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In about 1769, John Howe began his apprenticeship as a printer to Richard Draper, 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, 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 5th or 6th, 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, but Margaret Draper soon ended this partnership (between August 4th and 11th, 1774) as Boyle did not share her loyalist sympathies. Margaret Draper published the paper by herself from August 11, 1774.
On April 19, 1775, the opening battle of the [[American Revolution]] occurred, when the British forces raided inland from Boston to Concord "to destroy a Magazine of Military Stores deposited there." When the raid broke into a firefight, the "Troops had above Fifty killed, and many more wounded". In the April 20, 1775, issue of the ''Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News Letter'' a short article appeared that briefly described and—a day or more later—a broadside reporting on the [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/rbpebib:@field(NUMBER%2B@band(rbpe%2B03801100)) Battle of Lexington and Concord] at greater length, were quite possibly both written and printed by John Howe. After the Battle of Lexington and Concord, news of the event quickly spread to the other colonies and American patriots came in great numbers to lay seige to Boston. On June 17, 1775, American forces seized a hill to the north of Boston and began building fortifications upon it from which they would be able to fire upon the town and harbour. In the morning light, a British ship in the harbour, seeing the fortifications being constructed on the hill, began firing on the hill. Soon, British troops were ferried from Boston to Charlestown, where they charged up and took the hill, although at an enormous cost in lives. In later years, John Howe described his experiences at the [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/rbpebib:@field(NUMBER%2B@band(rbpe%2B0380190a)) Battle of Bunker Hill] to his youngest son, Joseph. He watched as General Sir William Howe led the final bayonet charge up the hill "with the bullets flying through the tails of his coat." After the battle, John told of aiding "a young officer whose leg had been amputated and who he cured of a raging fever by letting him drink a bucket of cold water." Shortly after the battle, John Howe proposed to
<!-- From Joseph Howe, Vol. I, Conservative Reformer, 1804-1848; J. Murray Beck [McGill-Queen's University Press, 1982]. [[User:AllanJohnstone|AllanJohnstone]] 08:39, 3 October 2005 (UTC) -->
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