Hezekiah Usher

Hezekiah Usher (1616 – 14 May 1676) was an English merchant in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was the first known bookseller in the British Colonies. likely in Bednall Green. With his brother, Robert, he emigrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he was living (at the corner of Dunster and Winthrop streets) and believed to be running a bookshop out of his home there by 1639.

He appears to have been functioning as both a bookseller and a publisher by 1648. In that year, evidence of his bookselling is to be found on the title page of a book of laws printed by the printing press in Cambridge which "are to be solde at the shop of Hezekiah Usher in Boston." Evidence of his publishing role appears on the title page of a new edition of the Psalms with the imprint "Cambridge: Printed for Hezekiah Usher, of Boston, 1648." Usher appears similarly on several other volumes in the 1650s and later, including what is believed to be the first book in America written for children, John Cotton's Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes (1656).

In the mid-17th century, Usher was a selectman in Boston. and Mary Alford.

He was a member of Boston's Old South Meetinghouse. His widow, third wife Mary, remarried to Samuel Nowell of Charlestown.