PIONEER
IMPRINTS
FROM FIFTY STATES

by Roger J. Trienens

Descriptive Cataloging Division, Processing Department

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
WASHINGTON
1973

Cover: A standard tray (case) of type. Frequency of a letter's use determined the size and position of the letter compartment.

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 20402.—Price $4.25
Stock Number 3000-0059

Preface

Pioneer Imprints From Fifty States will enable readers to view the Library of Congress collections from an unaccustomed angle. It takes for its subject the Library's earliest examples of printing from within present-day boundaries of each State in the Union, providing for each in turn 1) a brief statement about the origin of printing; 2) identification of the Library's earliest examples—among them broadsides, newspapers, individual laws, almanacs, primers, and longer works; and 3) information, if available, about the provenance of these rarities.

Each of the 50 sections may be consulted independently. To those who read it through, however, Pioneer Imprints will give some idea of the movement of printers and presses across the Nation, as well as insight into the nature and history of the Library's holdings.

The author wishes to express his indebtedness to Frederick R. Goff, Chief of the Library of Congress Rare Book Division from 1945 to 1972, who has been constantly helpful and encouraging; to Thomas R. Adams, Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I., who read the first 13 sections before their publication under the title "The Library's Earliest Colonial Imprints" in the Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress for July 1967; and to Marcus A. McCorison, Director and Librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., who read the manuscript of the later sections. These scholars cannot, of course, be held responsible for any errors or faults in this bibliographical investigation. The author's indebtedness to printed sources is revealed to some extent by notes appearing at the end of each section. He is obliged for much of his information to the staffs of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as to the following correspondents: Alfred L. Bush, Curator, Princeton Collections of Western Americana, Princeton University Library; G. Glenn Clift, Assistant Director, Kentucky Historical Society; James H. Dowdy, Archivist, St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore; Caroline Dunn, Librarian, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indianapolis; Joyce Eakin, Librarian, U.S. Army Military History Research Collection, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.; Arthur Perrault, Librarian, Advocates' Library, Montreal; P. W. Filby, Librarian, Maryland Historical Society; Lilla M. Hawes, Director, Georgia Historical Society; Earl E. Olson, Assistant Church Historian, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City; and Frank S. Richards, Piedmont, Calif.

Contents

PIONEER
IMPRINTS

The Lapwai press, brought to Idaho in 1839 to produce the first book printed in the Northwest—an Indian primer. Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society.
See page 63.

[Pg 1]

Massachusetts

Stephen Daye, the first printer of English-speaking North America, established his press at Cambridge late in 1638 or early in 1639 and printed the famed Bay Psalm Book there in 1640. This volume of 295 pages is the first substantial book and the earliest extant example of printing from what is now the United States. Mrs. Adrian Van Sinderen of Washington, Conn., deposited an original copy of the Bay Psalm Book in the Library of Congress at a formal ceremony held in the Librarian's Office on May 2, 1966. Mrs. Van Sinderen retained ownership of the book during her lifetime; it became the Library's property upon her death, April 29, 1968.

The book is properly entitled The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre. Of 11 extant copies this was the last in private hands, and it filled the most serious single gap in the Library's collection of early American printing. It is an imperfect copy, lacking its title page and 18 leaves. Bound in calfskin, it is one of the five copies in an original binding.

Zoltán Haraszti's authoritative study The Enigma of the Bay Psalm Book (Chicago, 1956) includes information about all the surviving copies. Mrs. Van Sinderen's copy was one of five that were collected by scholarly Thomas Prince of Boston (1687-1758), who bequeathed his extensive library to Old South Church. It was from the church that the Cambridge wool merchant and Bible collector George Livermore obtained it in 1849. By an exchange agreement between Livermore and the prominent bookseller Henry Stevens, 12 leaves were removed from the volume to complete another copy, which Stevens sold to James Lenox in 1855 and which now belongs to the New York Public Library. Livermore's collection, deposited at Harvard after his death, was auctioned in 1894 in Boston, his Bay Psalm Book realizing $425 and going to Mrs. Van Sinderen's father, Alfred Tredway White of Brooklyn.

(Richard Mather's The Summe of Certain Sermons upon Genes: 15.6, printed at Cambridge in 1652)

Before 1966 the earliest Massachusetts imprint, as well as the earliest imprint of the Nation, in the Library was Richard Mather's The Summe of Certain Sermons upon Genes: 15.6, printed at Cambridge in 1652. Its author was the progenitor of the powerful Mather family of New England divines, and he was among the translators contributing to the Bay Psalm Book. Its printer, Samuel Green, operated the first Massachusetts printing press after Stephen Daye's son Matthew died in 1649, Stephen having retired from the press[Pg 2] in 1647. Mather's book contains his revised notes for sermons preached at Dorchester.

(Bay Psalm Book)

The Library of Congress copy—one of four extant—is inscribed by an early hand, "James Blake his Booke." In the mid-19th century this copy apparently came into the possession of Henry Stevens, whereupon it was bound in full morocco by Francis Bedford at London; and it presumably belonged to the extensive collection of Mather family books that Stevens sold in 1866 to George Brinley, of Hartford, Conn.[1] The Library of Congress obtained the volume with a $90 bid at the first sale of Brinley's great library of Americana, held at New York in March 1879.

[Pg 3]

Virginia

(A Collection of All the Acts of Assembly Now in Force, in the Colony of Virginia (1733) printed by William Parks)

A press that William Nuthead started at Jamestown in 1682 was quickly suppressed, and nothing of its output has survived. It was William Parks who established at Williamsburg in 1730 Virginia's first permanent press. Here Parks issued the earliest Virginia imprint now represented in the Library of Congress: A Collection of All the Acts of Assembly Now in Force, in the Colony of Virginia (1733). Printing of this book may have begun as early as 1730. In a monograph on William Parks, Lawrence C. Wroth cites evidence "in the form of a passage from Markland's Typographia, which indicates that its printing was one of the first things undertaken after Parks had set up his Williamsburg press."[2]

Two Library of Congress copies of this imposing folio—one of them seriously defective—are housed in the Law Library; while yet another copy, which is especially prized, is kept with the Jefferson Collection in the Rare Book Division since it belonged to the library which Thomas Jefferson sold to the Congress in 1815.[3] The 1815 bookplate of the Library of Congress is preserved in this rebound copy, and Jefferson's secret mark of ownership can be seen—his addition of his other initial to printed signatures I and T. A previous owner wrote "Robert [?] Lewis law Book" on a flyleaf at the end, following later acts bound into the volume and extending through the year 1742. He may well have been the same Robert Lewis (1702-65) who served in the House of Burgesses from 1744 to 1746.[4]

The Library possesses the only known copy of another early Virginia imprint bearing the same date: Charles Leslie's A Short and Easy Method with the Deists. The Fifth Edition.... Printed and sold by William Parks, at his Printing-Offices, in Williamsburg and Annapolis, 1733. Inasmuch as an advertisement for this publication in the Maryland Gazette for May 17-24, 1734, is headed "Lately Publish'd," it was most likely printed early in 1734 but dated old style, and so it probably followed the publication of the Acts of Assembly. The Library purchased the unique copy for $8 at the second Brinley sale, held in March 1880.

[Pg 4]

Maryland

After departing from Virginia, William Nuthead set up the first Maryland press at St. Mary's City sometime before August 31, 1685. This press continued in operation until a few years after Nuthead's widow removed it to Annapolis about 1695; yet nothing more survives from it than a single broadside and some printed blank forms.

In 1700 Thomas Reading began to operate a second press at Annapolis, and his output in that year included a collection of laws which is the earliest Maryland imprint now represented in the Library of Congress. Since the Library's is the only extant copy, it is particularly regrettable that its title page and considerable portions of the text are lacking. Catalogers have supplied it with the title: A Complete Body of the Laws of Maryland.[5]

The copy was formerly in the possession of the lawyer and diplomat John Bozman Kerr (1809-78). It might not have survived to this day were it not for his awareness of its importance, as shown in his flyleaf inscription:

William Bladen, to whom the book is dedicated, was then clerk of the Upper House and had been instrumental in bringing Thomas Reading to Maryland. In fact, the records indicate that he assumed the role of publisher. If John Bozman Kerr had had access to the proceedings of the Lower House for the year 1700, he would have been most interested to find there Bladen's written proposal:

This was approved on May 9.[6] The printing was not wholly satisfactory, for on May 17 of the next year an errata list was ordered printed.[7]

John Bozman Kerr, from Genealogical Notes of the Chamberlaine Family of Maryland (Baltimore, 1880).

[Pg 5]

Pennsylvania

Like William Nuthead, William Bradford introduced printing in more than one Colony, and he began his American career by establishing the first Pennsylvania press at Philadelphia in 1685. Here that same year he printed Good Order Established in Pennsilvania & New-Jersey in America, the earliest Pennsylvania imprint in the Library of Congress and the second known example of Bradford's press. The author, Thomas Budd, was a successful Quaker immigrant, who settled first at Burlington, N.J., and later at Philadelphia. He intended his description of the two Colonies to stimulate further immigration, and he printed this statement on the title page verso:

Because neither place nor printer is named in the book, it was long thought to have been printed at London, but typographical comparisons made during the latter part of the 19th century demonstrated conclusively that it issued from William Bradford's press.

The 19th-century bookseller Henry Stevens.

The Library of Congress copy was bound at London by William Pratt for the bookseller Henry Stevens. F. J. Shepard traces this much of its later provenance in his introduction to a reprint issued in Cleveland in 1902:

The copy was among several Americana from the library of C. H. Chubbock, a Boston collector,[9] which were sold at auction by C. F. Libbie & Co. on February 23 and 24, 1904, the Library of Congress obtaining it for $600.

[Pg 6]

New York

William Bradford moved from Pennsylvania to New York in the spring of 1693, but what was the first product of his New York press has not been established.[10] The Library of Congress owns two Bradford imprints from this period, neither containing any indication of the place of publication. Nevertheless, both are listed in Wilberforce Eames' bibliography of early New York imprints.[11] One of them, entitled New-England's Spirit of Persecution Transmitted to Pennsilvania, and the Pretended Quaker Found Persecuting the True Christian-Quaker, in the Tryal of Peter Boss, George Keith, Thomas Budd, and William Bradford, at the Sessions Held at Philadelphia the Nineth, Tenth and Twelfth Days of December, 1692. Giving an Account of the Most Arbitrary Procedure of That Court, has been conjectured to be the first New York imprint (Eames 1). Eames states that the work "seems to be the joint production of George Keith and Thomas Budd, including Bradford's own account of the trial. As it mentions the next Court Session of March, 1693, it could hardly have been printed before May...." He confesses that Bradford may have printed it at Philadelphia. The Library of Congress purchased its copy—one of six recorded in the National Union Catalog—for $50 at the November 1876 auction of the library of Americana formed by a New York collector, William Menzies.

