Part 4

The earliest Tennessee imprint in the Library of Congress is probably the eight-page official publication entitled _Acts and Ordinances of the Governor and Judges, of the Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio_, which according to Douglas C. McMurtrie "was certainly printed by Roulstone at Knoxville in 1793, though it bears no imprint to this effect."[44] Its contents, relating principally to the definition of separate judicial districts within the Territory, are dated from June 11, 1792, to March 21, 1793, and the printing could have been accomplished soon after the latter date.

The Library of Congress copy is one of those afterwards prefixed to and issued with a much more extensive work printed by Roulstone in 1794: _Acts Passed at the First Session of the General Assembly of the Territory of the United States of America, South of the River Ohio, Began and Held at Knoxville, on Monday the Twenty-Fifth Day of August, M,DCC,XCIV_. The Library's volume lost its 1794 title page at an early date, and it is the exposed second leaf, the title page of 1793, that bears the inscription, "Theodorick Bland June 1st 1799." Theodorick Bland (1777-1846) was to be chancellor of Maryland for many years. His correspondence preserved by the Maryland Historical Society reveals that he practiced law in Tennessee from 1798 to 1801. From such evidence as its Library of Congress bookplate, the volume would appear to have entered the Library around the late 1870's.

The earliest dated example of Tennessee printing in the Library is the _Knoxville Gazette_ for June 1, 1793, issued a month after Ferguson retired from the paper. The issue begins with a lengthy selection by Benjamin Franklin, which is prefaced in this way:

Messrs. _Printers_,

I beg you to publish in your next number of the Knoxville Gazette, the following extracts, from a narrative of the massacres in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania; of a number of friendly Indians, by persons unknown; written by the late Dr. _Benjamin Franklin_, whose many benevolent acts, will immortalize his memory, and published in a British Magazine,[45] in April 1764.

I am your obedient servant, W.B.

The subscriber was undoubtedly William Blount, the Territorial Governor appointed by President Washington in 1790, who perhaps hoped that the sympathy towards Indians expressed by Franklin might temper public reaction against Indian raids figuring so large in the local news. Readers of the same June 1 issue learned of such crimes as the scalping of a child near Nashville, and they may have been moved by the following paragraph which the editor interjected in the news reports:

The Creek nation must be destroyed, or the south western frontiers, from the mouth of St. Mary's to the western extremities of Kentucky and Virginia, will be incessantly harassed by them; and now is the time. [_Delenda est Carthago._][46]

Both this issue and the June 15 issue, the sole Library of Congress holdings of the _Gazette_ for the year 1793, are inscribed "Claiborne Watkins, esq^r." They probably belonged to the person of that name residing in Washington County, Va., who served as a presidential elector in 1792.[47]

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

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

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

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

Ohio

William Maxwell of New York, after failing to establish himself at Lexington, Ky., moved on to Cincinnati in the Northwest Territory and thereby became the first Ohio printer. His work at Cincinnati began with the November 9, 1793, issue of his newspaper, _The Centinel of the North-Western Territory_.[48]

The earliest known Ohio book, also printed by Maxwell, is the earliest example of Ohio printing to be found at the Library of Congress: _Laws of the Territory of the United States North-West of the Ohio: Adopted and Made by the Governour and Judges, in Their Legislative Capacity, at a Session Begun on Friday, the XXIX Day of May, One Thousand, Seven Hundred and Ninety-Five, and Ending on Tuesday the Twenty-Fifth Day of August Following_.... Dated 1796, "Maxwell's Code," as this book is sometimes called, was not the first publication of Northwest Territory laws, others having been printed at Philadelphia in 1792 and 1794.

The printer set forth a "Proposal" concerning the forthcoming work in the _Centinel_ of July 25, 1795:

W. Maxwell being appointed by the legislature to print for them 200 copies of their laws, he thinks it would be greatly conducive towards the instruction and common benefit of all the citizens to extend the impression to 1000 copies.... The price, in boards, to subscribers, will be at the rate of nineteen cents for every 50 pages, and to non-subscribers, thirty cents.[49]

He completed the volume in 225 pages, with numerous printed sidenotes that make it easy to consult. An incidental reference to printing occurs in a law for land partition (p. 185-197) which states that land proprietors "may subscribe a writing, and publish the same in one or more of the public News-papers printed in the Territory, in the State of Kentucky, and at the seat of government of the United States, for twelve successive weeks" in order to announce the appointment of commissioners to divide their property into lots. Subsequently, advertisements were to be placed in the newspapers for six weeks to announce a balloting or drawing for the subdivided lots.

