Pioneer Imprints from Fifty States · Roger J. Trienens
TO OUR PATRONS.
We are under the disagreeable necessity of issuing this number of the Gazette, in its present form, owing to a very lengthy advertisement, (occupying seven columns) being ordered out the moment the paper was ready for the Press. It being a personal controversy between Mr. _William Robertson_, and Messrs. _Hernandez, Kingsley_ and _Yonge_, Esquires, and a reply to Mr. Hernandez's publication of last week, our readers would not have found it very interesting. Its publication was countermanded on account of an amicable arrangement being made by the parties about one o'clock this day. We hope this will be a sufficient apology to our subscribers for the manner in which the Paper appears, as it is impossible for it to be issued this day in any other way, being short of hands. We pledge ourselves another instance of the kind shall never occur--and assure the public we feel much aggrieved at the imposition. The advertisement of Mr. Wm. Robertson, headed "_Caution_" and the reply by J. M. Hernandez, Esq. will be discontinued after this week, and no further altercation between the parties will be permitted thro' the medium of this Press. The printed portions of this early issue include an installment of a "Historical Sketch of Florida," extracts from various newspapers, and among others the printer's own advertisements: "COMMERCIAL BLANKS, For Sale at this Office. _Also_, Blank Deeds, Mortgages, &c. &c." "Blank Bills of Lading, For Sale at the Gazette Office" and "BOOK AND JOB PRINTING, Of every description, executed at this Office." In this century the Library bound the 10 issues into a single volume. Those dated November 24 and December 1 are addressed in ink to the Department of State at Washington.
From the same year the Library of Congress holds 13 issues of _The Floridian_, published at Pensacola beginning August 18, some of which are also addressed to the Department of State. From this year, too, the Library possesses _Ordinances, by Major-General Andrew Jackson, Governor of the Provinces of the Floridas, Exercising the Powers of the Captain-General, and of the Intendant of the Island of Cuba, Over the Said Provinces, and of the Governors of Said Provinces Respectively_, printed at St. Augustine by Edes. This pamphlet-sized volume was advertised as "just published" in the September 15 issue of the _Florida Gazette_; and the Library's copy, one of two extant,[35] was autographed twice by "John Rodman Esquire" at St. Augustine. Since he once added the designation "Collector" to his name, he is readily identified as the person who placed the following announcement in the November 24 issue of the _Gazette_: "JOHN RODMAN, Attorney & Counsellor at Law, May be consulted on professional business, at his Office in the Custom-House." [Footnote 34: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, "The Beginnings of Printing in Florida," in _The Florida Historical Quarterly_, vol. 23 (1944-45), p. [63]-96.] Maine Benjamin Titcomb and Thomas B. Wait introduced printing in the District of Maine, then part of Massachusetts, with the first issue of _The Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser_, dated January 1, 1785. Titcomb was a native of Falmouth, now Portland, who had gained his experience at Newburyport, and Wait was formerly employed at Boston.[36]
The Library of Congress possesses nine issues of _The Falmouth Gazette_ from this first year of printing in Maine. Of these the earliest is a partly mutilated copy of the second issue, dated January 8 and featuring a moralistic essay "On Entrance into Life, and the Conduct of early Manhood." This issue contains one piece of news, relayed from a Boston paper, that has importance for American printing history, namely, the arrival in this country from Ireland, "that land of gudgeons," of Mathew Carey, destined to become a leading printer and publisher at Philadelphia. Since the Library of Congress copy is inscribed "Mess^{rs} Adams & Nourse printers," it is interesting to note that one of the Falmouth news items was reprinted in their Boston paper, _The Independent Chronicle_, for January 20. Similarly, the Library's copy of the August 13 issue of the _Gazette_ is addressed in manuscript to the famous printer Isaiah Thomas at Worcester, and it retains his editorial markings for the reprinting of two sections--a news item and a poem on atheism--that subsequently appeared in the September 1 and September 8 issues of _Thomas's Massachusetts Spy; or, The Worcester Gazette_. It was largely by means of just such borrowing amongst themselves that most early American newspapers were put together. Four of the Library's nine issues, including the Isaiah Thomas copy, were purchased from Goodspeed's Book Shop for $13.50 in 1939. Four of the remaining five, including the very earliest, appear from their physical condition to have a common provenance. The five were listed initially in the 1936 edition of _A Checklist of American Eighteenth-Century Newspapers in the Library of Congress_.[37]
