Chapter II: Part 2

Richard W. Edes, grandson of the Boston printer Benjamin Edes, reestablished printing at St. Augustine, issuing the first number of his weekly paper, the _Florida Gazette_, on the day of the transfer of Florida's administration, July 14, 1821. The Library of Congress holds 10 issues, constituting the best surviving file of this paper. The earliest Florida printing in the Library is the third issue, published July 28 and the earliest issue extant. This happens to be a very curious example of printing. Of its four pages the second is half blank and the third is totally blank, the following explanation being given:

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.]

[Footnote 35: See no. 36 in Thomas W. Streeter's _Americana--Beginnings_ (Morristown, N.J., 1952).]

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]

[Footnote 36: See R. Webb Noyes, _A Bibliography of Maine Imprints to 1820_ (Stonington, Maine, 1930), p. 7.]

[Footnote 37: The preface to this edition is dated June 1, 1935. A sixth issue of the _Gazette_ (March 5) listed here was later replaced by a better copy from the 1939 purchase.]

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_.

[Footnote 38: See J. Winston Coleman, Jr., _John Bradford, Esq._ (Lexington, Ky., 1950).]

[Footnote 39: Brackets in text.]

[Footnote 40: J. Stoddard Johnston, _Memorial History of Louisville_ (Chicago and New York [pref. 1896]), vol. 2, p. 3.]

[Footnote 41: C. R. Staples, _The History of Pioneer Lexington_ (Lexington, 1939), p. 78 and 151.]

West Virginia

Late in 1790 Nathaniel Willis, grandfather of the writer Nathaniel Parker Willis, established at Shepherdstown the first press within the present boundaries of West Virginia. For some years he had published _The Independent Chronicle_ at Boston, and earlier in 1790 he had been printing at Winchester, Va. At Shepherdstown Willis published _The Potowmac Guardian, and Berkeley Advertiser_ from November 1790 at least through December 1791.[42] By April 1792 he had moved to Martinsburg, where he continued publishing his newspaper under the same title.

The earliest example of West Virginia printing in the Library of Congress is a broadside printed at Martinsburg in 1792. Entitled _Charter of the Town of Woodstock_ [Pa.], it consists of the printed text of a legal document in the name of one John Hopwood and dated November 8, 1791. The preamble of the document reveals its nature:

Whereas I John Hopwood, of Fayette-County, and Commonwealth
of _Pennsylvania_, have surveyed and laid out into
convenient lots or parcels, for the purpose of erecting
a Town thereon, the quantity of two hundred acres of
land, being part of the tract of land on which I now
live, situate in Union Township, and County aforesaid,
on the great road leading from the Town of Union to Fort
Cumberland, on the River Potowmack; and for the purpose
of encouraging the settlement, growth, and prosperity of
the said Town, as laid out agreeable to a plan and survey
thereof, hereunto annexed and recorded, together with this
instrument of writing, have determined to grant and confirm
to all persons, who shall purchase or become proprietors
of any lot or lots in the said Town, and to their heirs
and assigns, certain privileges, benefits, and advantages
herein after expressed and specified....

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.

[Footnote 42: The latest extant Shepherdstown issue of _The Potowmac Guardian_, for December 27, 1791, is reported in Clarence S. Brigham, _Additions and Corrections to History and Bibliography of American Newspapers 1690-1820_ (Worcester, Mass., 1961), p. 50.]

[Footnote 43: According to his obituary in the Montreal newspaper _La Presse_, December 22, 1925, Arthur DeLisle obtained a degree in medicine but never practiced that profession. "M. DeLisle s'intéressait vivement à toutes les choses de l'histoire et, par des recherches patientes et continues il fit de la bibliothèque du Barreau ce qu'elle est aujourd'hui, l'enrichissant sans cesse de livres et de documents précieux relatifs à l'histoire du droit, ainsi qu'à la biographie des juges et des avocats de Montréal depuis 1828."]

