turned twenty-one in 1846, Elizabeth turned over full control of the newspaper to him. She
briefly operated a book and stationary shop next to the
printing office for at least the next year, and then apparently retired from public life. She continued as a woman of
property, however, and colonial records show that in the last
decade of her life she owned property in Charleston, slaves,
and some valuables in addition to the Gazette.
Elizabeth Timothy not only kept the Gazette running at
a time when the growing Charleston community depended
on it, she turned it and the print shop over to her son as a
healthy, thriving establishment. She also set an example for
her son and other women, showing them a woman could
accomplish anything when she put her shoulder to the
wheel. When Peter died in 1781, his wife Anne Donovan
Timothy took over the publication of the Gazette until her
own death in 1791.
Further Reading
Copeland, David. Colonial American Newspapers: Character
and Content. Newark: Delaware University Press, 1997.
Dexter, Elizabeth. Colonial Women in America: Women in Business and the Professions in America. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1934.
Marzolf, Marion. “Widow Printer to Big City Reporter.” In Up
From the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists. New
York: Hastings House Publishers, 1977, 1–31.
Oldham, Ellen M. “Early Women Printers in America.” Boston Public Library Quarterly 10 (1958): 6–26, 78–92, and
141–153.
Schlipp, Madelon Golden, and Sharon M. Murphy. “Elizabeth
Timothy: First Woman Publisher” In Great Women of the
Press, 1–11, 203–204. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.
Thomas, Isaiah. The History of Printing in America with a Biography of Printers. 1874, reprint New York: Burt Franklin,
1964.
Elizabeth V. Burt