Kentucky The printing history of Kentucky begins with the August 11, 1787, issue of a Lexington newspaper, _The Kentucke Gazette_. John Bradford of Fauquier County, Va., established this paper in partnership with his younger brother, Fielding. They purchased their press at Philadelphia in the spring of 1787 and transported it to Lexington by way of Pittsburgh, where the first press to cross the Alleghenies had been active since the preceding summer.[38] The earliest Kentucky imprint in the Library of Congress is _The Kentucke Gazette_ for March 1, 1788. Like five other issues of the paper, available at the Library in facsimile, this original issue opens with "Extracts from the journals of a convention begun and held for the district of Kentucky at Danville in the county of Mercer on the 17th day of September 1787." The extracts are resolutions looking towards the separation of Kentucky from Virginia, and the following one accounts for their publication in this paper: [Resolved][39] That full opportunity may be given to the good people of exercising their right of suffrage on an occasion so interesting to them, each of the officers so holding elections, shall continue the same from day to day, for five days including the first day, and shall cause these resolutions to be read immediately preceeding the opening of the election at the door of the courthouse, or other convenient place; and that Mr. Bradford be requested to publish the same in his Kentucky Gazette, six weeks successively, immediately preceeding the time of holding said elections.
At a time for important decisions _The Kentucke Gazette_ served as a means of airing different opinions on statehood, independence, and constitutional questions. A long second portion of this March 1 issue is an essay on liberty and equality signed by "Republicus." Critical of certain sections of the proposed Federal Constitution, he opposes a bicameral legislature, fears undue influence of the Congress over State elections, and denounces any condoning of slavery. The remainder of the issue includes an announcement of the ice breaking up on the Ohio River, a report of an Indian raid, and an advertisement in this vein: "I have been told that a certain Jordan Harris asserted in a public and very positive manner, that I had acknowledged myself a liar and a scoundrel in a letter to maj. Crittenden." The writer, Humphrey Marshall, concludes that if said letter is published, "the public will then see who is the liar and the scoundrel." This early issue bears the name of the subscriber Richard Eastin, one of the first justices of the peace in Jefferson County.[40] The Library's only other examples of Kentucky printing from 1788 are eight additional issues of the _Gazette_, for November 8 through December 27, which have been detached from a bound volume and are still joined together. These belonged to Walter Carr, who was serving as a magistrate in Fayette County by 1792 and who in 1799 attended the convention to form the second constitution of Kentucky.[41] Nothing more can be ascertained about the acquisition of these holdings than that the March 1 issue is first listed in the 1912 edition and that the later issues are first listed in the 1936 edition of _A Checklist of American Eighteenth-Century Newspapers in the Library of Congress_.
Access of the proposed town to the Potomac River is the clue to why this broadside relating to an otherwise remote location in Pennsylvania should have been printed in this part of West Virginia. The _Charter_ is the third recorded West Virginia imprint apart from newspaper issues, and the Library of Congress has the only known copy. Written on the verso is: Col. Morr[----] And other early hands have written there, "Hopwoods deeds" and "no body will have his Lotts." At the Anderson Galleries sale of Americana held at New York on November 9, 1927, the presumed same copy of the _Charter_ was sold from the library of Arthur DeLisle, M.D. (1851-1925), librarian of the Advocates' Library in Montreal.[43] It fetched $11. The Library of Congress obtained it in October 1935 from the Aldine Book Shop in Brooklyn for $35. Tennessee The printers George Roulstone and Robert Ferguson introduced the first Tennessee printing at Hawkins Court House, now Rogersville, with the November 5, 1791, issue of _The Knoxville Gazette_. Both men came to the Tennessee country, or Southwest Territory, by way of North Carolina. Their newspaper remained at Hawkins Court House until October 1792, while Knoxville, chosen as the seat of the Territorial government, was being constructed. The earliest Tennessee imprint in the Library of Congress is probably the eight-page official publication entitled _Acts and Ordinances of the Governor and Judges, of the Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio_, which according to Douglas C. McMurtrie "was certainly printed by Roulstone at Knoxville in 1793, though it bears no imprint to this effect."[44] Its contents, relating principally to the definition of separate judicial districts within the Territory, are dated from June 11, 1792, to March 21, 1793, and the printing could have been accomplished soon after the latter date.