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]

[Footnote 44: _Early Printing in Tennessee_ (Chicago, 1933), p. 21.]

[Footnote 45: _The Gentleman's Magazine._ Franklin's _A Narrative of the Late Massacres_ was published separately at Philadelphia in the same year.]

[Footnote 46: Brackets in text. Several issues carried this paragraph. See William Rule, ed. _Standard History of Knoxville, Tennessee_ (Chicago, 1900), p. 74.]

[Footnote 47: See _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, vol. 6 (1886), p. 140.]

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.

[Footnote 48: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, _Pioneer Printing in Ohio_ (Cincinnati, 1943).]

[Footnote 49: Quoted from Historical Records Survey, American Imprints Inventory, no. 17, _A Check List of Ohio Imprints 1796-1820_ (Columbus, 1941), p. 21.]

[Footnote 50: See the short biography of Dilhet in the preface to his _Etat de l'église catholique ou Diocèse des Etats-Unis de l'Amérique septentrionale.... Translated and annotated by Rev. P. W. Browne_ (Washington, D.C., 1922).]

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]

[Footnote 51: Historical Records Survey, American Imprints Inventory, no. 52.]

[Footnote 52: The original is in Record Group 46 at the National Archives; the Library's photostat is in the Manuscript Division. The imaginary imprint recurs as no. 3168 in _American Bibliography, a Preliminary Checklist for 1802_, comp. by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker (New York, 1958).]

[Footnote 53: A. H. Greenly, _A Bibliography of Father Richard's Press in Detroit_ (Ann Arbor, 1955).]

[Footnote 54: Catalogue 134, no. 392. Two years later the same firm offered another copy for $750, in its Catalogue 138, no. 428.]

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_.

The Library of Congress earliest Mississippi imprint was designed to controvert remarks by "The Friend of the People" in _Green's Impartial Observer_ for November 1, 1800. It is a small broadside "From the Office of J. Green" that would seem to corroborate the printer's impartiality, at least in this particular dispute. Captioned "To the Public," dated November 8, 1800, and signed by eight members of the new Territorial House of Representatives, it refers to "an exaggerated estimate of the supposed expence attending the second grade of Government"; and it continues, "We therefore consider it our duty to counteract the nefarious and factious designs of the persons concerned" in the anonymous article. Mississippi's second grade of Territorial government had come about in 1800 with the creation of a legislature to enact the laws, theretofore enacted by the Governor and three judges. The authors of this broadside itemize the maximum annual expenses for operating the legislature, concluding with a comparison of the total estimates: their $2,870 as opposed to the $15,050 of "The Friend of the People."

In addition the Library of Congress has a lengthy rebuttal to the November 8 statement on a broadside also captioned "To the Public," dated at Natchez "November 15th, 1809" (a misprint for 1800), and signed "The Friend of the People." The writer begins:

Fellow-Citizens,

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.]

[Footnote 56: Nos. 11 and 12.]

[Footnote 57: From letter dated November 12, 1800, in _The Mississippi Territorial Archives_, compiled and edited by Dunbar Rowland, vol. 1 (1905), p. 301-302.]

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.

[Footnote 58: See V. C. (H.) Knerr, _Elihu Stout, Indiana's First Printer_ (ACRL microcard series, no. 48; Rochester, N.Y., 1955).]

[Footnote 59: No. 2 in C. K. Byrd and H. H. Peckham, _A Bibliography of Indiana Imprints 1804-1853_ (Indianapolis, 1955).]

[Footnote 60: W. S. Bryan and Robert Rose, _A History of the Pioneer Families of Missouri_ (St. Louis, 1876), p. 173-174.]

[Footnote 61: _Missouri Historical Society Collections_, vol. 4, no. 1 (1912), p. 20.]

