Former Lancaster Publisher Broke Declaration Story!

It was an ordinary day.  Reading a story posted in my local newspaper by Jack Brubaker, known to all as "The Scribbler."  Story began with...On Thursday, Americans will celebrate precisely 248 years since a Congress of upstart colonists adopted the Declaration of Independence on Thursday, July 4, 1776.  A Philadelphia newspaper published by a German-American journalist scooped all others in announcing the existence of the Declaration on Friday, July 5.  The publisher, Heinrich Miller, previously had produced Lancaster's first notable paper.  Miller and Samuel Holland published Die Lancastersche Zeitung, or The Lancaster Gazette, in 1752.  The publication had the backing of Philadelphia publisher Benjamin Franklin.  Printed somewhere on King Street, the Zeitung printed news in both German and English in side-by-side columns.  The paper lasted only a few months, and Miller returned to Philadelphia before it folded.  In 1762, he began publishing a new paper there.  Miller's Philadelphia paper, Heinrich Miller's Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (Heinrich Miller's Pennsylvania Staatsbote (Heinrich Miller's Pennsylvania Courier), carried the first news of the Declaration.  "Yesterday, the honorable Congress of these Western Lands, declared the United Colonies free and independent states," Miller's paper reported, as translated from the German.  Miller announced the news story of the century before anyone else because his paper was the only Philadelphia publication printed on Fridays. Other newspapers waited until their day of  weekly or semiweekly publication.  Such restraint is difficult to imagine in a time of incessantly breaking news.  The delay also was notable in 1776 because Philadelphia enjoyed six major, primarily English-language, newspapers in a highly competitive market.  Miller beat them all.  Born Johann Heinrich Muller in Germany in 1702, Miller worked as a printer before emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1741.  He helped Franklin produce the Pennsylvanian Gazette.  Eventually, Franklin supported Miller's publication of the bilingual Zeitung.  Although that paper did not last long, Franklin and Miller remained determined to keep German readers as informed as the English population.  Miller's Pennsylvanianischer Staatabote, originally a weekly paper, began publishing twice a week during the Revolution.  So, the publisher printed news of the Declaration on July 5 and a full German-languge translation of the Declaration on July 9.  The British forced Miller to flee Philadelphia when they occupied the city in September 1777.  After the British left, he resumed publishing the Staatsbotr until he retired in 1779. He died in 1782, at the age of 80.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.