Margaret Draper

Loyalist Printer and Publisher

Margaret Draper was one of early America’s most influential Loyalist voices. Following her husband's death in 1774, she took control of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, Boston’s oldest newspaper.As the American Revolution loomed, Draper fiercely defended the British Crown. Her press became the primary vehicle for publishing official British decrees, including the controversial Intolerable Acts. Amid intense Patriot backlash and boycotts, she refused to compromise her political loyalty, making her paper the last Loyalist stronghold in revolutionary Boston. When British troops evacuated the city in 1776, Draper fled to England, where she lived the remainder of her life in exile.