Alabama

The earliest extant Alabama imprint is thought to be _The Declaration of the American Citizens on the Mobile, with Relation to the British Aggressions. September, 1807_, which was printed "on the Mobile" at an unspecified date. No one has yet identified the printer of this five-page statement inspired by the _Chesapeake-Leopard_ naval engagement. The next surviving evidence is a bail bond form dated February 24, 1811, and printed at St. Stephens by P. J. Forster, who is reported to have worked previously at Philadelphia.[62]

A second St. Stephens printer, Thomas Eastin, founded a newspaper called _The Halcyon_ sometime in 1815, after Alabama newspapers had already appeared at Fort Stoddert (1811), Huntsville (1812), and Mobile (1813). Eastin had formerly worked at Nashville, at Alexandria, La., and at Natchez in association with Mississippi's first printer, Andrew Marschalk.[63] His work at St. Stephens included a 16-page pamphlet, which is among the three or four earliest Alabama imprints other than newspaper issues[64] and is the first specimen of Alabama printing in the Library of Congress. Headed "To the Citizens of Jackson County," it is signed by Joseph P. Kennedy and has on its final page the imprint, "St. Stephens (M.T.) Printed by Tho. Eastin. 1815." Here "M.T." denotes the Mississippi Territory, which in 1817 divided into the Alabama Territory and the State of Mississippi. St. Stephens was an early county seat of Washington County, now part of Alabama, whereas Jackson County, to whose inhabitants the author addresses himself, lies within the present Mississippi borders.

Joseph Pulaski Kennedy wrote this pamphlet after an election in which he ran unsuccessfully against William Crawford of Alabama to represent Jackson County in the Territorial legislature.[65] His stated purpose is to refute "malicious falsehoods ... industriously circulated" against him before the election, foremost among them the charge that but for him Mobile Point "would never have been retaken"; and he summarizes his actions as an officer "in the command of the Choctaws of the United States" during the dangerous final stage of the War of 1812 when the town of Mobile nearly fell into British hands.

The only recorded copy of this little-known pamphlet is inscribed to "James Madison President of the U States." It owes its preservation to its inclusion among the Madison Papers in possession of the Library of Congress.[66]

[Footnote 62: Copies of both imprints are described under nos. 1548 and 1549 in _The Celebrated Collection of Americana Formed by the Late Thomas Winthrop Streeter_ (New York, 1966-69), vol. 3. _The Declaration_ was reprinted in _The Magazine of History, with Notes and Queries_, extra no. 8 (1925), p. [45]-55.]

[Footnote 63: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, _A Brief History of the First Printing in the State of Alabama_ (Birmingham, 1931), p. 6.]

[Footnote 64: No. 4 in Historical Records Survey. American Imprints Inventory, no. 8, _Check List of Alabama Imprints, 1807-1840_ (Birmingham, 1939); no. 3 in the section, "Books, Pamphlets, etc." in R. C. Ellison, _A Check List of Alabama Imprints 1807-1870_ (University, Ala., 1946).]

[Footnote 65: See Cyril E. Cain, _Four Centuries on the Pascagoula_ ([State College? Miss., 1953-62]), vol. 2, p. 8-9 (naming Crawford only).]

[Footnote 66: It is in vol. 78, leaf 22. This volume, containing printed material only, is in the Rare Book Division.]

Missouri

Joseph Charless, with a background of printing experience in his native Ireland, in Pennsylvania, and in Kentucky, became the first man to establish a printing press west of the Mississippi River. Meriwether Lewis, Governor of the Territory of Louisiana, was instrumental in bringing Charless to St. Louis, the Territorial capital, and there the printer launched his weekly newspaper, the _Missouri Gazette_, on July 12, 1808.[67] His awareness of his place in history is demonstrated by a copy of _Charless' Missouri & Illinois Almanac, for 1818_, printed in 1817, which the State Department Library transferred to the Library of Congress in August 1962. It is inscribed: "A tribute of respect from the first Press that ever crossed the Mississippi."[68]