The other Bradford imprint conjecturally assigned to New York is Governor Benjamin Fletcher's proclamation of April 29, 1693, prohibiting "the Breaking of the LORDS DAY, all Prophane Swearing, Cursing, Drunkenness, Idleness and unlawful Gaming, and all manner of Prophaneness whatsoever" (Eames 9). Eames gives no reason why this broadside should be listed as a later imprint. An eminent New Yorker, Stuyvesant Fish, presented the unique copy to the Library of Congress in 1915 and in an accompanying letter to the Librarian told how it had come into his possession:

In view of the uncertain assignment of these two imprints to New York, the Library's earliest imprints naming New York as the place of publication should also be mentioned. A Catalogue of Fees Established by the Governour and Council at the Humble Request of the Assembly (New-York, William Bradford, 1693) is an 11-page work printed sometime after September 20, 1693. The Library's copy, like others, is appended to Bradford's printing of The Laws & Acts of the General Assembly (New-York, 1694), which in Eames' opinion was itself probably begun in 1693, perhaps as early as July or August. Among the owners of the volume containing these early imprints was the bibliographer Charles R. Hildeburn, who gave the following history in a note prefixed to an 1894 facsimile edition of The Laws & Acts:

Now in a full morocco binding by Bradstreet's, the volume contains the bookplates of Abram C. Bernheim, who lectured on New York history at Columbia College, Henry C. Bernheim, and Russell Benedict. At the New York auction[Pg 7] of Judge Benedict's library in 1922 Halstead H. Frost, Jr., purchased it for $3,000; yet in 1926 at an auction by the same house of "Rare Americana including the collection of the late A. R. Turner, Jr. and selections from the collection of the late Charles A. Munn," the same copy drew only $1,800. In 1931 the Library of Congress obtained it from the firm of Lathrop C. Harper for $2,929.55, and it was duly noted in the subsequent annual report as "the most precious acquisition of the year by the law library."

A Catalogue of Fees Established by the Governour and Council at the Humble Request of the Assembly (New-York, William Bradford, 1693)

[Pg 8]

Connecticut

Thomas Short, who learned his trade at Boston, became Connecticut's first printer when he went to New London to do the official printing for the Colony in 1709.

The Library of Congress owns two Thomas Short imprints dated 1710, and one of them is believed to be the first book printed in Connecticut: The Necessity of Judgment, and Righteousness in a Land. A Sermon, Preached at the General Court of Election, at Hartford in the Colony of Connecticut, on May 11th. 1710. By Eliphalet Adams, Pastor of the Church in New-London. Eliphalet Adams was an influential clergyman whose 43 years of service at New London had just begun in 1709. The work is an election sermon, of a type delivered annually at the opening of certain New England legislatures. Although not especially worthy of remembrance, it manages to suggest the ceremony of the occasion. Adams closes his sermon by addressing the Governor, Deputy Governor, and magistrates, next turning to the assembled clergy, and finally concluding:

The Library of Congress copy, in a 19th-century morocco binding, contains no evidence of provenance, but it was undoubtedly in the Library's possession by 1878, for the title is listed in the Library catalog published that year. Another copy sold at auction in 1920 for $1,775, which was the largest amount ever paid for a Connecticut imprint.[14]

The Library's other Connecticut imprint with a date of 1710 is entitled A Confession of Faith Owned and Consented to by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches in the Colony of Connecticut in New-England, Assembled by Delegation at Saybrook September 9th. 1708.... Herein is the historic Saybrook Platform, whereby individual congregations of the Colony submitted to the firmer control of synods. There exists documentary evidence that the printing of this book did not begin until late in 1710, and apparently it was not completed until 1711.[15] Elizabeth Short, the printer's widow, was paid £50 in 1714 for binding all 2,000 copies in calfskin and birchwood covers.[16] The Library's copy retains the original binding. Of further interest is the evidence supplied by the Library's bookplate that the volume formerly belonged to Peter Force, the American historian and archivist, whose notable collection was obtained through a special Congressional appropriation in 1867.

[Pg 9]

Peter Force. Lithograph from life by Charles Fenderich.

[Pg 10]

New Jersey

Anno Regni Georgii Regis Magnæ Britanniæ, Franciæ & Hiberniæ decimo, at a Session of the General Assembly of the Colony of New Jersey, begun the twenty fourth Day of September, Anno Domini 1723. and continued by Adjournments to the 30th Day of November following, at which time the following Acts were Published. Printed by William Bradford in the City of Perth-Amboy, 1723.

In 1723 William Bradford is thought by some to have transported a press from New York to Perth Amboy, then the capital of New Jersey, to print paper currency for the Colony.[17] If this is true he was the first New Jersey printer, although printing was not established there on a permanent basis until three decades later. In any event, in 1723 Bradford produced the first book with a New Jersey imprint: Anno Regni Georgii Regis Magnae Britanniae, Franciae & Hiberniae decimo, at a Session of the General Assembly of the Colony of New Jersey, begun the twenty fourth Day of September, Anno Domini 1723. and continued by Adjournments to the 30th Day of November following....

Douglas C. McMurtrie distinguishes three variant issues of the edition in A Further Note on the New Jersey Acts of 1723 (Somerville, N.J., 1935); but the Library of Congress copy, containing 30 numbered and four unnumbered pages, represents a fourth variant. It is one of two issues (the other bearing a New York imprint) in which the type for the later pages was reset.

In the section on paper money, which has a prominent place in the New Jersey laws, is an interesting sidelight on printing history: the text of an oath to be administered to the printer upon his delivery of the bills to those authorized to sign them, requiring him to declare

The Library of Congress copy is bound in the midst of a folio volume of early New Jersey laws and ordinances that C. S. Hook of Atlantic City, a dealer in old law books, sold to the Library in 1925 for $2,337.50. Though dilapidated, the volume retains its original calf binding, and the names of two early owners are inscribed on its front flyleaf: "M^r Bard" and "John Wright Esq:^r" The former may well be the same Peter Bard, a Huguenot immigrant, who served as member[Pg 11] of the Council from 1720 to 1734 and who was one of those authorized to sign the above-mentioned bills.

Some authorities doubt that Bradford would have moved a press to New Jersey for only a short time and think it more likely that he actually printed the acts of 1723 in New York.[18] In that case the earliest New Jersey imprint in the Library of Congress would be an 18-page pamphlet containing an act passed on June 3, 1757, which James Parker printed at Woodbridge on the first permanent press in the Colony: ... A Supplementary Act to the Act, Entitled, An Act for Better Settling and Regulating the Militia of this Colony of New-Jersey; for the Repelling Invasions, and Suppressing Insurrections and Rebellions; As [sic] also, for Continuing Such Parts and Clauses of the Said Laws, as are not Altered or Amended by This Act. The Library's copy, inscribed "Capt. Monrow" on its title page, probably belonged originally to John Monrow, a resident of Burlington County.[19] The Central Book Company of New York sold it to the Library for $150 in 1939.

[Pg 12]

Rhode Island

(Benjamin Franklin's Rhode-Island Almanack for the Year 1728)

After a stay in prison resulting from his publishing activities in Boston, James Franklin, elder brother of Benjamin, chose to settle at Newport, where he established the first Rhode Island press in 1727.

When the Library of Congress acquired its unique copy of Franklin's Rhode-Island Almanack for the Year 1728 in 1879, it was thought to be the earliest book printed in Rhode Island. Not until 1953, when copies of two religious tracts by John Hammett came to light, was it relegated to third place. Those two tracts were printed before July 25, 1727, while Franklin's pseudonymous preface to his almanac is dated August 30 of that year.[20]

Although it may no longer be regarded as the first Rhode Island book, this small almanac nevertheless is of exceptional interest. Four years before Benjamin Franklin inaugurated Poor Richard's Almanack his elder brother presented himself in this wise:

[Pg 13]

James Franklin strove to make his almanac entertaining, and he did not refrain from injecting anticlerical gibes or a bit of ribaldry. He obviously relished such pithy sayings as "More religion than honesty" and "If you cannot bite, never show your Teeth."

The Library of Congress purchased its unique copy for $35 at the Brinley sale of 1879. It then had seven leaves and seemed to lack an eighth leaf at the end. Much later, George Winship, librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, reported a curious happening in an article that he contributed to The Providence Sunday Journal, November 19, 1911:

A reprint of the almanac with an introduction by Mr. Winship, signing himself as Philohistoricus, was published at this time. And while at Boston the copy was encased in a variegated morocco binding by the Hathaway Book Binding Company on Beacon Street.

[Pg 14]

South Carolina

Printing commenced in South Carolina in 1731 when three competing printers migrated to Charleston: George Webb, Eleazer Phillips, Jr., and Thomas Whitmarsh. They were attracted by an offer of monetary aid that the government announced in order to secure a printer for the Colony.

The earliest Library of Congress copies of South Carolina imprints issued from the press of Lewis Timothy (otherwise Louis Timothée), a Frenchman trained in Holland and subsequently employed by Benjamin Franklin at Philadelphia. Through an arrangement with Franklin he took over the press of Thomas Whitmarsh after the latter's death in 1733, Webb having either died or departed from Charleston and Phillips having died in 1732. The Library has three Lewis Timothy imprints dated 1736: Josiah Smith's sermon, The Character and Duty of Minister and People; the session laws for November 15, 1733-May 29, 1736, entitled Acts Passed by the General Assembly of South-Carolina; and Nicholas Trott's compilation of The Laws of the Province of South-Carolina. The sermon, advertised in The South-Carolina Gazette for May 22, 1736, as just published, was completed first. Still earlier printing, however, is contained in the first volume of Trott's Laws, though the volume was not completed until September 1736. Timothy began to print the laws shortly after November 15, 1734, and the first sheets were ready in May 1735.[21]

This publication in two folio volumes is a landmark of Colonial printing; it was Timothy's most ambitious undertaking by far, one he carried out with remarkable taste and skill. The title page, printed in black and red, is particularly striking. Nicholas Trott, the editor, was a learned jurist who played a leading role in South Carolina's affairs, becoming chief justice in 1703. In the preface he sets forth his guiding purpose in compiling the Laws:

The Library of Congress owns three copies of this rare book, all lacking some pages. The copy most distinguished in its provenance bears on its title page the signature of William Bull, Jr., five times Acting Governor of South Carolina between 1760 and 1775. Also on this title page is the late 18th-century signature of one Thomas Parker. Another copy is inscribed "Thomas Farr jun^r. [another hand:] of St. Andrew's Parish 12^th. May 1773"; and in the following century it was given "With Edward Logan's kind regards to James Parker Esq. 18 Feb 1868." Thomas Farr can be identified as a merchant,[22] but the later names have not been traced. The third Library copy retains no marks of previous ownership.

[Pg 15]

(Nicholas Trott's compilation of The Laws of the Province of South-Carolina.)

[Pg 16]

North Carolina

The first printer active in North Carolina was James Davis, a native of Virginia, who probably received his training from William Parks at Williamsburg.[23] Davis settled at New Bern in 1749, and in the same year he began printing The Journal of the House of Burgesses.

