Ann Smith Franklin - printer, publisher and newspaper editor : 1696
– 1763
Ann Smith Franklin learned the printing and publishing business from her
husband James Franklin, brother of Benjamin Franklin. She inherited the
business on his death in 1735. In 1736, in order to support her family, she
petitioned the General Assembly of Rhode Island, seeking to print their
official publications. She won the contract, and became the official printer of
the General Assembly, a position she held until she died – printing law
books, election ballots, legal forms, the colony's currency and the colony's
charter granted by Charles II of England..
To supplement her income, she printed sermons for ministers,
advertisements for merchants, as well as popular British novels. Ann's most
notable work was compiling and publishing five editions of the Rhode Island
Almanack, for the years 1737-1741. In 1741, she began selling her
brother-in-law Benjamin's alamanac, Poor Richard's Alamanac, and in 1745, she
printed 500 copies of the Acts and Laws of Rhode Island as a folio edition, her
largest commission.
In 1758 she and her son James produced the Newport Mercury, the first
newspaper in Rhode Island – which is being still published today. Ann was
the country’s first woman newspaper editor, first woman to write an
almanac, and the first woman inducted into the University of Rhode Island's
Journalism Hall of Fame.