The earliest example of Missouri printing in the Library of Congress is _The Laws of the Territory of Louisiana. Comprising All Those Which Are Now in Force Within the Same_, printed at St. Louis by Charless with the imprint date 1808. Besides newspaper issues this was long thought to be the first Missouri imprint. A document of April 29, 1809, appearing on p. 373 proves that it was not completed until after that date, however, and recent authorities have relegated it to second or third place in terms of publication date.[69]

Consisting of 376 numbered pages with a 58-page index, the book is a compilation of the laws of 1804 and 1806-08. Those of 1804 carry over from the compilation for the District of Louisiana, which is the Library's earliest Indiana imprint, and the same law on slavery quoted on p. 41, above, is among those reprinted. Typical of the later laws is "An Act Concerning Strays," from which the following section is presented for its incidental reference to printing:

Sec. 4. Every person taking up a stray horse, mare or
colt, shall within two months after the same is appraised,
provided the owner shall not have claimed his property
during that time, transmit to the printer of some public
newspaper printed within this territory, a particular
description of such stray or strays and the appraisment
thereof, together with the district and place of residence
certified by the clerk, or by the justice before whom such
stray was appraised, to be inserted in such paper three
weeks succesively, for the advertising of which the printer
shall receive his usual and stated price for inserting
advertisements in his newspaper.

In 1809 the _Missouri Gazette_ was still the only newspaper available to print these advertisements.

The Library of Congress must have obtained its copy of this book during the final quarter of the 19th century, when the "Law Department" stamp on the title page was in use.

[Footnote 67: See David Kaser, _Joseph Charless, Printer in the Western Country_ (Philadelphia [1963]). A printed form, surviving in a copy dated in manuscript July 8, 1808, may have been printed by Charless at St. Louis; see no. 1836 in _The Celebrated Collection of Americana Formed by the Late Thomas Winthrop Streeter_ (New York, 1966-69), vol. 3.]

[Footnote 68: See U.S. Library of Congress, _Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions_, vol. 20 (1962-63), p. 199 and plate facing p. 197.]

[Footnote 69: See Kaser, _Joseph Charless_, p. 71-74; V. A. Perotti, _Important Firsts in Missouri Imprints, 1808-1858_ (Kansas City, 1967), p. 1-4.]

Texas

Aaron Mower of Philadelphia set the type for volume 1, number 1, of the _Gaceta de Texas_, dated "Nacogdoches, 25 de Mayo, de 1813," which is preserved at the National Archives and is the earliest evidence of printing activity in Texas. A political dispute forced the removal of Mower's press and type from Nacogdoches to Natchitoches, in Louisiana, where this Spanish-language newspaper was actually printed and issued.[70] Other transient presses operated briefly at Galveston in 1817, at Nacogdoches in 1819, and at San Antonio de Bexar in 1823.[71]

The permanent establishment of Texas printing dates from September 1829, when Godwin B. Cotten introduced a press at San Felipe and founded the _Texas Gazette_. In March 1832 he relocated at Brazoria. D. W. Anthony purchased both the press and the paper in the summer of 1832, and until July 1833 he continued to publish the paper at Brazoria under a new name, _The Constitutional Advocate and Texas Public Advertiser_.

The earliest Texas printing in the Library of Congress is the number of the paper dated June 15, 1833, which offers news only from the United States and from overseas. "From the City of Mexico," writes Anthony, "we have heard nothing this week, except mere disjointed rumors from the interior. By the arrival of the next mail at San Felipe, we may reasonably expect that some certain intelligence will be received, of what the legislatures have done." Gathering news was one problem; he reveals another in the following paragraph:

We are glad to be able at length, to present the ADVOCATE
to our readers, on a sheet of its accustomed size. We
stated before, that its being diminished two columns
lately, was the consequence of a mistake made by our
merchant in filling our order for paper. We now have an
ample supply, and of excellent quality, so that we shall
have no more apologies to offer on that score. These
things, however, cost money, and that in hand, which we
hope our good friends will not altogether forget.