The earliest North Carolina imprint in the Library of Congress, printed by Davis in 1751, is carefully described in its title, A Collection of All the Public Acts of Assembly, of the Province of North-Carolina: Now in Force and Use. Together with the Titles of all such Laws as are Obsolete, Expired, or Repeal'd. And also, an exact Table of the Titles of the Acts in Force, Revised by Commissioners appointed by an Act of the General Assembly of the said Province, for that Purpose; and Examined with the Records, and Confirmed in full Assembly.

This collection is sometimes called "Swann's Revisal" after the commissioner William Swann, who did a major part of the editing and wrote the dedication to Governor Gabriel Johnston. One of the acts, passed on March 7, 1746, begins with the preamble, "Whereas for Want of the Laws of this Province being Revised and Printed, the Magistrates are often at a Loss how to discharge their Duty, and the People transgress many of them through Want of knowing the same...." These words reflect not only a shortage of copies, but also the need to rectify discrepancies in the manuscript copies by publishing a uniform text.

Davis did not complete the volume until about November 15, 1751, when he advertised it in his newspaper, The North-Carolina Gazette. Four distinct issues of the edition can be identified;[24] and of these, the Library of Congress owns both the third, in which the laws of 1751 and 1752 (not shown in the table) are added, and the fourth, which is like the third but with a title page dated 1752 and a new table.

The Library's copy of the third issue bears on the title page the signature of Michael Payne, a resident of Edenton, N.C., who served in the State legislature during the 1780's. The Library purchased it in 1936 from Richard Dillard Dixon of Edenton for $500. The copy of the fourth issue is signed "Will Cumming" in an early hand, and it is inscribed to Samuel F. Phillips, who was Solicitor General of the United States from 1872 to 1885 and who appears to have been the latest owner of the book before its addition to the Library in 1876.

[Pg 17]

(A Collection of All the Public Acts of Assembly, of the Province of North-Carolina: Now in Force and Use. Together with the Titles of all such Laws as are Obsolete, Expired, or Repeal'd. And also, an exact Table of the Titles of the Acts in Force, Revised by Commissioners appointed by an Act of the General Assembly of the said Province, for that Purpose; and Examined with the Records, and Confirmed in full Assembly. Printed by James Davis in 1751.)

[Pg 18]

New Hampshire

(Nathaniel Ames' An Astronomical Diary: or, An Almanack for the Year of Our Lord Christ, 1757 Printed by Daniel Fowle, 1756.)

[Pg 19]

The Boston printer Daniel Fowle felt himself unjustly punished by the Massachusetts Assembly for supposedly printing an objectionable pamphlet in 1754. He consequently removed to Portsmouth in New Hampshire and started that Colony's first press in 1756.

The first New Hampshire book, preceded only by issues of The New-Hampshire Gazette, was printed by Fowle in the same year. It is Nathaniel Ames' An Astronomical Diary: or, An Almanack for the Year of Our Lord Christ, 1757. The Library of Congress owns one of four known copies of a singularly interesting later issue or state of the edition, featuring on its next-to-last page a historical note printed within an ornamental border: "The first Printing Press set up in Portsmouth New Hampshire, was on August 1756; the Gazette publish'd the 7th of October; and this Almanack November following."

Almanacs written by Nathaniel Ames of Dedham, Mass., were bestsellers in mid-18th century America. This almanack for the year 1757, evidently reprinted from the Boston edition, is a somber one reflecting recent set-backs in England's conflict with France. A verse on the title page strikes the keynote:

The rebound Library of Congress copy, which bears no marks of previous ownership, is listed in the Library catalog of 1878 and presumably was obtained not long before then.

At about the same time the Library acquired and similarly rebound two other Daniel Fowle imprints of undetermined provenance, both of which are dated 1756 but were published later than the almanac. There is some question whether one of them, Jonathan Parsons' Good News from a Far Country, was begun at Boston or at Portsmouth. In any event, Fowle placed the following notice in the November 4, 1756, issue of his Gazette: "Good News from a far country: in seven discourses by Rev. Jonathan Parsons is soon to be published. Five of the sermons have already been set up and lack of paper prevents completion until a supply of paper arrives from London which is probable at an early date." Not until April 1757 did Fowle advertise the book for sale.[25] The other imprint dated 1756 is Samuel Langdon's The Excellency of the Word of God, in the Mouth of a Faithful Minister,[26] a sermon delivered on November 3 and also delayed in printing for lack of suitable paper. Both books were probably completed in the early months of 1757 but dated old style. There is a noticeable difference between the paper on which they are printed and the crude paper of the almanac, such as Fowle used for his newspaper.

[Pg 20]

Delaware

James Adams of Londonderry, Ireland, after working more than seven years with Franklin and Hall in Philadelphia, established Delaware's first press at Wilmington in 1761.

(The Wilmington Almanack, or Ephemeries, for the Year of Our Lord, 1762. By Thomas Fox, Philom.)

The Library of Congress possesses one of two extant imprints out of four that Adams is known to have issued at Wilmington in the latter part of that year: The Wilmington Almanack, or Ephemeries [sic], for the Year of Our Lord, 1762 ... By Thomas Fox, Philom.[27] Copies, according to the title page, were also "to be had, in Philadelphia, of William Falkner." The publication is the first in an annual series of "Wilmington Almanacs," all printed by Adams, that were prepared for the years 1762 to 1794.

The otherwise unknown author, Thomas Fox (possibly a pseudonym), brings himself to the reader's attention in this statement:

More interesting than the colorless prose and verse selections accompanying the astronomical tables are the printer's advertisements, such as the following notice near the end of the book:

The Library's copy of the almanac has been detached from a bound volume and bears no evidence of early ownership. It was acquired by exchange from Dodd, Mead & Company in 1908, at a valuation of $15.

[Pg 21]

Georgia

(An Act to Prevent Stealing of Horses and Neat Cattle; and for the More Effectual Discovery and Punishment of Such Persons as Shall Unlawfully Brand, Mark, or Kill the Same. Printed by James Johnston.)

[Pg 22]

An act for the provision of printing, passed by the Georgia Legislature on March 4, 1762, stated that "James Johnston, lately arrived in this province from Great-Britain, recommended as a person regularly bred to and well skilled in the art and mystery of printing, hath offered to set up a printing press in the town of Savannah." Employed to print the Colony's statutes, Johnston had readied the first Georgia press by April 7, 1763, when he began to publish his newspaper, The Georgia Gazette.

From the year 1763 the Library of Congress owns several official imprints bound up in a volume of Georgia laws enacted from 1755 to 1770 and one unofficial imprint, The South-Carolina and Georgia Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord, 1764 ... By John Tobler, Esq. This almanac, which the distinguished collector Wymberley Jones De Renne gave the Library in 1907, was published by December 8, 1763, and probably printed very shortly before. The earliest of Johnston's many official imprints, predating all his other work except The Georgia Gazette, are thought to be two acts advertised in that paper on June 2, 1763. They are entitled An Act to Prevent Stealing of Horses and Neat Cattle; and for the More Effectual Discovery and Punishment of Such Persons as Shall Unlawfully Brand, Mark, or Kill the Same and An Act for Ascertaining the Qualifications of Jurors, and for Establishing the Method of Balloting and Summoning of Jurors in the Province of Georgia. They had been passed on March 27, 1759, and April 24, 1760, and were printed in folio in four and six pages, respectively. Both acts are represented in the Library of Congress bound volume of early Georgia laws. Only two other copies of each are known to be extant.

Various owners inscribed their name in this book. Joseph Stiles, who operated the Vale Royal Plantation near Savannah from 1806 until his death in 1838, owned at least the latter part of it, where his signature and that of his son, the evangelist Joseph C. Stiles, may be seen. Another owner of the same part was John C. Nicholl (1793-1863), a prominent lawyer and jurist who served as mayor of Savannah in 1836 and 1837. A later owner of the entire volume was a certain S. H. McIntire, not known to have any Savannah connections, who inscribed it in June 1878. The Library of Congress purchased it in June 1909 from the Statute Law Book Company of Washington, D.C. for $2,500.

[Pg 23]

Louisiana

(EXTRAIT De Régistres, des Audiances du Conseil Supérieur, de la Province de la Loüisiane. Du 7. May 1765. ENTRE L'ABBE DE L'ISLE DIEU, Vicaire Général du Diocèse de Québec, & de cette Province, Demandeur en Requête, le Procureur Général du Roi, joint.)

[Pg 24]

Only after printing penetrated the Thirteen Colonies did the French printer Denis Braud carry the art to Louisiana. His earliest known work, an official broadside concerning the transfer of Louisiana from French to Spanish ownership, was printed at New Orleans in 1764.

The earliest Louisiana imprint in the Library of Congress is the second extant example of Louisiana printing. The Library's unique copy is a four-page, folio-sized document signed by Garic, clerk of the Superior Council of Louisiana, and headed, "EXTRAIT De Régistres, des Audiances du Conseil Supérieur, de la Province de la Loüisiane. Du 7. May 1765. ENTRE L'ABBE DE L'ISLE DIEU, Vicaire Général du Diocèse de Québec, & de cette Province, Demandeur en Requête, le Procureur Général du Roi, joint." It is a decree restricting the activities of the Capuchin friar Hilaire Genoveaux and suppressing a catechism circulated by him which apparently had also been printed at New Orleans. The title of the catechism, as preserved in the text of the decree, is Catechisme pour la Province de la Loüisianne, &c. Rédigé par le R. P. Hilaire, Protonotaire du St. Siége & Supérieur Général de la Mission des Capucins en ladite Province, pour être seul enseigné dans sadite Mission. The contemporary importance of the surviving document lay in its connection with a far-reaching struggle between the Jesuit and Franciscan orders over ecclesiastical authority in Louisiana. Although it contains no imprint statement naming place of publication or printer, typographical features of the document serve to identify it as the work of Denis Braud.[28]

That this unique copy belonged to an official archive—presumably that of the Superior Council of Louisiana—the following manuscript additions make apparent. There is first a notation: "Joint a la lettre de M. Aubry, Command. a la Louisianne du 7. May 1765." (Aubry had succeeded d'Abbadie as commandant, or governor, after the latter's death in February 1765.) A second column in manuscript contains the same date as a filing guide and this descriptive title: "Arrest du Conseil Superieur de la Louisianne portant deffense au Pere Hilaire Capucin de simississer [i. e. s'immiscer] dans aucune Jurisdiction Ecclesiastique autre que celle qui lui est permise par son seul titre de superieur de la mission des RR. PP. Capucins de cette Colonie." At the end of the column is a cross reference: "Voyez les lettres de M. l'Abbe de LIsle Dieu Vicaire g[e]n[er]al de M. de Quebek en 1759 et 1760 et sa Correspond. a ce sujet."

The subsequent history of this document has not been traced before October 17, 1905, when C. F. Libbie & Co auctioned it off with the library of Israel T. Hunt, a Boston physician. The Library of Congress was able to obtain it on that date for $10.45.

