Samuel Keimer

[1] Keimer was born in the later part of the seventeenth century in the London Borough of Southwark, England.

Keimer had come to America with an old printing press, and a worn-out font of English letters.

[4] Franklin found Keimer trying to set up a composition of his own, the mournful Aquila Rose, ...

In 1729, after a short term in prison and to avoid debtors, he fled the country to Barbados after selling his print shop and newspaper to Benjamin Franklin.

[2][7] While in debtors' prison Keimer wrote some works considered of little literary value: A Search after Religion among the many Modern Pretenders to it, London [1718], and A Brand Pluck'd from the Burning exemplify'd in the unparallel'd case of Samuel Keimer, London, 1718.

It also spoke of prison life and included a letter from the English trader Daniel Defoe.