Among the advertisements is the usual "JOB PRINTING DONE AT THIS OFFICE" and also an announcement of the "CONSTITUTION OF TEXAS, With or without the Memorial, For Sale at this Office and at the stores of W. C. White, San Felipe: David Ayres, Montville: and T. W. Moore, Harrisburg." Anthony printed these historic documents shortly after the Texas convention held at San Felipe in April, and the _Advocate_ began to carry this advertisement on May 11, 1833.[72]

The Library's copy of the four-page newspaper has been removed from a bound volume. Since it is inscribed "Intelligencer, W. C.," it was obviously sent to the office of the _National Intelligencer_ at Washington City, as the capital was then called. It is slightly mutilated: an item has been cut from an outer column, affecting the third and fourth pages. There is no record of the issue in _A Check List of American Newspapers in the Library of Congress_ (1901), but its location does appear in the union list, _American Newspapers 1821-1936_ (1937).

[Footnote 70: See Clarence S. Brigham, _History and Bibliography of American Newspapers 1690-1820_ (Worcester, 1947), p. [1069].]

[Footnote 71: A reliable survey of early Texas printing is in Thomas W. Streeter's _Bibliography of Texas 1795-1845_ (Cambridge [Mass.] 1955-60), pt. 1, vol. 1, p. xxxi-lxi.]

[Footnote 72: See nos. 40 and 41 in Streeter's _Bibliography of Texas_.]

Illinois

Illinois' first printing took place at Kaskaskia, the no longer existent Territorial capital. In 1814 Governor Ninian Edwards induced the Kentucky printer Matthew Duncan to settle there, and probably in May of that year Duncan founded a weekly newspaper, _The Illinois Herald_.

The earliest Illinois imprint in the Library of Congress, listed as number 4 in Cecil K. Byrd's definitive bibliography, is _Laws of the Territory of Illinois, Revised and Digested under the Authority of the Legislature. By Nathaniel Pope_, published by Duncan in two volumes dated June 2 and July 4, 1815. Nathaniel Pope (1784-1850), who prepared this earliest digest of Illinois statutes, went to Kaskaskia upon being appointed secretary of the newly authorized Illinois Territory and did important organizational work there in the spring of 1809 before Governor Edwards' arrival. On December 24, 1814, the legislature decreed that Pope should receive $300 "for revising the laws of this Territory making an index to the same, and superintending the printing thereof."[73] The work he produced was to a large extent based on an 1807 revision of the laws of the Indiana Territory, from which Illinois had recently been separated.[74]

Even though it paid him for his labor and authorized printing, the Illinois Legislature never enacted Pope's digest into law. Nevertheless, the work had a certain importance, as explained by its 20th-century editor, Francis S. Philbrick:

"The first thing that anyone will notice who opens
this volume is that Pope began the practice of
topical-alphabetical arrangement to which the lawyers of
Illinois have now been accustomed for more than a hundred
years. At the time of its appearance the work's importance
was increased by the fact that it collected, so far as
deemed consistent and still in force, the laws of 1812,
1813, and 1814. These enactments--though presumably all
accessible in manuscript, for a time, at the county seats,
and in many newspapers--had not all appeared in book form;
nor did they so appear until fifteen years ago [i. e., in
1920-21]."[75]

The Library of Congress set of two rebound volumes is seriously imperfect, with numerous missing leaves replaced in facsimile. The volumes were purchased in June 1902 from the Statute Law Book Company in Washington together with a volume of Illinois session laws of 1817-18 for a combined price of $225.

[Footnote 73: See _Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library_, vol. 25, 1950, p. 178.]

[Footnote 74: Ibid., vol. 28, 1938, p. xviii.]

[Footnote 75: Ibid., p. xxi.]