[Pg 25]

Vermont

Formed as an independent republic in 1777, Vermont in the next year appointed the brothers Alden and Judah Padock Spooner of Connecticut to be her official printers. Publications under their imprint were issued at Dresden, before and later named Hanover, in 1778 and 1779; but in February 1779 this town, along with 15 others east of the Connecticut River, returned to the jurisdiction of New Hampshire. The earliest printing from within the present borders of Vermont came from the town of Westminster, where Judah Padock Spooner and Timothy Green, son of the State Printer of Connecticut, undertook the official printing late in 1780.

The Library of Congress possesses three Dresden imprints dated 1779. The first two listed here name Alden Spooner as printer, while the third names both brothers. They are Ira Allen's A Vindication of the Conduct of the General Assembly of the State of Vermont, Held at Windsor in October 1778, Against Allegations and Remarks of the Protesting Members, With Observations on Their Proceedings at a Convention Held at Cornish, on the 9th Day of December 1778; Ethan Allen's A Vindication of the Opposition of the Inhabitants of Vermont to the Government of New-York, and of Their Right to Form into an Independent State. Humbly Submitted to the Consideration of the Impartial World; and Acts and Laws of the State of Vermont, in America. The earliest of the three would appear to be Ira Allen's 48-page Vindication, known from a printer's bill of February 10, 1779, to have been produced by then in 450 copies.[29] The Library's rebound copy is inscribed "from y^e author" beneath its imprint statement, and at the head of the title page is written, "Nath^l Peabody^s Book." Nathaniel Peabody (1741-1823), a New Hampshire legislator, served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1779 and 1780. His book was ultimately listed in the Catalogue of Books Added to the Library of Congress During the Year 1871.

Ira Allen (1751-1814), miniature attributed to Edward G. Malbone, ca. 1795-1798. Courtesy of the Robert Hull Fleming Museum, the University of Vermont, Burlington.

The Library holds the other two Dresden imprints in duplicate. A copy of the Acts and Laws was formerly in the Hazard Pamphlets, acquired with the collection of Peter Force (see p. 8, above). Ebenezer Hazard (1744-1817) was an early collector of Americana. The two copies of Ethan Allen's Vindication, both printed on blue paper, are in the Hazard Pamphlets, volume 47, number 3, and in Colonial Pamphlets, volume 19, number 6. The latter pamphlet volume originally formed part[Pg 26] of Thomas Jefferson's library, obtained by the Congress in 1815 (see p. 3, above).[30]

The earliest example of printing from present-day Vermont in the Library is a document printed by Judah Padock Spooner at Westminster in 1781[31]: Acts and Laws, Passed by the General Assembly of the Representatives of the State of Vermont, at their Session at Windsor, April 1781. In four pages, it contains only "An Act for the Purpose of emitting a Sum of Money, and directing the Redemption of the same." The Act provides for a land tax, stating in justification that "The Land is the great Object of the present War, and receives the most solid Protection of any Estate, a very large Part of which has hitherto paid no Part of the great Cost arisen in defending it, whilst the Blood and Treasure of the Inhabitants of the State has been spent to protect it, who many of them owned but a very small part thereof."

The Library of Congress copy bears the following inscription: "Secry's Office 10^th August 1785. The preceding is a true Copy of an Act passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont April 14^th 1781—Attest Micah Townsend, Secry." Although a loyalist, Micah Townsend served as secretary of state in Vermont from October 1781 until 1789.[32] The Library's copy also bears the autograph of a private owner, Henry Stevens of Barnet, Vt., first president of the Vermont Historical Society. After his death in 1867, his son Henry Stevens, the bookseller, wrote that he left his home "full of books and historical manuscripts, the delight of his youth, the companions of his manhood, and the solace of his old age."[33] To judge from its present library binding, this thin volume has been in the Library of Congress collections since the 19th century.

[Pg 27]

Florida

FLORIDA GAZETTE. VOL. I. ST. AUGUSTINE, (E. F.) SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1821. No. 3.

Dr. William Charles Wells, one of many American loyalists who took refuge in Florida, introduced printing at St. Augustine in 1783. There he published a loyalist paper, The East-Florida Gazette, under the imprint of his elder brother, the Charleston printer John Wells, and with the assistance of a pressman named Charles Wright. Apart from two books of 1784 bearing John Wells' imprint and a document printed at Amelia Island in 1817 during the Spanish rule, no other Florida publications survive from the years preceding United States acquisition of the territory.[34]

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:

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.[Pg 28] 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."

(Florida Gazette ads)

[Pg 29]

Maine

The Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser (No. 2.) Saturday, January 8, 1785. (Vol. 1.)

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]

[Pg 30]

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:

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.

[Pg 31]

(THE KENTUCKE GAZETTE, March 1, 1788.)
[Click image for larger view.]

[Pg 32]

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:

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.

(Charter of the Town of Woodstock.)
[Click on image for larger view.]

[Pg 33]

[Pg 34]

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.

Patch-repairs help to preserve not only the title page but the first page of the text, which is printed on the verso.

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[Pg 35] 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:

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:

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]

[Pg 36]

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:

Pages from the first book printed in Ohio.

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,[Pg 37] advertisements were to be placed in the newspapers for six weeks to announce a balloting or drawing for the subdivided lots.

(Northwest Territory Laws)

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.

[Pg 38]

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.

(L'AME PENITENTE OU LE NOUVEAU PENSEZ-Y-BIEN; CONSIDERATION SUR LES VE'RITE'S ETERNELLES, Avec des Histoires & des Exemples ... printed by James M. Miller at Detroit in 1809.)

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]

[Pg 39]

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."

("To the Public," dated November 8, 1800)

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:

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:

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:

[Pg 41]

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

A subsequent compilation of laws made after the District became the Territory of Louisiana is described on p. 45, below.

(Laws for the Government of the District of Louisiana, Passed by the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory, at Their First Session, Uegun and Held at Vincennes, on Monday the First Day of October, 1804. Printed by Elihu Stout late in 1804.)

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[Pg 42] 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.

[Pg 43]

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.

James Madison, President of the U—States——
"St. Stephens (M.T.)
Printed by Tho. Eastin. 1815."

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]

[Pg 44]

Missouri

Some of the subjects covered in The Laws of the Territory of Louisiana.

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[Pg 45] 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:

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.

[Pg 46]

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:

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).

[Pg 47]

Last page of The Constitutional Advocate and Texas Public Advertiser, June 15, 1833.
[Click on image for larger view.]

[Pg 48]

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]

(Laws of the Territory of Illinois, Revised and Digested under the Authority of the Legislature. By Nathaniel Pope)

Even though it paid him for his labor and[Pg 49] 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 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.

[Pg 50]

Arkansas

(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.)

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[Pg 51] 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:

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.

[Pg 52]

Hawaii

(Hawaiian Primer, printed by Elisha Loomis.)

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.

[Pg 53]

Wisconsin

Green-Bay Intelligencer. VOL. I. NAVARINO, WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 11, 1833. NO. 1.

"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).

The Library of Congress also owns the only known copy of Kikinawadendamoiwewin or almanac, wa aiongin obiboniman debeniminang iesos, 1834, printed at Green Bay on the Intelligencer press. Its 14 leaves, printed on one side only, are within an original paper cover bearing the manuscript title "Chippewa Almanac." A document held by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin reveals that in 1834 the Catholic mission at Green Bay charged "the Menominee Nation of Indians" for "an Indian Almanac rendered by signs equally useful to those among the Natives who are unable to read their language, published at Green Bay, 150 copies, $18"; and that the bill went unpaid.[83] Since the almanac was intended for use in the year 1834, it was likely printed before the end of 1833; yet there is no evidence to suggest that it predates the Intelligencer. At the suggestion of Douglas C. McMurtrie, the Library purchased its unique copy from the Rosenbach Company for "$375.00 less usual discount" in 1931.

[Pg 54]

California

Conclusion of General Vallejo's message to the Governor of Alta California, which was printed on a press that had been shipped from Boston via Hawaii.

As early as 1830 Agustín V. Zamorano, executive secretary of the Mexican territory of Alta California, was using limited printing equipment to produce official letterheads. Zamorano later became proprietor of California's first regular printing press, which was shipped from Boston (via Hawaii) and set up at Monterey about July 1834. While he controlled this press—that is, until the uprising in November 1836—Zamorano appears to have employed two printers, whose names are unknown.[84]

Under the revolutionary government the same press continued in operation at Monterey and at Sonoma, and the earliest California printing in the Library of Congress is the first known Sonoma issue: Ecspocision [sic] que hace el comdanante [sic] general interino de la Alta California al gobernador de la misma. It is a small pamphlet having 21 pages of text, preceded by a leaf bearing a woodcut of an eagle. The text is dated from Sonoma, August 17, 1837, and signed by Mariano G. Vallejo, beneath whose printed name is a manuscript flourish.

Don Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807-90) held the highest military office of Alta California at the time of writing, his headquarters[Pg 55] then being at Sonoma. In his communication to the Governor, he advocates certain commercial reforms summarized as follows in Hubert Howe Bancroft's History of the Pacific States of North America (San Francisco, 1882-90):

General Vallejo was his own printer. In a manuscript "Historia de California" he says of his pamphlet, "I wrote the attached statement of which I sent the original to the governor of the State and which I printed immediately in the small printing office that I had in Sonoma and of which I was the only employee; I had the printed copies distributed throughout all parts of California and furthermore I gave some copies to the captains of merchant ships that were going to ports in the United States of America."[86]

The Library of Congress copy shows that the general left something to be desired as a printer, some pages being so poorly inked as to be scarcely legible. This copy—one of but four known to bibliographers—was previously in the possession of A. B. Thompson of San Francisco, and the Library purchased it from him in February 1904 for $15.

[Pg 56]

Kansas

(The Annual Register of Indian Affairs Within the Indian (or Western) Territory. Published by Isaac M'Coy. Shawanoe Baptist Mission House, Ind. Ter. January 1, 1835)

[Pg 57]

By introducing printing at the Shawanoe mission station in the Indian Territory in March 1834, Jotham Meeker became the first printer of what is now Kansas. He had learned his trade at Cincinnati and for some years had served as a Baptist missionary and printer among various Indian tribes.

The Library of Congress' earliest example of Kansas printing is the first number of The Annual Register of Indian Affairs Within the Indian (or Western) Territory. Published by Isaac M'Coy. Shawanoe Baptist Mission House, Ind. Ter. January 1, 1835. Isaac McCoy (1784-1846), publisher of four numbers of the Annual Register between 1835 and 1838, was a prominent Baptist missionary, who also served as an Indian agent and strongly advocated the colonization of western Indians in a separate state. In this work he gives an account of the several mission stations operated by various denominations in the Indian Territory.

