Part 3

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.

Louisiana

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.

[Footnote 28: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, _Early Printing in New Orleans_ (New Orleans, 1929), p. 25-26 and 88. McMurtrie mistakenly locates the original at the New York Public Library, which owns a photostat copy.]

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_.

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 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.

[Footnote 29: See no. 12 in Marcus A. McCorison's _Vermont Imprints 1778-1820_ (Worcester, 1963).]

[Footnote 30: No. 3146 in U.S. Library of Congress, _Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Compiled with Annotations by E. Millicent Sowerby_ (Washington, 1952-59). See also no. 498.]

[Footnote 31: Imprint information supplied in McCorison, no. 47.]

[Footnote 32: See Chilton Williamson, _Vermont in Quandary_ (Montpelier, 1949), p. 133. On Townsend's divulging secret intelligence to the British in April 1781, see J. B. Wilbur, _Ira Allen_ (Boston and New York, 1928), p. 183-186.]

[Footnote 33: See W. W. Parker, _Henry Stevens of Vermont_ (Amsterdam, 1963), p. 21.]

Florida

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:

TO OUR PATRONS.

We are under the disagreeable necessity of issuing this number of the Gazette, in its present form, owing to a very lengthy advertisement, (occupying seven columns) being ordered out the moment the paper was ready for the Press. It being a personal controversy between Mr. _William Robertson_, and Messrs. _Hernandez, Kingsley_ and _Yonge_, Esquires, and a reply to Mr. Hernandez's publication of last week, our readers would not have found it very interesting. Its publication was countermanded on account of an amicable arrangement being made by the parties about one o'clock this day.

We hope this will be a sufficient apology to our subscribers for the manner in which the Paper appears, as it is impossible for it to be issued this day in any other way, being short of hands. We pledge ourselves another instance of the kind shall never occur--and assure the public we feel much aggrieved at the imposition. The advertisement of Mr. Wm. Robertson, headed "_Caution_" and the reply by J. M. Hernandez, Esq. will be discontinued after this week, and no further altercation between the parties will be permitted thro' the medium of this Press.

The printed portions of this early issue include an installment of a "Historical Sketch of Florida," extracts from various newspapers, and among others the printer's own advertisements: "COMMERCIAL BLANKS, For Sale at this Office. _Also_, Blank Deeds, Mortgages, &c. &c." "Blank Bills of Lading, For Sale at the Gazette Office" and "BOOK AND JOB PRINTING, Of every description, executed at this Office." In this century the Library bound the 10 issues into a single volume. Those dated November 24 and December 1 are addressed in ink to the Department of State at Washington.

From the same year the Library of Congress holds 13 issues of _The Floridian_, published at Pensacola beginning August 18, some of which are also addressed to the Department of State. From this year, too, the Library possesses _Ordinances, by Major-General Andrew Jackson, Governor of the Provinces of the Floridas, Exercising the Powers of the Captain-General, and of the Intendant of the Island of Cuba, Over the Said Provinces, and of the Governors of Said Provinces Respectively_, printed at St. Augustine by Edes. This pamphlet-sized volume was advertised as "just published" in the September 15 issue of the _Florida Gazette_; and the Library's copy, one of two extant,[35] was autographed twice by "John Rodman Esquire" at St. Augustine. Since he once added the designation "Collector" to his name, he is readily identified as the person who placed the following announcement in the November 24 issue of the _Gazette_: "JOHN RODMAN, Attorney & Counsellor at Law, May be consulted on professional business, at his Office in the Custom-House."

[Footnote 34: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, "The Beginnings of Printing in Florida," in _The Florida Historical Quarterly_, vol. 23 (1944-45), p. [63]-96.]

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

Maine

Benjamin Titcomb and Thomas B. Wait introduced printing in the District of Maine, then part of Massachusetts, with the first issue of _The Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser_, dated January 1, 1785. Titcomb was a native of Falmouth, now Portland, who had gained his experience at Newburyport, and Wait was formerly employed at Boston.[36]

The Library of Congress possesses nine issues of _The Falmouth Gazette_ from this first year of printing in Maine. Of these the earliest is a partly mutilated copy of the second issue, dated January 8 and featuring a moralistic essay "On Entrance into Life, and the Conduct of early Manhood." This issue contains one piece of news, relayed from a Boston paper, that has importance for American printing history, namely, the arrival in this country from Ireland, "that land of gudgeons," of Mathew Carey, destined to become a leading printer and publisher at Philadelphia. Since the Library of Congress copy is inscribed "Mess^{rs} Adams & Nourse printers," it is interesting to note that one of the Falmouth news items was reprinted in their Boston paper, _The Independent Chronicle_, for January 20. Similarly, the Library's copy of the August 13 issue of the _Gazette_ is addressed in manuscript to the famous printer Isaiah Thomas at Worcester, and it retains his editorial markings for the reprinting of two sections--a news item and a poem on atheism--that subsequently appeared in the September 1 and September 8 issues of _Thomas's Massachusetts Spy; or, The Worcester Gazette_. It was largely by means of just such borrowing amongst themselves that most early American newspapers were put together.