The Library of Congress copy is one of those afterwards prefixed to and issued with a much more extensive work printed by Roulstone in 1794: _Acts Passed at the First Session of the General Assembly of the Territory of the United States of America, South of the River Ohio, Began and Held at Knoxville, on Monday the Twenty-Fifth Day of August, M,DCC,XCIV_. The Library's volume lost its 1794 title page at an early date, and it is the exposed second leaf, the title page of 1793, that bears the inscription, "Theodorick Bland June 1st 1799." Theodorick Bland (1777-1846) was to be chancellor of Maryland for many years. His correspondence preserved by the Maryland Historical Society reveals that he practiced law in Tennessee from 1798 to 1801. From such evidence as its Library of Congress bookplate, the volume would appear to have entered the Library around the late 1870's. The earliest dated example of Tennessee printing in the Library is the _Knoxville Gazette_ for June 1, 1793, issued a month after Ferguson retired from the paper. The issue begins with a lengthy selection by Benjamin Franklin, which is prefaced in this way: Messrs. _Printers_, I beg you to publish in your next number of the Knoxville Gazette, the following extracts, from a narrative of the massacres in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania; of a number of friendly Indians, by persons unknown; written by the late Dr. _Benjamin Franklin_, whose many benevolent acts, will immortalize his memory, and published in a British Magazine,[45] in April 1764.
I am your obedient servant, W.B. The subscriber was undoubtedly William Blount, the Territorial Governor appointed by President Washington in 1790, who perhaps hoped that the sympathy towards Indians expressed by Franklin might temper public reaction against Indian raids figuring so large in the local news. Readers of the same June 1 issue learned of such crimes as the scalping of a child near Nashville, and they may have been moved by the following paragraph which the editor interjected in the news reports: The Creek nation must be destroyed, or the south western frontiers, from the mouth of St. Mary's to the western extremities of Kentucky and Virginia, will be incessantly harassed by them; and now is the time. [_Delenda est Carthago._][46] Both this issue and the June 15 issue, the sole Library of Congress holdings of the _Gazette_ for the year 1793, are inscribed "Claiborne Watkins, esq^r." They probably belonged to the person of that name residing in Washington County, Va., who served as a presidential elector in 1792.[47] Ohio William Maxwell of New York, after failing to establish himself at Lexington, Ky., moved on to Cincinnati in the Northwest Territory and thereby became the first Ohio printer. His work at Cincinnati began with the November 9, 1793, issue of his newspaper, _The Centinel of the North-Western Territory_.[48]
The earliest known Ohio book, also printed by Maxwell, is the earliest example of Ohio printing to be found at the Library of Congress: _Laws of the Territory of the United States North-West of the Ohio: Adopted and Made by the Governour and Judges, in Their Legislative Capacity, at a Session Begun on Friday, the XXIX Day of May, One Thousand, Seven Hundred and Ninety-Five, and Ending on Tuesday the Twenty-Fifth Day of August Following_.... Dated 1796, "Maxwell's Code," as this book is sometimes called, was not the first publication of Northwest Territory laws, others having been printed at Philadelphia in 1792 and 1794. The printer set forth a "Proposal" concerning the forthcoming work in the _Centinel_ of July 25, 1795: W. Maxwell being appointed by the legislature to print for them 200 copies of their laws, he thinks it would be greatly conducive towards the instruction and common benefit of all the citizens to extend the impression to 1000 copies.... The price, in boards, to subscribers, will be at the rate of nineteen cents for every 50 pages, and to non-subscribers, thirty cents.[49] He completed the volume in 225 pages, with numerous printed sidenotes that make it easy to consult. An incidental reference to printing occurs in a law for land partition (p. 185-197) which states that land proprietors "may subscribe a writing, and publish the same in one or more of the public News-papers printed in the Territory, in the State of Kentucky, and at the seat of government of the United States, for twelve successive weeks" in order to announce the appointment of commissioners to divide their property into lots. Subsequently, advertisements were to be placed in the newspapers for six weeks to announce a balloting or drawing for the subdivided lots.