The following passage from the first number of the Annual Register deals with the printer:

Jotham Meeker's surviving journal, from which extracts have been published,[88] affords an interesting view of his work from December 15, 1834, when McCoy brought him the manuscript, until January 17, 1835, when he wrote, "Finish Br. M'Coy's Ann. Reg. a work of 52 pages, including the Cover. 1000 copies."

Another source of information about the Annual Register is Isaac McCoy's book, History of Baptist Indian Missions (Washington, New York, and Utica, 1840), wherein he states,

Under the circumstances it is not surprising that three copies have made their way into the Library of Congress collections. On their respective title pages they are addressed in manuscript to "Hon Nathaniel Silsbee U.S. Sen," "Hon Jno. Cramer H. Reprs. U S," and "Hon Lucius Lyon H.R.U.S."

[Pg 58]

New Mexico

The first press of New Mexico was imported overland from the United States in 1834 to print El Crepúsculo de la libertad, a short-lived newspaper supporting the election of its editor, Antonio Barreiro, to the Mexican congress. It was operating at Santa Fe by August 1834 with Ramón Abreu as proprietor and with Jesús María Baca as printer,[90] the latter having learned his trade in Durango, Mexico.[91]

A broadside in the Library of Congress collections appears to be a genuine copy of the earliest extant issue of this press. Entitled Lista de los ciudadanos que deberan componer los jurados de imprenta, formada por el Ayuntamiento de este capital, it lists, in accordance with Mexican law, 90 men qualified to be jurors in cases of what the law terms "denuncias de los escritos."[92] The broadside is dated August 14, 1834, signed by "Juan Gallego, precidente—Domingo Fernandez, secretario," and carries the Ramón Abreu imprint. This copy must be one of 48 discovered in 1942 in a parcel marked "Benjamin Read Papers" at the New Mexico Historical Society. Benjamin Read (1853-1927) was an attorney who served in the New Mexico Legislature and who published a number of works on the State's history.[93] Before the find in 1942 only a single copy of the broadside was located. The authenticity of these 48 copies has been questioned, but in the opinion of the late collector Thomas W. Streeter they are originals.[94] The Library obtained its copy by exchange from Edward Eberstadt & Sons in May 1951.

The Library also has the only known copy of New Mexico's first book, issued by the same press and dated 1834: Cuaderno de ortografia. Dedicado a los niños de los señores Martines de Taos. A metal cut on its title page, oddly depicting a moose, has been traced to a contemporary Boston specimen book, which also displays a pica type identical or very similar to that used in early New Mexican imprints.[95] Authorship of the book has been attributed to Antonio José Martínez (1793-1867), the parish priest in Taos, who arranged to have the press and the printer move there in 1835. From 1826 to 1856 Martínez taught reading, writing, and arithmetic in his parish,[96] and he undoubtedly had this work printed for the use of his own pupils. It is divided into three sections: "De las letras," "De los diptongos, uso de letras mayusculas, acentos y signos de institucion para las citas," and "De la puntuacion de la clausula."[97] The copy of this small book is soiled and worn from much thumbing. Penciled on an inner page in an early, childlike hand is the name "Jesus Maria Baldez." The Library purchased the book in 1931 from Aaron Flacks, a Chicago bookseller, for $350 on the same day that it purchased its earliest Wisconsin almanac (see p. 53, above) and likewise through the intervention of Douglas C. McMurtrie.

[Pg 59]

(Lista de los ciudadanos que deberan componer los jurados de imprenta, formada por el Ayuntamiento de este capital)

[Pg 60]

Oklahoma

(Istutsi in Naktsokv. Or The Child's Book. By Rev. John Fleming.)

When the Cherokee Nation migrated from Georgia to the newly formed Indian Territory, John Fisher Wheeler, who had been head printer of the Cherokee Press at New Echota, proceeded to the Union Mission Station on the Grand River, near the present location of Mazie, Okla. There the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions supplied him with a new press on which in August 1835 he did the first Oklahoma printing. Wheeler had served his apprenticeship at Huntsville, Ala.[98]

One of two or three extant copies of the third recorded issue of Oklahoma's first press is present in the Library of Congress collections: Istutsi in naktsokv. Or The Child's Book. By Rev. John Fleming. Missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Printed before October 31, 1835, in an edition of 500 copies, it is a 24-page primer with text in the Creek language rendered in the Pickering alphabet and with woodcut illustrations of animals and other subjects. A Creek Indian named James Perryman or Pvhos Haco ("Grass Crazy") assisted with the translation.[99] Fleming's work among the Indians has earned for him a notice in the Dictionary of American Biography, where his "chief claim to remembrance" is said to be "that he was the first to reduce to writing the Muskoki or Creek language, which was a task of peculiar difficulty on account of the numerous and puzzling combinations of consonants involved."

The Library of Congress obtained the rare copy of its earliest Oklahoma imprint through the Smithsonian Deposit (see p. 52, above) in 1878.

[Pg 61]

Iowa

Du Buque Visitor. "TRUTH OUR GUIDE, THE PUBLIC GOOD OUR AIM." VOL. I. DU BUQUE (LEAD MINES) WISCONSIN TERRITORY, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1837. NO. 37

The initial issue of the weekly Du Buque Visitor, dated May 11, 1836, is the oldest example of Iowa printing. John King, the first proprietor of this four-page newssheet, acquired the press on which it was printed at Chillicothe, Ohio. He employed William Cary Jones of Chillicothe to "perform the duties of foreman in the printing office ... and likewise such other duties in superintending the publication of the newspaper as may be required,"[100] and he employed the Virginia-born printer Andrew Keesecker, lately of Galena, Ill., to be the principal typesetter.

The earliest Iowa printing represented in the Library of Congress is its partial file of the Du Buque Visitor, extending from January 18 to May 17, 1837.[101] On December 21, 1836, the proprietorship had passed to W. W. Chapman, an attorney, and with the issue of February 1, 1837, William H. Turner became the owner. The paper maintained a high standard throughout these changes, its issues justly displaying the motto: "Truth our guide, the public good our aim." A reduction in the size of certain issues furnishes evidence of the customary difficulty of operating a pioneer press. As the March 15 issue explains, "Within the last two months, so large an addition has been made to the subscription list of the Visitor, that our stock of paper of the usual size is exhausted, and we are constrained to issue, for a week or two, a smaller sheet. By the first boat from St. Louis we shall receive our spring and summer supply."

The Library's file dates from the period when Iowa still belonged to the Wisconsin Territory. An editorial from the Library's earliest issue advocates independent status:

(Newspaper ads)

From later in 1837 the Library possesses Iowa News, which replaced the Du Buque Visitor after its expiration in May, in an imperfect file extending from June 17 (the third number) to December 23. The Library also has the Wisconsin Territorial Gazette and Burlington Advertiser, printed at Burlington, in another incomplete file from July 10 to December 2. The Library's three files of very early Iowa newspapers have a common provenance, as most issues of each file are addressed in manuscript to the Department of State, which was in charge of Territorial affairs until 1873. These newspapers were transferred to the Library of Congress sometime before the end of the 19th century.[102]

[Pg 63]

Idaho

The first printing in Idaho—in fact, in the entire Pacific Northwest—was done in 1839 at the Lapwai mission station, by the Clearwater River, in what is now Nez Perce County. The printer was Edwin Oscar Hall, originally of New York, who on orders of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions brought to this wilderness site the same small press he had taken to the Hawaiian Islands in 1835.[103]

Henry Harmon Spalding (1804-74), the missionary who had requested this press, was the author of its first issue in Idaho, an eight-page primer of the native language with an English title: Nez-Perces First Book: Designed for Children and New Beginners. In May 1839 Hall printed 400 copies, of which no complete examples are known to survive. An alphabet of Roman letters that Spalding utilized to convey the Indian language proved to be impractical, and in August the original edition was replaced by a revised 20-page edition of 500 copies with the same title.

The Library of Congress acquired this edition, then thought to be the first Idaho book, in 1911. A few years later the bibliographer Wilberforce Eames discovered pages of the earlier edition used as reinforcements in the paper covers of the later one,[104] and on February 18, 1922, another interested bibliographer, Howard M. Ballou, wrote to the Librarian of Congress:

(By Oregon, of course, he meant the Oregon country at large rather than the present State.) The Library did soak apart the covers and found that it had two copies of the original leaf paged 5 and 6. One of them, released for exchange in October 1948, subsequently joined two other original leaves to form an almost complete copy in the Coe Collection at Yale University.[105]

A page from the original edition of the Nez Perces First Book.

The Library made its fortunate acquisition with a bid of $7.50 at a Philadelphia auction sale conducted by Stan V. Henkels on May 23-24, 1911. The item[106] was among a group of books from the library of Horatio E. Hale (1817-96), who served as philologist with the famed Wilkes Expedition of 1838-42. He probably obtained his copy about 1841, the year the expedition reached Oregon.

[Pg 64]

Oregon

Oregon Spectator. "Westward the Star of Empire takes its way." Vol. I Oregon City, (Oregon Ter.) Thursday, May 28, 1846. No. 9.

Medare G. Foisy performed the first Oregon printing in 1845 with type owned by the Catholic mission at St. Paul. Apparently without the benefit of a permanent press, he printed at least two official forms, and there is evidence that he produced tickets for an election held on June 3, 1845. Foisy was a French Canadian who had worked at the Lapwai mission press for Henry Harmon Spalding (see p. 63, above) during the fall and winter of 1844-45.[107]

Later certain forward-looking settlers organized the Oregon Printing Association, obtained a printing press, hired a printer named John Fleming, who had migrated to Oregon from Ohio,[108] and founded the Oregon Spectator at Oregon City on February 5, 1846. This was the earliest English-language newspaper in North America west of the Missouri River.[109] The earliest Oregon printing in the Library of Congress is the ninth semimonthly number of the Oregon Spectator, dated May 28, 1846. It is a small four-page sheet presently bound with 15 other numbers of the Spectator through May 13, 1847. All bear the newspaper's motto: "Westward the Star of Empire takes its way." When this ninth number was printed, the Oregon Country was still jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain. Shortly after, on June 15, 1846, the U.S. Senate ratified the Oregon Treaty, whereby the Oregon Country was divided at the 49th parallel. News of the ratification as reported in the New York Gazette and Times of June 19 reached Honolulu in time to be printed in the Polynesian of August 29, and the information was reprinted from that paper in the November 12 issue of the Spectator, which is included in the Library's file.

The issue of May 28 has a decidedly political emphasis because of impending local elections, and among its articles is an amusing account of a meeting at which several inexperienced candidates proved embarrassingly "backward about speaking." The difficulty of obtaining information for the paper is illustrated by a section headed "Foreign News," consisting of a letter from Peter Ogden, Governor of Fort Vancouver, in which he gives a brief account of the political upheaval in Britain over the Corn Law question. He cites as the source of[Pg 65] his information a letter he received via "an express ... from [Fort] Nesqually." He concludes, "In three or four days hence we shall receive newspapers, and I trust further particulars." The last page of this issue is given entirely to the printing of an installment of "An Act to establish Courts, and prescribe their powers and duties," which had been passed by the provisional legislature.