The Library of Congress owns two copies of this Cincinnati imprint. One, lacking the title page and final leaf, is bound in a volume of unknown provenance, possibly obtained about 1912, containing four early editions of Northwest Territory laws. The other is a separate copy, lacking the last three leaves. This more interesting copy has two inscriptions on its title page, the words written uppermost posing some difficulty: "Ex Biblioth[eca] Sem[inari]i [----] S[anc]ti Sulp[icii] Baltimoriensis"; but they make clear that this copy once belonged to the Sulpician seminary founded at Baltimore in 1791 and now named St. Mary's Seminary. A number of similarly inscribed books still retained by the seminary were once part of a special faculty library that merged with the regular seminary library about 1880. Many books from the faculty library bear signatures of individual priests who were their original owners. Thus the second inscription "Dilhet" refers to Jean Dilhet (1753-1811), a Sulpician who spent nine years in this country and was assigned to the pastorate of Raisin River (then in the Northwest Territory, in what is now Monroe County, Mich.) from 1798 to 1804. During 1804 and 1805 he worked in Detroit with Father Richard, who later established a press there (see next section).[50] Its absence from the Library's early catalogs implies that the present copy was acquired sometime after 1875. Two date stamps indicate that the Library had it rebound twice, in 1904 and 1947.

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

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

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

Michigan

In 1796 John McCall, the earliest printer active in Michigan, issued at Detroit a 16-page Act of Congress relating to Indian affairs. Apart from blank forms printed on the same press before its removal to Canada in 1800, no other specimens of Michigan printing survive antedating the press that Father Gabriel Richard, the influential Sulpician priest, established at Detroit in 1809.

Entry number 2 in the _Preliminary Check List of Michigan Imprints 1796-1850_ (Detroit, 1942)[51] describes a 12-page publication said to exist in a unique copy at the Library of Congress: _To the Honourable the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States. Memorial of the citizens of the United States, situated north of an east and west line, extending thro' the southward bend of Lake Michigan, and by the Act of Congress of 30th April 1802 attached to, and made part of the Indiana Territory ..._ ([Detroit? 1802?]). This entry is, in bibliographical parlance, a ghost. Actually, the Library of Congress possesses the work only as a negative photostat of a manuscript document which is preserved at the National Archives.[52]

The earliest _bona fide_ Michigan imprint in the Library of Congress is _L'Ame penitente ou Le nouveau pensez-y-bien; consideration sur les ve'rite's eternelles, avec des histoires & des exemples ..._ printed at Detroit in 1809. The printer, James M. Miller, of Utica, N. Y., was the first of three operators of Father Richard's press. This particular imprint is the fourth item in a standard bibliography of the press, which calls it "the first book of more than 24 pages printed in Detroit or Michigan."[53] As a matter of fact, it is a very substantial work of 220 pages, albeit in a small duodecimo format. It is a reprint of a devotional book first published in France in the 18th century and attributed to a prolific Jesuit author, Barthélemy Baudrand (1701-87). As head of the Catholic Church in the area, Father Richard wanted to make such religious literature available to the largely French-speaking inhabitants.

The Library of Congress copy of _L'Ame penitente_, in a speckled calf binding of uncertain date, was obtained through a 1954 exchange with Edward Eberstadt & Sons. It had been offered in one of the bookselling firm's catalogs earlier that year for $500.[54]

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

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

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

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

Mississippi

Mississippi's first printer was Andrew Marschalk of New York, an Army lieutenant stationed at Walnut Hills, close to the eventual site of Vicksburg.[55] There, probably in 1798, he attracted attention by printing a ballad on a small press he had acquired in London. At the request of Governor Winthrop Sargent, Marschalk undertook in 1799 to print the laws of Mississippi Territory, and for that purpose he built a larger press at Natchez. Late in 1799 a second printer, Ben M. Stokes, purchased this press from Marschalk and soon commenced a weekly paper, _The Mississippi Gazette_. On May 5, 1800, James Green, a printer from Baltimore, introduced a rival paper at Natchez, _Green's Impartial Observer_.

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

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

Fellow-Citizens,

Of all the extraordinary performances I ever beheld, the late hand-bill, signed by eight members of our house of representatives, is the _most_ extraordinary--and I doubt not that it will be considered by the country at large as the legitimate offspring of the subscribers; being replete with that unauthorized assumption of power, and those round assertions so truly characteristic--propagated for the avowed purpose of 'undeceiving the people' in a matter of the first moment, and yet not containing one authenticated fact for them to found an opinion on--but resting all upon their mere _dictum_, penetrating into future events, and proclaiming what _shall be_ the decisions of legislators not yet elected.