The Library of Congress owns two copies of this Cincinnati imprint. One, lacking the title page and final leaf, is bound in a volume of unknown provenance, possibly obtained about 1912, containing four early editions of Northwest Territory laws. The other is a separate copy, lacking the last three leaves. This more interesting copy has two inscriptions on its title page, the words written uppermost posing some difficulty: "Ex Biblioth[eca] Sem[inari]i [----] S[anc]ti Sulp[icii] Baltimoriensis"; but they make clear that this copy once belonged to the Sulpician seminary founded at Baltimore in 1791 and now named St. Mary's Seminary. A number of similarly inscribed books still retained by the seminary were once part of a special faculty library that merged with the regular seminary library about 1880. Many books from the faculty library bear signatures of individual priests who were their original owners. Thus the second inscription "Dilhet" refers to Jean Dilhet (1753-1811), a Sulpician who spent nine years in this country and was assigned to the pastorate of Raisin River (then in the Northwest Territory, in what is now Monroe County, Mich.) from 1798 to 1804. During 1804 and 1805 he worked in Detroit with Father Richard, who later established a press there (see next section).[50] Its absence from the Library's early catalogs implies that the present copy was acquired sometime after 1875. Two date stamps indicate that the Library had it rebound twice, in 1904 and 1947.
Michigan In 1796 John McCall, the earliest printer active in Michigan, issued at Detroit a 16-page Act of Congress relating to Indian affairs. Apart from blank forms printed on the same press before its removal to Canada in 1800, no other specimens of Michigan printing survive antedating the press that Father Gabriel Richard, the influential Sulpician priest, established at Detroit in 1809. Entry number 2 in the _Preliminary Check List of Michigan Imprints 1796-1850_ (Detroit, 1942)[51] describes a 12-page publication said to exist in a unique copy at the Library of Congress: _To the Honourable the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States. Memorial of the citizens of the United States, situated north of an east and west line, extending thro' the southward bend of Lake Michigan, and by the Act of Congress of 30th April 1802 attached to, and made part of the Indiana Territory ..._ ([Detroit? 1802?]). This entry is, in bibliographical parlance, a ghost. Actually, the Library of Congress possesses the work only as a negative photostat of a manuscript document which is preserved at the National Archives.[52]
The earliest _bona fide_ Michigan imprint in the Library of Congress is _L'Ame penitente ou Le nouveau pensez-y-bien; consideration sur les ve'rite's eternelles, avec des histoires & des exemples ..._ printed at Detroit in 1809. The printer, James M. Miller, of Utica, N. Y., was the first of three operators of Father Richard's press. This particular imprint is the fourth item in a standard bibliography of the press, which calls it "the first book of more than 24 pages printed in Detroit or Michigan."[53] As a matter of fact, it is a very substantial work of 220 pages, albeit in a small duodecimo format. It is a reprint of a devotional book first published in France in the 18th century and attributed to a prolific Jesuit author, Barthélemy Baudrand (1701-87). As head of the Catholic Church in the area, Father Richard wanted to make such religious literature available to the largely French-speaking inhabitants. The Library of Congress copy of _L'Ame penitente_, in a speckled calf binding of uncertain date, was obtained through a 1954 exchange with Edward Eberstadt & Sons. It had been offered in one of the bookselling firm's catalogs earlier that year for $500.[54] Mississippi Mississippi's first printer was Andrew Marschalk of New York, an Army lieutenant stationed at Walnut Hills, close to the eventual site of Vicksburg.[55] There, probably in 1798, he attracted attention by printing a ballad on a small press he had acquired in London. At the request of Governor Winthrop Sargent, Marschalk undertook in 1799 to print the laws of Mississippi Territory, and for that purpose he built a larger press at Natchez. Late in 1799 a second printer, Ben M. Stokes, purchased this press from Marschalk and soon commenced a weekly paper, _The Mississippi Gazette_. On May 5, 1800, James Green, a printer from Baltimore, introduced a rival paper at Natchez, _Green's Impartial Observer_.
Of all the extraordinary performances I ever beheld, the late hand-bill, signed by eight members of our house of representatives, is the _most_ extraordinary--and I doubt not that it will be considered by the country at large as the legitimate offspring of the subscribers; being replete with that unauthorized assumption of power, and those round assertions so truly characteristic--propagated for the avowed purpose of 'undeceiving the people' in a matter of the first moment, and yet not containing one authenticated fact for them to found an opinion on--but resting all upon their mere _dictum_, penetrating into future events, and proclaiming what _shall be_ the decisions of legislators not yet elected. His argument against his opponents' cost estimates touches upon certain fundamental issues, such as the threat of an aristocratic rule if the stipend for legislators is indeed kept very low. Towards the end he notes an instance of intimidation: One thing more I would observe--a very threatening letter has been written to the printer denouncing vengeance on him, if he does not deliver up the author of "_the friend of the people_"--this I take to be an attempt to frighten and preclude further investigation, but it will be of little avail when the interests of my fellow citizens are so deeply concerned. That James Green, although not named, is the printer of this second broadside can be demonstrated by typographical comparison with the January 24 and February 21, 1801 issues of _Green's Impartial Observer_, available at the Library of Congress.