In addition to its small volume of issues from 1846 and 1847, the Library of Congress has an incomplete volume of Spectator issues from September 12, 1850, to January 27, 1852, when the paper had a larger format and appeared weekly. Evidence for the provenance of the earlier volume is the inscription, "J. B. McClurg & C.," on the issue of December 24, 1846, designating a Honolulu firm which carried this advertisement in the same Spectator:

Several issues in the later volume are addressed either to the "State Department" or to "Hon. Daniel Webster," who was Secretary of State at the time. The Library's A Check List of American Newspapers, published in 1901, records holdings only for December 12, 1850, to February 27, 1851, but all of the Spectator issues look as if they have been in the Library from an early date.

(Rules for House-Wives.)

[Pg 66]

Utah

(Ordinances, Passed by the Legislative Council of Great Salt Lake City, and Ordered to be Printed)

[Pg 67]

Brigham Young's nephew Brigham Hamilton Young was the first printer within the present boundaries of Utah. A manuscript "Journal History" of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints records that on January 22, 1849, "Brigham H. Young and Thomas Bullock were engaged in setting type for the fifty cent bills, paper currency. This was the first typesetting in the [Salt Lake] Valley. The bills were to be printed on the press made by Truman O. Angell."[110]

The Law Library of the Library of Congress keeps in a small manila envelope a remarkable group of five very early examples of Utah printing, some of which must have been issued in 1850. The one that seems to be the earliest has the title Ordinances, Passed by the Legislative Council of Great Salt Lake City, and Ordered to be Printed. This piece—like the others without indication of place or date of printing—may be assigned to a press from Boston which reached Salt Lake City in August of 1849 and supplanted the original homemade press. Listed as number 3 in Douglas C. McMurtrie's The Beginnings of Printing in Utah, with a Bibliography of the Issues of the Utah Press 1849-1860 (Chicago, 1931), it is a four-page leaflet containing nine ordinances passed between February 24 and December 29, 1849. Among them are a "Penalty for Riding Horses Without Leave, Driving Cattle Off the Feeding Range, &c." and "An Ordinance Creating an Office for the Recording of 'Marks and Brands' on Horses, Mules, Cattle, and All Other Stock."

A 34-page pamphlet entitled Constitution of the State of Deseret (not in McMurtrie; Sabin 98220) is obviously from the same press. Appended to the constitution, which was approved November 20, 1849, are several ordinances passed between March 9, 1849, and March 28, 1850. Another issue of this press (not in McMurtrie or Sabin) is a slightly mutilated three-page leaflet: Rules and Regulations for the Governing of Both Houses of the General Asse{mbly} of the State of Deseret, When in Joint Session; and for Each Respective House, When in Separate Session. Adopted by the Senate and House of Representatives, December 2, 1850. Of unspecified date is a single leaf, unrecorded and apparently unique, captioned Standing Committees of the House. Finally, there is among these imprints a copy of the 80-page Ordinances. Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Deseret, known as the "Compilation of 1851" and listed as number 8 by McMurtrie, who writes, "A copy of the 1851 volume in the library of the Church Historian's Office was used in 1919 for making a reprint, but the original has since disappeared.[111] A copy is said to be in private ownership in California." The latter is undoubtedly the one now in the Library of Congress.

The only one of these extremely rare imprints to show marks of previous ownership is the "Compilation of 1851." It was autographed by Phinehas Richards, who served both as representative and as senator in the provisional legislature of the state of Deseret. Whether the other four pieces also belonged to him is not clear; in any event all five came into the hands of his son, Franklin Dewey Richards (1821-99), who for half a century was an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, becoming president of the Apostles' Quorum, and who served as Church Historian for the last 10 years of his life.[112] A Library of Congress purchase order dated October 31, 1940, reveals that these imprints were contained in a bound volume labeled "Laws of Utah—F. D. Richards"; that by agreement the Library had them removed from the volume and subsequently returned it to Mr. Frank S. Richards, in care of the San Francisco bookseller John Howell; and that the price paid for the detached items was $1,600. Frank S. Richards, an attorney residing in Piedmont, Calif., is a great-grandson of Franklin Dewey Richards, most of whose books he has given to the Bancroft Library of the University of California.

[Pg 68]

Minnesota

(Minnesota Chronicle and Register St. Paul, Minnesota Territory, Saturday, August 25, 1819. Vol. 1 No. 1)

Minnesota's first printer was James Madison Goodhue of Hebron, N.H. An Amherst College graduate, he had abandoned a legal career to run a pioneer newspaper at Lancaster, Wis. Shortly after the establishment of the Minnesota Territory, he moved his printing equipment to St. Paul, and on April 28, 1849, he founded his weekly newspaper, The Minnesota Pioneer. It is reported that even though he brought along two printers, Goodhue himself worked both as compositor and pressman, and further that the printing press he used at Lancaster and St. Paul was the same on which Iowa's first printing had been performed.[113] The Library of Congress' scattered file of this first Minnesota newspaper contains just one 1849 issue, dated October 25.

Taking precedence as the Library's earliest example of Minnesota printing is the first issue, dated August 25, 1849, of another St. Paul paper, the Minnesota Chronicle and Register, which resulted from the merger of two early rivals of the Pioneer. In an introductory editorial the proprietors, James Hughes and John Phillips Owens, make certain claims on behalf of this paper:

They also make an interesting statement of editorial policy:

The Library has eight issues of the Chronicle and Register from the year 1849, as well as later ones through February 17, 1851, all bearing its motto: "The greatest good for the greatest number." Many of the earlier issues are addressed to John M. Clayton, who was Secretary of State until July 1850, and some[Pg 69] later issues are addressed to his successor, Daniel Webster. (The Library's file of The Minnesota Pioneer also has a State Department provenance.)

(Short newspaper items)

In addition the Library of Congress owns three official publications printed by James Madison Goodhue in 1849: Message from the Governor of Minnesota Territory to the Two Houses of the Legislative Assembly, at the Commencement of the First Session, September 4, 1849; Rules for the Government of the Council of Minnesota Territory, and Joint Rules of the Council and House, Adopted at a Session of the Legislature, Commenced September 3, 1849; and Message of the Governor, in Relation to a Memorial from Half-Breeds of Pembina.[114] On September 5, the day after it authorized Goodhue to do its printing, the newly formed legislature ordered the first two of these titles printed in editions of 500 and 100 copies, respectively.[115] The Library copies of both pamphlets are unbound, without marks of personal ownership. The first is an older acquisition of undetermined origin; the second a 1940 purchase from the Rosenbach Company in New York, at $165. The third title was ordered printed in 300 copies on October 1, 1849, the day the Governor's message was delivered.[116] It is a four-page leaflet, one of 73 rare American imprints that the printing historian Douglas C. McMurtrie sold to the Library for $600 in 1935.

[Pg 70]

Washington

(Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, Passed at the Second Regular Session, Begun and Held at Olympia, December 4, 1854, in the Seventy-Ninth Year of American Independence)

(Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, ... continued)

The earliest recorded example of Washington printing is the first number of The Columbian, published at Olympia on September 11, 1852. The founders of this newspaper were James W. Wiley and Thornton F. McElroy, who purchased a press on which the Portland Oregonian had for a short time been printed and which before that saw service in California.[117]

In 1853 the Territory of Washington was created from the northern part of the Territory of Oregon, and on April 17, 1854, the new Territorial legislature elected James W. Wiley to be Washington's first official printer. The earliest specimen of Washington printing held by the Library of Congress appears to be the following example of his work, printed at Olympia in 1855: Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, Passed at the Second Regular Session, Begun and Held at Olympia, December 4, 1854, in the Seventy-Ninth Year of American Independence. It includes an act passed at the second session, on February 1, 1855, specifying the size and distribution of the original edition:

The Library owns three copies of this 75-page official document, all acquired probably during the last quarter of the 19th century. They are in old Library bindings and bear no marks of prior ownership.

Among the Library's collections are five other Olympia imprints of the same year but from the press of the second official printer, George B. Goudy, who was elected on January 27, 1855. One of these, a work of more than 500 pages, the Library also holds in three copies: Statutes of the Territory of Washington: Being the Code Passed by the Legislative Assembly, At Their First Session Begun and Held at Olympia, February 27th, 1854. Also, Containing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Organic Act of Washington Territory, the Donation Laws, &C., &C. The others are Journal of[Pg 71] the Council of the Territory of Washington: Together With the Memorials and Joint Resolutions of the First Session of {the} Legislative Assembly ...; Journal of the House of Representatives of the Territory of Washington: Together With the Memorials and Joint Resolutions of the First Session of the Legislative Assembly ...; Journal of the Council of the Territory of Washington, During the Second Session of the legislative Assembly ...; and Journal of the House of Representatives of the Territory of Washington: Being the Second Session of the Legislative Assembly ....

Most official printing in the Territories was paid for by the Federal Government, and copies of many publications were sent to Washington, D.C., to meet certain administrative requirements. In some copies now at the Library of Congress visible evidence to this effect remains, as in the above-mentioned Council and House journals for the second legislative session, both inscribed to "Library State Dept." Although the Department of State continued to exercise broad supervision over the Territories at this period, supervision of their official printing was assigned, as it had been since 1842, to the Treasury Department. The cover or halftitle now bound in at the end of the above-mentioned House journal for the first legislative session bears notations made in the office of the Treasury Department's first comptroller, who exercised this particular responsibility.[118] One is a barely legible record in pencil: "Recd Oct 14/56 in letter of Sec Mason of Augt 26/56"; and another is in ink: "Finding enclosed to Sec Mason March 31/57." These notations refer to correspondence between the comptroller and the secretary of the Territory of Washington about remuneration for printing. Part of the correspondence is still retained at the National Archives (in Record Group 217).

[Pg 72]

Nebraska

(Laws, Resolutions and Memorials, Passed at the Regular Session of the First General Assembly of the Territory of Nebraska, Convened at Omaha City, on the 16th Day of January, Anno Domini, 1855. Together with the Constitution of the United States, the Organic Law, and the Proclamations Issued in the Organization of the Territorial Government)

Scholarly investigation has revealed that a supposed early instance of Nebraska printing—the Mormon General Epistle "written at Winter Quarters, Omaha Nation, west bank of Missouri River, near Council Bluffs, North America, and signed December 23d, 1847"—actually issued from a St. Louis press.[119] The Library of Congress copy of this imprint is consequently disqualified for discussion here, as are also the Library's three issues of the Omaha Arrow, beginning with the initial number dated July 28, 1854, since these issues were printed in Iowa, at Council Bluffs, before Omaha acquired its own press.

