Bartholomew was the eldest son of Samuel Green, printer to Cambridge University, where the Greens had resided since 1649, and where Samuel Green, along with Marmaduke Johnson printed the Eliot Indian Bible, the first Bible in America, not in English, but in the Algonquin-Massachusett Indian language.[4]
In 1690 he removed to Boston, and established his printing house. That year his house and printing wares were destroyed by fire and was subsequently compelled to return to Cambridge and resume work in his father's printing house.[5]
Green served for his father and assisted his half-brother Samuel when the latter managed Sewall's press in Boston after 1682. When Sewall's license expired in 1684, the Greens continued to print, and on Bartholomew's brother's death, in July 1690, he assumed charge.[7]
The Boston News-Letter is regarded as the first continuously published newspaper in British North America. Initially, it was heavily subsidized by the British government, with a limited circulation. The Boston News-Letter’s first editor was John Campbell.[8]
In 1722 the editorship passed to Green, the paper's printer. Green changed the focus of the newspaper to place more emphasis on domestic events.
After his death in 1732 his son John Draper, also a printer, took the paper's helm, who upon his death left it to his son, Richard Draper. He enlarged the paper to four pages and filled it with news from throughout the colonies. He also had a son, Bartholomew, who was a successful printer.
The charter granted by Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary, to the inhabitants of the province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England. Boston in New-England: Printed by B. Green, printer to the Honorable the lieut. governor & Council, for Benjamin Eliot, and sold at his shop near the Town-House in King's Street, 1726.