The two broadsides cited are the only copies recorded in Douglas C. McMurtrie's _A Bibliography of Mississippi Imprints 1798-1830_ (Beauvoir Community, Miss., 1945).[56] They bear manuscript notations, in an identical hand, that suggest use in an official archive; and the earlier broadside is stated to be "from M^r Banks, Nov^r 12^{th} 1800." Sutton Bankes, one of the eight signers, is presumably referred to here. The second broadside has, besides a brief caption in this hand, a more elegantly written address: "His Excellency Winthrop Sergent Bellemont." Bellemont was one of Governor Sargent's residences near Natchez. It is interesting that at the time Governor Sargent expressed himself privately on the earlier broadside as follows: They [the members of the House of Representatives] are undoubtedly the proper Guardians of their own honour and Conduct, but nevertheless, will not take it amiss, in a Communication intended only for themselves, that I should observe it has always been Considered derogatory to the Dignity of Public Bodies, to notice anonymous writings, in the style and Manner of the Hand Bills,--it opens a broad Avenue to Retort and Satire, with many other obvious and unpleasant Consequences.[57] [Footnote 55: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, _Pioneer Printing in Mississippi_ (Atlanta, 1932); and Charles S. Sydnor, "The Beginning of Printing in Mississippi," _The Journal of Southern History_, vol. 1, 1935, p. [49]-55.]
Indiana Elihu Stout, whose family moved from New Jersey to Kentucky in 1793, probably learned printing as an apprentice to Kentucky's first printer, John Bradford. He is known to have been in Bradford's employ at Lexington in 1798, and later he worked at Nashville. Invited by Governor William Henry Harrison to do the official printing for the Indiana Territory, Stout settled at Vincennes and began publishing his newspaper, the _Indiana Gazette_, on July 31, 1804.[58] The Library of Congress' Indiana holdings begin with a copy of the second known imprint excepting newspaper issues, printed by Stout late in 1804: _Laws for the Government of the District of Louisiana, Passed by the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory, at Their First Session, Uegun_ [sic] _and Held at Vincennes, on Monday the First Day of October, 1804_.[59] In March 1804 Congress had divided the lands of the Louisiana Purchase into two parts, the southern part becoming the Territory of Orleans (ultimately the State of Louisiana), the northern and larger part becoming the District of Louisiana. As explained in the preamble to the first law in this collection, "the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory [were] authorized by an act of Congress to make Laws for the District of Louisiana." They possessed this special authority from March 1804 until March 1805.
Fifteen laws make up the 136-page work. They are written in plain language, and the 10th, "Entitled a law, respecting Slaves," is a particularly engrossing social document. To illustrate, its second provision is That no slave shall go from the tenements of his master, or other person with whom he lives without a pass, or some letter or token, whereby it may appear that he is proceeding by authority from his master, employer or overseer, if he does it shall be lawful for any person to apprehend and carry him before a justice of the peace to be by his order punished with stripes, or not, in his discretion. A subsequent compilation of laws made after the District became the Territory of Louisiana is described on p. 45, below. The Library has handsomely rebound its copy in ruby morocco. Formerly it must have been in a wretched state, evidenced by the extreme marginal deterioration of its now laminated pages. It contains the signature of James Mackay (1759-1822), a Scottish fur trader, surveyor, and explorer who was later remembered at St. Louis as "the first English speaking white man who ever came west of the Mississippi river," and who was appointed "Commandant of the territory of Upper Louisiana" in 1803.[60] When the territory passed from Spanish to American rule in 1804, he became a judge of the Court of Quarter Sessions,[61] in which capacity he would have needed the volume of laws. The Library's copy is one of six unrelated volumes that were purchased together for $750 from the Statute Law Book Company of Washington, D.C., in 1905.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.