Nebraska printing begins in fact with the 16th number of the Nebraska Palladium, issued at Bellevue on November 15, 1854. Previously issued at St. Mary's, Iowa, the paper takes pride in introducing printing to the newly formed Territory of Nebraska and identifies the men responsible:

The first Nebraska books were printed at Omaha by the Territorial printers Sherman & Strickland in 1855, and they are represented in the Library of Congress collections: Laws, Resolutions and Memorials, Passed at the Regular Session of the First General Assembly of the Territory of Nebraska, Convened at Omaha City, on the 16th Day of January, Anno Domini, 1855. Together with the Constitution of the United States, the Organic Law, and the Proclamations Issued in the Organization of the Territorial Government; Journal of the Council at the First Regular Session of the General Assembly, of the Territory of Nebraska, Begun and Held at Omaha City, Commencing on Tuesday the Sixteenth Day January, A. D. 1855, and Ending on the Sixteenth Day of March, A. D. 1855; and Journal of the House of Representatives, of the First Regular Session of the General Assembly of the Territory of Nebraska .... These three official publications record quite fully the work of the first Nebraska Legislature, which consisted of a council of 13 and a house of 26 members. From later in the same year the Library owns still another Sherman &[Pg 73] Strickland imprint: Annual Message of Mark W. Izard, Governor of the Territory of Nebraska, Addressed to the Legislative Assembly, December 18, 1855. The Governor delivered this address at the convening of the second legislature.

The press on which these four books were printed had been transported to Omaha from Ohio, and it was used to produce the initial number of the Omaha Nebraskan, January 17, 1855.[121] On March 13, with the approval of a joint resolution which may be read in the Laws, Resolutions and Memorials, John H. Sherman and Joseph B. Strickland became the official printers of the Territory; and "An Act to provide for Printing and Distributing the Laws of Nebraska Territory," also approved on March 13, stipulated that a thousand copies of the laws and resolutions of the first legislature be printed. Two of the thousand copies are listed as a "present" in Additions Made to the Library of Congress, Since the First Day of November, 1855. November 1, 1856 (Washington, 1856).[122] They are still on the Library shelves, along with a third copy received by transfer from another Government agency in 1911. The Library received its copy of the Journal of the Council in 1867 and its copy of the Journal of the House of Representatives probably not much later in the 19th century.[123] The Statute Law Book Company sold the Library Governor Izard's Annual Message for $22 in October 1935.

[Pg 74]

South Dakota

In 1858 the Dakota Land Company sent out from St. Paul to Sioux Falls a newspaper editor named Samuel J. Albright, a printer named J. W. Barnes, and a printing press which Albright later insisted was the original Goodhue press (see above, p. 68), despite conflicting accounts of its history. If his testimony is correct, the same press introduced printing in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. It appears to have been first used at Sioux Falls to print a small election notice dated September 20, 1858; in the following summer, it was used to print South Dakota's first newspaper, The Democrat.[124]

Establishment of the Territory of Dakota in 1861 attracted a second Dakota press to the new Territorial capital at Yankton. The earliest Dakota, or South Dakota, printing in the Library of Congress is from the newspaper associated with that press, The Dakotian, first published on June 6, 1861, by Frank M. Ziebach and William Freney of Sioux City, Iowa. The Library's earliest holding is the 13th number, which is dated April 1, 1862, and exhibits the paper's motto: "'Let all the Ends thou aims't at, be thy Country's, thy God's and Truth's.'—Wolsey." This number follows upon a transfer of the editorship and proprietorship to Josiah C. Trask of Kansas, who announces,

By using fine print, Trask was able to present much material in this four-page issue. Among its contents are the text of the Governor's message to the first Territorial legislature and several U.S. laws passed by the first session of the 37th Congress. The lead editorial, "What We Mean to Do," contains the following statement of policy regarding the Civil War:

The editorial concludes with an appeal to support the paper:

A Library of Congress bound volume contains an incomplete but substantial run of The Dakotian from April 1, 1862, to December 17, 1864, without any marks of provenance. In addition the Library owns a file of South Dakota's third newspaper, The Dakota Republican, beginning with volume 1, number 31, published at Vermillion on April 5, 1862. This newspaper has for its motto "Our Country If Right, If Wrong, God Forgive, But Our Country Still!" The Library's issue of April 12, 1862, is inscribed "Wm H James"—this would be William Hartford James of Dakota City, Nebr., who served as Acting Governor of Nebraska in 1871-1872—and some of its 1868 and 1869 issues are inscribed "Dept of State." All of[Pg 75] these papers are accounted for in A Check List of American Newspapers in the Library of Congress (1901).

(The Dakotian)

From the year 1862 the Library also possesses four books printed at Yankton all bearing the imprint of Josiah C. Trask, Public Printer: Council Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Dakota, to which is Prefixed a List of the Members and Officers of the Council, With Their Residence, Post-Office Address, Occupation, Age, &c.; House Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Dakota, to which is Prefixed a List of the Members and Officers of the House ...; General Laws, and Memorials and Resolutions of the Territory of Dakota, Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly, Commenced at the Town of Yankton, March 17, and Concluded May 15, 1862. To Which are Prefixed a Brief Description of the Territory and its Government, the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, and the Act of Organizing the Territory; and Private Laws of the Territory of Dakota, Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly....[125] Single copies of the Council and House journals were in the Library by 1877. The Library has four copies of the General Laws and Private Laws, bound together as issued; two copies are probably 19th-century accessions, the third came from the Department of Interior in 1900, and the fourth was transferred from an unspecified Government agency in 1925.

[Pg 76]

Nevada

Joseph T. Goodman, editor of the Territorial Enterprise. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

Nevada owes its first printing to W. L. Jernegan, who in partnership with Alfred James established a weekly newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise, at Genoa, then in western Utah Territory, on December 18, 1858. Jernegan had transported his printing equipment across the Sierras from Yolo County, Calif.[126]

The earliest Nevada imprint in the Library of Congress dates from 1862, the year after Nevada's establishment as a separate Territory: Second Annual Message of Governor James W. Nye, to the Legislature of Nevada Territory, November 13, 1862. Together with Reports of Territorial Auditor, Treasurer, and Superintendent of Public Instruction. Printed at Carson City by J. T. Goodman & Co., Territorial printers, this publication has 48 pages, not including the title page printed on its yellow wrapper. Joseph T. Goodman was not only involved with official printing at this time, but he was also editing the Territorial Enterprise, which was then located at Virginia City and had become a daily paper. He is perhaps best remembered[Pg 77] for launching Mark Twain on a literary career when he employed him as a reporter in August 1862.[127]

Governor Nye's Second Annual Message covers an important period of national history. Strongly pro-Union, it gives an optimistic account of the year's events in the Civil War and bestows high praise on Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862: "As an engine of war, its formidability is a powerful warrant of early peace, and as a measure of humanity, the enlightened world receives it with acclamations of unbounded joy." Part of the message concerns expected consequences from a bill recently passed by Congress authorizing construction of a Pacific Railroad, which would profoundly affect life in Nevada:

The inscription "Library Depr State" on the Library of Congress copy indicates it must have been submitted to the Department of State, which in 1862 was still in charge of the United States Territories. A date stamp on its wrapper suggests that it was transferred to the Library of Congress by December 1900, while a stamp on page 2 reveals that it was in custody of the Library's Division of Documents in September 1907.

[Pg 78]

Arizona

(The Weekly Arizonian)
[Click on image for larger view.]

Printing began in Arizona with the establishment of The Weekly Arizonian, at the mining town of Tubac, on March 3, 1859. The Santa Rita Mining Company, which owned this newspaper, had imported the first press from Cincinnati, and the first printers are said to have been employees of the company named Jack Sims and George Smithson.[128]

The Library of Congress file of the Arizonian starts with the issue of August 18, 1859, the earliest example of Arizona printing now held by the Library. The paper had removed from Tubac to Tucson shortly before that date under rather dramatic circumstances. Edward E. Cross, its first editor, vigorously opposed a movement in favor of separating Arizona from New Mexico and organizing it as an independent territory. In attacking population statistics put forward by Sylvester Mowry, the leader of that movement, Cross impugned Mowry's character, whereupon Mowry challenged him to a duel, which was fought with rifles on July 8 without injury to either party. Mowry subsequently purchased the printing press and moved it to Tucson. Under a new editor, J. Howard Wells, the Arizonian's positions were completely reversed.[129]

The issue of August 18 supports the candidacy of Sylvester Mowry for delegate to Congress, in an election scheduled for September 1. In view of past events it was understandable that the paper should encourage a heavy vote, not only to demonstrate the unity of Arizonians desiring Territorial status, but also to indicate the extent of the population. The following short article relates to the recurrent topic of numbers:

In the same issue is a notice illustrating the production difficulties characteristic of a frontier press:

When examined as recently as 1932, a Library of Congress binding contained 10 issues of the Arizonian from the year 1859, beginning July 14; however, that early issue has been missing from the binding at least since 1948. One mark of provenance occurs among the remaining issues: an inscription on the issue of August 18, the upper half of which has been cut away but which unquestionably reads, "Gov Rencher." The recipient was Abraham Rencher (1798-1883), a distinguished North Carolinian who was serving as Governor of the Territory of New Mexico in 1859. By whatever route, these issues reached the Library early enough to be recorded in A Check List of American Newspapers in the Library of Congress (1901).

(Column from Arizonian)

[Pg 80]

Colorado

The earliest examples of Colorado printing are the first numbers of two competing newspapers, which were issued at Denver on April 23, 1859, only about 20 minutes apart.[130] Taking precedence was the Rocky Mountain News, published by William N. Byers & Co. and printed with equipment purchased in Nebraska. Its printers were John L. Dailey of Ohio, a member of the company, and W. W. Whipple of Michigan.[131]

The Library of Congress recently acquired its earliest example of Colorado printing, a broadside entitled Laws and Regulations of the Miners of the Gregory Diggings District, attributed to the Byers & Co. press. Printed sometime after July 16, 1859, it is one of but two located copies of the first extant Colorado imprint other than a newspaper or newspaper extra.[132] The laws, passed at miners' meetings on June 8 and July 16, apply to the district named for John Gregory, whose successful prospecting helped to stimulate the famous Pike's Peak gold rush. They were placed in historical context by Peter C. Schank, assistant chief of the American-British Law Division in the Library of Congress, in an article announcing this acquisition:

The lower margin of the Library's copy is inscribed, "Favor of Stiles E Mills, July 20th 1863." Neither the identity of Mr. Mills nor the intervening provenance has been established. In recent years this copy belonged to Thomas W. Streeter (1883-1965) of Morristown, N. J., owner of the most important private library of Americana assembled during the 20th century. The Library of Congress paid $2,800 for the broadside at that portion of the Streeter sale held by Parke-Bernet Galleries on April 23-24, 1968.[134]

Previously the Library's first example of Colorado printing was the second issue of a small newspaper sheet, The Western Mountaineer, published at Golden City on December 14, 1859. This newspaper was printed on the same press, actually the first to reach Colorado, that under different ownership had lost the close race to print the first newspaper at Denver. Gold is a prominent topic in this particular issue, which includes an interesting account of the prospector, George Andrew Jackson, based on information he himself supplied. The Library's copy seems to have been detached from a bound volume, probably before its listing in A Check List of American Newspapers in the Library of Congress (1901). Penciled on its front page are the name "Lewis Cass [Esquire?]" and what appears to be another name beginning with "Amos." Lewis Cass was Secretary of State at the time of publication.