Arkansas

William E. Woodruff, the first Arkansas printer, was a Long Islander who served his apprenticeship at Sag Harbor with Alden Spooner, nephew of the early Vermont printer of that name. Woodruff transported printing equipment purchased at Franklin, Tenn., to the Post of Arkansas, and there, on November 20, 1819, he began to publish _The Arkansas Gazette_. He later moved his press to Little Rock, where the newspaper has continued to the present day.[76]

In his _History and Bibliography of American Newspapers 1690-1820_ (Worcester, Mass., 1947) Clarence S. Brigham locates the only complete file of early issues of the _Gazette_ at the Library of Congress. It must be reported here, regretfully, that the Library released these along with later issues for exchange in July 1953 as part of a space-saving operation, after making microfilm copies for retention. Subsequently the same file, extending from 1819 to 1875, was described at length under item 649 in Edward Eberstadt and Sons' Catalog 134 (Americana) issued in 1954.

Two copies of the first book published in Arkansas, printed by Woodruff at the Post of Arkansas and dated 1821, now share the distinction of being the earliest specimens of Arkansas printing in the Library. The fact that Arkansas officially separated from the Missouri Territory in July 1819 helps to explain the title of this book: _Laws of the Territory of Arkansas: Comprising the Organic Laws of the Territories of Missouri and Arkansas, with the Amendments and Supplements Annexed; All Laws of a General Nature Passed by the General Assembly of the Territory of Missouri, at the Session Held in 1818; Together with the Laws Passed by the General Assembly of the Territory of Arkansas, at the Sessions in 1819 and 1820_.

In the initial issue of the _Gazette_ Woodruff claimed to have established his press entirely at his own expense. His imprint on these _Laws_ discloses his eventual employment as official "printer to the Territory," and among the resolutions of the new general assembly to be found in this volume is that of April 1, 1820, appointing Woodruff to the position. A resolution of the assembly, approved October 25, 1820, directs how official documents printed by him were to be distributed:

RESOLVED ... That the governor be, and he is hereby,
authorized to have printed in pamphlet form, a sufficient
number of copies of the laws of the present general
assembly, and all laws of a general nature passed by the
general assembly of Missouri, in eighteen hundred and
nineteen, and also the laws passed by the governor and
judges of this territory, which have not been repealed
by this general assembly; and to distribute such laws on
application of those entitled to copies, in the manner
herein-after provided, to wit: To the governor and
secretary each one copy; to the judges of circuit and
county courts, to the clerk of superior court, to the
sheriff of each county, to every justice of the peace, to
every constable, to the prosecuting attorney in behalf of
the United States, and circuit or county court prosecuting
attornies, to the territorial auditor, to the territorial
treasurer, to the coroner of each county, to every member
of the general assembly, each one copy: _Provided_, it
shall be the duty of every officer, on his or their going
out of office, to deliver the copy of the laws with
[which][77] he shall have been furnished, in pursuance of
this resolution, to his successor in office.

_Resolved also_, That a sufficient number of copies shall
be sent, by order of the governor, to the care of the
several clerks of each county, in this territory, whose
duty it shall be to distribute one copy to every officer or
person allowed one in the foregoing part of this resolution.

_Resolved also_, That the governor be, and he is hereby,
authorized to draw on the territorial treasurer for the
amount of expenses arising thereon, which are not otherwise
provided for by law.

The two copies in possession of the Library of Congress carry no marks of previous ownership. One was recorded in the _Catalogue of Additions to the Library of Congress Since December, 1833_, dated December 1, 1834.[78] Whether this was the copy which retains a late 19th-century bookplate or the copy which the Library had rebound in 1914 is uncertain.

[Footnote 76: See _Wilderness to Statehood with William E. Woodruff_ (Eureka Springs, Ark., 1961); Rollo G. Silver, _The American Printer 1787-1825_ (Charlottesville, 1967), p. 140.]

[Footnote 77: Brackets in text.]

[Footnote 78: Page 12 (combined entry: "Laws of Arkansas, &c., &c., 1818 to 1821, 1823, and 1825").]