His argument against his opponents' cost estimates touches upon certain fundamental issues, such as the threat of an aristocratic rule if the stipend for legislators is indeed kept very low. Towards the end he notes an instance of intimidation:

One thing more I would observe--a very threatening letter has been written to the printer denouncing vengeance on him, if he does not deliver up the author of "_the friend of the people_"--this I take to be an attempt to frighten and preclude further investigation, but it will be of little avail when the interests of my fellow citizens are so deeply concerned.

That James Green, although not named, is the printer of this second broadside can be demonstrated by typographical comparison with the January 24 and February 21, 1801 issues of _Green's Impartial Observer_, available at the Library of Congress.

The two broadsides cited are the only copies recorded in Douglas C. McMurtrie's _A Bibliography of Mississippi Imprints 1798-1830_ (Beauvoir Community, Miss., 1945).[56] They bear manuscript notations, in an identical hand, that suggest use in an official archive; and the earlier broadside is stated to be "from M^r Banks, Nov^r 12^{th} 1800." Sutton Bankes, one of the eight signers, is presumably referred to here. The second broadside has, besides a brief caption in this hand, a more elegantly written address: "His Excellency Winthrop Sergent Bellemont." Bellemont was one of Governor Sargent's residences near Natchez.

It is interesting that at the time Governor Sargent expressed himself privately on the earlier broadside as follows:

They [the members of the House of Representatives] are undoubtedly the proper Guardians of their own honour and Conduct, but nevertheless, will not take it amiss, in a Communication intended only for themselves, that I should observe it has always been Considered derogatory to the Dignity of Public Bodies, to notice anonymous writings, in the style and Manner of the Hand Bills,--it opens a broad Avenue to Retort and Satire, with many other obvious and unpleasant Consequences.[57]

[Footnote 55: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, _Pioneer Printing in Mississippi_ (Atlanta, 1932); and Charles S. Sydnor, "The Beginning of Printing in Mississippi," _The Journal of Southern History_, vol. 1, 1935, p. [49]-55.]

[Footnote 56: Nos. 11 and 12.]

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

Indiana

Elihu Stout, whose family moved from New Jersey to Kentucky in 1793, probably learned printing as an apprentice to Kentucky's first printer, John Bradford. He is known to have been in Bradford's employ at Lexington in 1798, and later he worked at Nashville. Invited by Governor William Henry Harrison to do the official printing for the Indiana Territory, Stout settled at Vincennes and began publishing his newspaper, the _Indiana Gazette_, on July 31, 1804.[58]

The Library of Congress' Indiana holdings begin with a copy of the second known imprint excepting newspaper issues, printed by Stout late in 1804: _Laws for the Government of the District of Louisiana, Passed by the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory, at Their First Session, Uegun_ [sic] _and Held at Vincennes, on Monday the First Day of October, 1804_.[59] In March 1804 Congress had divided the lands of the Louisiana Purchase into two parts, the southern part becoming the Territory of Orleans (ultimately the State of Louisiana), the northern and larger part becoming the District of Louisiana. As explained in the preamble to the first law in this collection, "the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory [were] authorized by an act of Congress to make Laws for the District of Louisiana." They possessed this special authority from March 1804 until March 1805.

Fifteen laws make up the 136-page work. They are written in plain language, and the 10th, "Entitled a law, respecting Slaves," is a particularly engrossing social document. To illustrate, its second provision is

That no slave shall go from the tenements of his master, or other person with whom he lives without a pass, or some letter or token, whereby it may appear that he is proceeding by authority from his master, employer or overseer, if he does it shall be lawful for any person to apprehend and carry him before a justice of the peace to be by his order punished with stripes, or not, in his discretion.

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

The Library has handsomely rebound its copy in ruby morocco. Formerly it must have been in a wretched state, evidenced by the extreme marginal deterioration of its now laminated pages. It contains the signature of James Mackay (1759-1822), a Scottish fur trader, surveyor, and explorer who was later remembered at St. Louis as "the first English speaking white man who ever came west of the Mississippi river," and who was appointed "Commandant of the territory of Upper Louisiana" in 1803.[60] When the territory passed from Spanish to American rule in 1804, he became a judge of the Court of Quarter Sessions,[61] in which capacity he would have needed the volume of laws. The Library's copy is one of six unrelated volumes that were purchased together for $750 from the Statute Law Book Company of Washington, D.C., in 1905.

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

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

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

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

Alabama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Missouri