John Howe (loyalist) - Early Years

Early Years

Howe was born in 1754, the same year that the French and Indian War or Seven Years' War (1754–1763) began. It was the consequences of this conflict that motivated the British to demand greater taxes from, and assert greater control over, their American colonies and it was the consequences of this conflict that raised and disappointed the English-American colonists' expectations about their opportunities for expansion, all of which contributed to the colonists' determination to revolt against an increasingly costly, authoritarian, and obstructive British rule. Howe was eight years old at the end of this war on September 7, 1763, so he grew to maturity influenced by the events that followed, such as colonial resistance to the Stamp Act (1765–66), when he was 16, and the violence of the Boston Massacre (1770), in which British troops opened fire on a mob of Bostonians who were brawling with the troops.

Howe's family were converts to a religious sect called the Sandemanians, whose best-known member was Michael Faraday, the famous scientist. The sect began when the Rev. John Glas (1695–1773), who had been the Presbyterian minister at Tealing, Perthshire, Scotland, sought a return to a "New Testament Christianity" that included Agapēs, pacifism, good works, charity, communal property, as well as a strong opposition to state control over the church. These views led to his suspension from the Church of Scotland in 1728. With the help of his son-in-law, Robert Sandeman, the sect grew to several churches in Scotland and England. Sandeman first moved to London in 1760 and then, in 1764, to New England. He arrived in Boston, where he helped his nephew get established as a bookseller, and then moved to Danbury, Connecticut, where he lived until his death in April, 1771. Sandeman's teachings to live a more purely Christian life appealed to New England's Puritan descendants and, with the rising tensions between the colonists and royal rule, Sandeman's command to "Fear God and honour the King" and "if it be possible... live peacefully with all men" found a receptive audience amongst the loyalists. A Joseph Howe is listed as a member of the Boston Sandemanians; this was probably John's father, but it might have been John's elder brother. John Howe's Sandemanian beliefs likely contributed to his loyalist stance, and definitely contributed to his lifelong pacifism.

John Howe probably began his apprenticeship as a printer to Richard Draper in either 1766 or 1767. Richard Draper was the King's printer in Massachusetts and the publisher of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News Letter, the oldest English newspaper in the Americas. As Richard Draper was known to be a frail and sickly man, and as he was Draper's apprentice, John Howe probably witnessed and wrote the article about the Boston Tea Party that appeared in the December 23, 1773, issue. Less than six months after the report on the Boston Tea Party, Richard Draper, owner of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News Letter, died on June 5 or 6, 1774, leaving the paper in the hands of his widow, Margaret Draper. Richard Draper may have anticipated his demise, as he formed a partnership with John Boyle in May, the month before his death. However, Margaret Draper soon ended this partnership (between August 4 and 11, 1774) as Boyle did not share her loyalist sympathies. Margaret Draper published the paper by herself from August 11, 1774.