[Pg 81]

(Laws and Regulations of the Miners of the Gregory Diggings District)
[Click image for larger view]

[Pg 82]

Wyoming

The oldest relics of Wyoming printing are June and July 1863 issues of the Daily Telegraph, published at Fort Bridger in what was then the Territory of Utah. The printer and publisher of this newspaper was Hiram Brundage, telegraph operator at the Fort, who had previously been associated with the Fort Kearney Herald in the Territory of Nebraska.[135] No printing is known to have been performed in Wyoming between 1863 and 1867, with the possible exception of a disputed imprint dated 1866,[136] and the first permanent Wyoming press dates from the founding of the Cheyenne Leader in September 1867.

The earliest example of Wyoming printing in the Library of Congress is a 24-page pamphlet printed at Green River by "Freeman & Bro., book and job printers" in 1868: A Vocabulary of the Snake, or, Sho-Sho-Nay Dialect by Joseph A. Gebow, Interpreter. Second Edition, Revised and Improved, January 1st, 1864. It was printed on the press of the Frontier Index, a migratory newspaper which commenced when the Freemans bought out the Fort Kearney Herald in Nebraska. This press moved westward from place to place as the Union Pacific Railroad penetrated into southern Wyoming, and it stopped at Green River for about two months in 1868.[137]

The first edition of Gebow's Vocabulary was printed at Salt Lake City in 1859, and the first printing of the second edition at Camp Douglas, Utah, in 1864. The vocabulary proper is prefaced only by the following statement:

Even for those unfamiliar with the native dialect, the words and phrases in English can be beguiling. Among the phrases chosen for translation are "Go slow, friend, don't get mad" and "You done wrong."

(A Vocabulary of the Snake, or, Sho-Sho-Nay Dialect by Joseph A. Gebow, Interpreter. Second Edition, Revised and Improved, January 1st, 1864.)

The present Library of Congress copy is inscribed to the Smithsonian Institution, and to judge from a date stamp it was added to the Smithsonian Library by May 1870. Later it was transferred to the Library of Congress through the Smithsonian Deposit (see above, p. 52). It is in an old library binding with the original printed wrappers bound in.

[Pg 83]

Montana

Authorities do not agree on when or by whom Montana's first printing was undertaken. It was either at Bannack or Virginia City, both gold-mining towns, probably in October 1863.[138]

The earliest Montana imprints in the Library of Congress were printed at Virginia City in 1866 by John P. Bruce, who owned The Montana Democrat and was designated Public Printer. Of these, the first may be an eight-page pamphlet, Reports of the Auditor, Treasurer, and Indian Commissioner, of the Territory of Montana. The latest document incorporated in the text is dated February 22, 1866, and the pamphlet was printed in the office of The Montana Democrat probably not long after that date. Most likely the second Montana imprint in the Library is the Message of Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, to the Legislature of Montana Territory, Delivered on the 6th Day of March, 1866. Three thousand copies were ordered, according to a printed note on the eighth and final page of this work. Neither of these two imprints bears any mark of provenance, and both appear to have entered the Library before the turn of the century.

Another early example of Montana printing in the Library is the 22d number, dated April 12, 1866, of The Montana Democrat, a sizable four-page sheet displaying the paper's motto: "Be faithful in all accepted trusts." It is addressed in pencil to the State Department. From about the same time the Library can boast two copies of Laws of the Teritory [sic] of Montana, Passed at the Second Session of the Legislature, 1866. Beginning March 5, 1866, and Ending April 14, 1866, a work of 54 pages. Although copy one is imperfect, lacking pages 49-54, it is of interest for the penciled inscription on its title page: "President Johnson."

(REPORT OF THE AUDITOR OF THE TERRITORY OF MONTANA.)

The Library of Congress also owns three copies of a celebrated Montana book published at Virginia City in the same year by the proprietors of The Montana Post press, S. W. Tilton & Co.: The Vigilantes of Montana, or Popular Justice in the Rocky Mountains. Being a Correct and Impartial Narrative of the Chase, Trial, Capture and Execution of Henry Plummer's Road Agent Band, Together With Accounts of the Lives and Crimes of Many of the Robbers and Desperadoes, the Whole Being Interspersed With Sketches of Life in the Mining Camps of the "Far West;" Forming the[Pg 84] Only Reliable Work on the Subject Ever Offered the Public. The author, Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale, was an Englishman who served Virginia City as a teacher and as editor of the Post, where his work originally appeared in installments. This first edition in book form contains 228 pages of text. The Library date-stamped copy one in 1874. Copy two was deposited for copyright in 1882, the year that D. W. Tilton put out a second edition. Copy three bears the signature of Henry Gannett (1846-1914), geographer of the U.S. Geological Survey and at the time of his death president of the National Geographic Society. It contains a "War Service Library" bookplate and an "American Library Association Camp Library" borrower's card (unused). The Library of Congress received the copy from an unknown source in 1925.[139]

[Pg 85]

North Dakota

FRONTIER SCOUT. Capt. E. G. Adams, Editor. LIBERTY AND UNION. Lieut. C. H. Champney, Publisher Vol. 1. FORT RICE, D. T., AUGUST 10, 1865 No. 9.

As early as 1853 a printing press is said to have been at the St. Joseph mission station, site of the present town of Walhalla, but there is no evidence that the press was actually used there. The first confirmed North Dakota printing was done on a press which Company I of the 30th Wisconsin Volunteers brought to Fort Union in June 1864. In July of that year a small newspaper, the Frontier Scout, made its appearance at the fort, and extant issues name the Company as "proprietors" and identify (Robert) Winegar and (Ira F.) Goodwin, both from Eau Claire but otherwise unknown, as publishers.[140] Possibly antedating the Frontier Scout is a rare broadside notice which either issued from the same press (not before June 17) or else could be the first extant Montana imprint.[141]

With its early North Dakota newspapers the Library of Congress has a facsimile reprint of the Frontier Scout, volume 1, number 2 (the first extant issue), dated July 14, 1864. The Library's earliest original specimen of North Dakota printing is a copy of the Frontier Scout, volume 1, number 9 in a new series of issues at the paper's second location, Fort Rice. Dated August 10, 1865, this issue names Capt. E. G. Adams as editor and Lt. C. H. Champney as publisher. The Library's copy is printed on a four-page sheet of blue-ruled notebook paper.

The contents of the August 10 issue are almost entirely from the pen of Captain Adams, who saw fit to run the statement: "Every article in the paper is original and sees the light for the first time." A long poem about Columbus, which he entitled "San Salvador," occupies most of the front page. More interesting is a second-page editorial headed "Indian Impolicy," rebuking the authorities in Washington for not allowing General Sully a free hand in his current operations against the Indians (whom the editor calls "these miserable land-pirates"). From this issue one gains an impression that Fort Rice must have been a dreary post. The following is under date of August 6 in a section captioned "Local Items":

The Library of Congress obtained its copy of this issue of the Frontier Scout through an exchange with the South Dakota Historical Society in November 1939.

[Pg 86]

Alaska

Printing is not known to have been undertaken by the Russians in Alaska,[142] nor can a broadside notice of 1854 printed by an English searching party aboard H.M.S. Plover at Point Barrow[143] be properly considered as Alaskan printing. The first printing in Alaska evidently followed its transfer to United States rule on October 18, 1867.

Despite the absence of a bibliography or trustworthy history of early Alaskan printing, it seems safe to say that the earliest imprints were the orders issued by the Military District of Alaska beginning with General Orders No. 1, dated October 29, 1867.[144] The District headquarters were at Sitka. There is no statement on the orders about place of printing, but it is difficult to imagine how they could have been printed elsewhere than Alaska and still have served their immediate purpose.

The earliest Alaskan printing in the Library of Congress is a series of general orders dating from April 11, 1868, to July 1, 1870. These orders, printed as small sheets and leaflets, are mostly of a routine character, the majority reporting courts-martial held at Sitka. In the General Orders No. 1, of April 11, 1868, Jefferson C. Davis announces his assumption of command of the Department of Alaska, which superseded the Military District of Alaska on March 18, 1868, and he names the members of his departmental staff. The orders are printed on different kinds of paper, including blue-ruled, and many of them carry official signatures in manuscript. General Orders No. 13, of December 31, 1868, is stamped: "Received Adjutant Gen'ls Office Apr 6 1870." The whole series is bound into a volume, now destitute of both covers, which was weeded from the Army War College Library sometime after World War II. The National War College transferred it to the Library of Congress in or about 1953.

Since the facts surrounding the Army press have yet to be documented, it may be well to consider the civilian printing of Alaska also. This apparently began with the initial issue of The Alaskan Times, dated April 23, 1869, and printed on a press obtained from San Francisco.[145] The Times ceased publication in 1870. Apart from the general orders of 1868-70, the earliest Alaskan printing in the Library is its file of The Sitka Post beginning with the second issue, dated November 5, 1876. The Post, published in a small six-page format on the 5th and 20th of each month, was the second newspaper to be printed in Alaska. Neither the Times nor the Post identifies its printer.

Featured in the November 5 issue is "The Cavalry Fight at Brandy Station," an extract from L. P. Brockett's The Camp, the Battle Field, and the Hospital (Philadelphia, 1866). Following this is a forceful editorial on "The Indian Campaign," which advocates committing a greater number of U.S. troops to the war against the Sioux. Certain advertisements in this issue are noteworthy because they relate to the paper itself. One is on the fourth page:

Another appears on the last page:

And there is a brief appeal at the end of the last page:

[Pg 87]

(Orders issued by the Military District of Alaska)

The Library of Congress file of the Post is in an old Library binding and extends from number 2 without break to the 14th and final number, dated June 5, 1877. The first page in the volume bears a Library date stamp of 1877. Also on the first page is the signature "M. Baker," preceded by the words "Purchased by" in a different hand. Thus the file was apparently assembled by Marcus Baker (1849-1903), a noted cartographer and writer on Alaska who was employed from 1873 to 1886 by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Some issues are addressed in pencil to individual subscribers, three of whom can be positively identified from company muster rolls at the National Archives as members of the 4th Artillery, U.S. Army, stationed at Sitka. They are "Ord[nance] Serg[ean]t [George] Go[l]kell"; "H[enry] Train," a corporal in Company G; and "W[illiam] J. Welch," a bugler in Company G.

Transcriber's Notes

The images have not been cleaned up in order to keep the worn look of the old documents. The texts within the images have not been transcribed with the exception of some titles. Image descriptions, added for convenience, are within parentheses below the images. Captions found in the original book are not enclosed in parentheses.

All [sic] notes were from the original book.

Retained spelling variations found in the original book.