Hawaii

Hawaii's first printer was a young American named Elisha Loomis, previously employed as a printer's apprentice at Canandaigua, N.Y. He arrived at Hawaii with a group of Boston missionaries in 1820; but use of the printing press that he brought with him had to be delayed owing to the lack of a written Hawaiian language, which the missionaries proceeded to devise. At a special ceremony held at Honolulu on January 7, 1822, a few copies of the earliest Hawaiian imprint were struck off: a broadside captioned "Lesson I." Its text was afterwards incorporated in a printed primer of the Hawaiian language.[79]

Loomis printed 500 copies of the primer in January, and in September 1822 he printed 2,000 copies of a second edition. The latter edition is the fifth recorded Hawaiian imprint,[80] as well as the earliest to be found among the Library of Congress holdings. In 16 pages, without a title page or an imprint statement, it opens with a section headed "THE ALPHABET" and includes lists of syllables, lists of words, and elementary Hawaiian readings of a religious character consistent with their missionary purpose.

The Library's copy is shelved in a special Hawaiiana Collection in the Rare Book Division. Bound with it is another rare primer in only four pages, captioned "KA BE-A-BA," which Loomis printed in 1824.[81] The small volume is in a black, half leather binding, with an old Library of Congress bookplate marked "Smithsonian Deposit." Since the final text page is date-stamped "1 Aug., 1858," the volume was probably received or bound by the Smithsonian Institution in that year. The Smithsonian transferred most of its book collection to the Library of Congress in 1866-67 and has continued to deposit in the Library quantities of material which it receives largely in exchange for its own publications. The Hawaiian rarities in this particular volume were cataloged at the Library in 1918.

[Footnote 79: See T. M. Spaulding, "The First Printing in Hawaii," _The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America_, vol. 50, 1956, p. 313-327; R. E. Lingenfelter, _Presses of the Pacific Islands 1817-1867_ (Los Angeles, 1967), p. 33-44.]

[Footnote 80: See H. R. Ballou and G. R. Carter, "The History of the Hawaiian Mission Press, with a Bibliography of the Earlier Publications," _Papers of the Hawaiian Historical Society_, no. 14, 1908, p. [9]-44.]

[Footnote 81: The penciled note on p. [1], "Second Ed. Spelling Book," would appear to identify it with no. 10 in the Ballou and Carter bibliography.]

Wisconsin

"With a handful of brevier and an ounce or two of printer's ink"--as he later recollected--Wisconsin's first printer managed to produce 1,000 lottery tickets at Navarino, now the city of Green Bay, in 1827. The printer was Albert G. Ellis, who had previously worked as an apprentice at Herkimer, N.Y. He could not undertake regular printing at Navarino before obtaining a printing press in 1833; then, in partnership with another young New Yorker named John V. Suydam, he began to publish the _Green-Bay Intelligencer_.[82]

The first issue of this newspaper, dated December 11, 1833, is the oldest example of Wisconsin printing known to survive, and it is represented in the Library of Congress collections. Neatly printed in fine type on a small sheet, the four-page issue shows professional competence. The publishers apologize for the type they use and for the necessity, owing to limited patronage, of commencing the _Intelligencer_ on a semimonthly basis. Their front page features an Indian story entitled "The Red Head," chosen from some "fabulous tales ... politely furnished us by a gentleman of this place, who received them from the mouths of the native narrators." Inclusion of the story accords with a stated editorial policy of giving faithful descriptions of the character and manners of the natives. Some articles in this issue concern proposed improvements on the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers that would open navigation between Green Bay and the upper Mississippi. And the question where to locate the capital of an anticipated Territory of Wisconsin is another topic of the day. The Territory was not actually created until 1836.

Aside from its obviously having been detached from a bound volume, there is no visible evidence of the Library of Congress copy's past history. It does not figure in _A Check List of American Newspapers in the Library of Congress_ (Washington, 1901); but it is registered in the union list, _American Newspapers 1821-1936_ (New York, 1937).