Four of the Library's nine issues, including the Isaiah Thomas copy, were purchased from Goodspeed's Book Shop for $13.50 in 1939. Four of the remaining five, including the very earliest, appear from their physical condition to have a common provenance. The five were listed initially in the 1936 edition of _A Checklist of American Eighteenth-Century Newspapers in the Library of Congress_.[37]

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

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

Kentucky

The printing history of Kentucky begins with the August 11, 1787, issue of a Lexington newspaper, _The Kentucke Gazette_. John Bradford of Fauquier County, Va., established this paper in partnership with his younger brother, Fielding. They purchased their press at Philadelphia in the spring of 1787 and transported it to Lexington by way of Pittsburgh, where the first press to cross the Alleghenies had been active since the preceding summer.[38]

The earliest Kentucky imprint in the Library of Congress is _The Kentucke Gazette_ for March 1, 1788. Like five other issues of the paper, available at the Library in facsimile, this original issue opens with "Extracts from the journals of a convention begun and held for the district of Kentucky at Danville in the county of Mercer on the 17th day of September 1787." The extracts are resolutions looking towards the separation of Kentucky from Virginia, and the following one accounts for their publication in this paper:

[Resolved][39] That full opportunity may be given to the good people of exercising their right of suffrage on an occasion so interesting to them, each of the officers so holding elections, shall continue the same from day to day, for five days including the first day, and shall cause these resolutions to be read immediately preceeding the opening of the election at the door of the courthouse, or other convenient place; and that Mr. Bradford be requested to publish the same in his Kentucky Gazette, six weeks successively, immediately preceeding the time of holding said elections.

At a time for important decisions _The Kentucke Gazette_ served as a means of airing different opinions on statehood, independence, and constitutional questions. A long second portion of this March 1 issue is an essay on liberty and equality signed by "Republicus." Critical of certain sections of the proposed Federal Constitution, he opposes a bicameral legislature, fears undue influence of the Congress over State elections, and denounces any condoning of slavery. The remainder of the issue includes an announcement of the ice breaking up on the Ohio River, a report of an Indian raid, and an advertisement in this vein: "I have been told that a certain Jordan Harris asserted in a public and very positive manner, that I had acknowledged myself a liar and a scoundrel in a letter to maj. Crittenden." The writer, Humphrey Marshall, concludes that if said letter is published, "the public will then see who is the liar and the scoundrel." This early issue bears the name of the subscriber Richard Eastin, one of the first justices of the peace in Jefferson County.[40]

The Library's only other examples of Kentucky printing from 1788 are eight additional issues of the _Gazette_, for November 8 through December 27, which have been detached from a bound volume and are still joined together. These belonged to Walter Carr, who was serving as a magistrate in Fayette County by 1792 and who in 1799 attended the convention to form the second constitution of Kentucky.[41] Nothing more can be ascertained about the acquisition of these holdings than that the March 1 issue is first listed in the 1912 edition and that the later issues are first listed in the 1936 edition of _A Checklist of American Eighteenth-Century Newspapers in the Library of Congress_.

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

[Footnote 39: Brackets in text.]

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

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

West Virginia

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

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

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

Access of the proposed town to the Potomac River is the clue to why this broadside relating to an otherwise remote location in Pennsylvania should have been printed in this part of West Virginia.

The _Charter_ is the third recorded West Virginia imprint apart from newspaper issues, and the Library of Congress has the only known copy. Written on the verso is: Col. Morr[----] And other early hands have written there, "Hopwoods deeds" and "no body will have his Lotts."

At the Anderson Galleries sale of Americana held at New York on November 9, 1927, the presumed same copy of the _Charter_ was sold from the library of Arthur DeLisle, M.D. (1851-1925), librarian of the Advocates' Library in Montreal.[43] It fetched $11. The Library of Congress obtained it in October 1935 from the Aldine Book Shop in Brooklyn for $35.

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

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

Tennessee

The printers George Roulstone and Robert Ferguson introduced the first Tennessee printing at Hawkins Court House, now Rogersville, with the November 5, 1791, issue of _The Knoxville Gazette_. Both men came to the Tennessee country, or Southwest Territory, by way of North Carolina. Their newspaper remained at Hawkins Court House until October 1792, while Knoxville, chosen as the seat of the Territorial government, was being constructed.