Part 2

In spite of Purdie’s efforts, the trend was toward a competitive press. A rival _Virginia Gazette_ was set up in Williamsburg in 1766 by William Rind, a Maryland printer who was more sympathetic to the protesting colonists than Royle and Purdie were thought to be. The motto of his paper cannily proclaimed “Open to all Parties but influenced by None.” Governor Francis Fauquier at this time reported to the British Board of Trade: “The late printer to the Colony [Royle] is dead, and as the press was then thought to be too complaisant to me, some of the hot Burgesses invited a printer [Rind] from Maryland. Upon which the foreman [Purdie] to the late printer, who is also a candidate for the place, has taken up the newspaper again in order to make interest with the Burgesses.” Jefferson, who in 1766 was completing his study of law, and was a friend and admirer of Fauquier’s, recalled later: “We had but one press, and that having the whole business of the government, and no competitor for public favor, nothing disagreeable to the governor could be got into it. We procured Rind to come from Maryland to publish a free paper.”

The hot-spirited Rind was elected public printer by the House of Burgesses. However, the job being too much for one printer alone, the Assembly in 1769 authorized both _Gazette_ publishers, Rind and Purdie, to print a large volume containing the Acts of Assembly then in force. Rind continued in office until his death in 1773 when his widow, Clementina Rind, took over the business as Virginia’s first woman printer.

The number of weekly newspapers in Williamsburg increased again in 1775 when Purdie, who had taken John Dixon into his business nine years before, withdrew in favor of William Hunter, Jr., the son of William Parks’s successor, and established his own _Virginia Gazette_. When the Revolution broke in 1776, Williamsburg thus had three newspapers, each called the _Virginia Gazette_. Rind’s _Gazette_ expired by 1777, after a succession of managers, and Purdie’s (which was continued after his death in 1779 by Clarkson and Davis) ceased publication in 1780. Dixon formed a new partnership with Thomas Nicolson in 1779 after William Hunter, Jr., had joined the British forces. Their newspaper was called the _Phoenix Gazette and Williamsburg Intelligencer_, but it expired the following year when these printers followed the seat of government to establish Richmond’s first press.

So pronounced was the decline in Williamsburg’s fortunes that from the year of the government’s removal until forty-four years later, in 1824, Williamsburg had no newspaper. Old copies of the three _Gazettes_ were treasured reminders of the town’s past glory. The name, _Virginia Gazette_, and some of the tradition of Parks’s skill were remembered, but little was done to perpetuate them until the late Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin in 1926 invited Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to restore Williamsburg. As a by-product of that movement, the proud masthead of William Parks’s original _Virginia Gazette_ was revived in 1930 by the late Joseph A. Osborne and his family. Likewise, in the realm of paper manufacture, typography, book production, and bookbinding, Colonial Williamsburg has revived the workmanship of William Parks and his confreres. In such publications as _The Williamsburg Art of Cookery, or, Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion_, published in 1938, and _A Brief & True Report concerning Williamsburg in Virginia_, first published in 1935, Colonial Williamsburg emulated type, paper, format, and binding of similar volumes from Parks’s press. And at its Printing Office, it has sought to recapture the manner and mood of a colonial printing shop as a part of its program to teach twentieth-century Americans more about the lives and ideas of their pre-Revolutionary ancestors.

_TECHNIQUES OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PRINTING_

In considering the craft of printing, it is important to remember that the western world has enjoyed the invention of movable type only since the middle of the fifteenth century. For several centuries thereafter, the new development was regarded with suspicion by church and state, which, as we have seen, feared the freedom of thought that would ensue if reading matter were readily available. Even in the eighteenth century, an era of enlightenment, printing was suspect.

An equally difficult obstacle facing the colonial printer was the cost of his press, his type, his paper, and his equipment. Eighteenth-century industry was largely home operated, based on the capital and ingenuity of one family. Yet the cost of equipping even the modest one- or two-press shops of eighteenth-century America was a burden for most people of the working class. In his famous _Autobiography_, Benjamin Franklin gives a vivid picture of the immense labor and thought that lay between a printer’s apprenticeship and ownership. To reach the level of success that Franklin and Parks achieved required not only skill but unusual industry and shrewdness.

Eighteenth-century appraisals of several printing houses indicate an average value of £100 to £125 currency. We may suppose that William Parks set up shop in Williamsburg in 1730 on some such scale as this, adding type and other equipment to the value of £359 Virginia currency or £288 sterling at the time his equipment was sold to William Hunter in 1751. Undoubtedly Parks’s three presses and his type constituted his chief equipment. The presses presumably were of the English common sort, which had then been in standard use in the British Isles for nearly one hundred years. The type was an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, the letters having been cast in Holland or England, and probably was valued at more than the rest of Parks’s facilities together. For the rest, equipment consisted of such printers’ staples as poles for drying paper, “shooting sticks,” quoins, planes, type cases, type racks, composing sticks, lye troughs, wetting troughs, and other paraphernalia. For bookbinding the printer needed other instruments, some of which could be made in Williamsburg. The majority of the tools, however, were imported from Great Britain or Holland.

As he received each font or size of type, the colonial printer would distribute it in a set of four wooden trays, two for Roman type and two for italic. These contained partitions for each “character,” or “sort,” as the letters and numerals were called. Such partitions varied in size depending on the frequency of use of each letter or numeral, and they were so placed as to permit the printer to assemble type with a minimum of movement. (Because capital letters are usually arranged in the upper two cases and small letters in the lower two, printers traditionally refer to them as “upper case” or “lower case,” respectively.)

In setting a page of printed matter the colonial printer rapidly plucked the necessary characters, one by one, from their compartments in the upper and lower cases. He placed them, with proper spacing, in a “composing stick” set to the proper length of line. When the stick was full he transferred the type to a shallow wooden tray called a “galley.” Having assembled in the galley enough type to form a page, the printer “tied it off,” i.e., bound a piece of string tightly around the whole mass. Then he could slide the assembled page off the galley onto the surface of the “imposing stone,” a flat marble working surface. Such transfers of type—especially from composing stick to galley—were often attended with accidents. One of the printer’s commoner frustrations was to have a stick, a galley, or even a whole page form of type dropped and “pied.”

On the imposing stone a rectangular wrought-iron frame or “chase” was then placed around the type, and the finished page was locked into place with wooden blocks and wedges called “furniture” and “quoins.” After being locked, it could be picked up and moved to the printing press without danger of the type falling out of place.

The eighteenth-century printer used paper made by hand from linen rags, importing it from Great Britain in the earlier years while domestic mills were gradually developing. Because such paper was uneven in texture and poorly sized, it was dampened before being put on the press to provide a more pliant working surface. For ink, Parks and his contemporaries used a combination of lampblack and varnish, which remain the chief constituents of printer’s ink today. Lampblack was obtained by burning various materials and collecting the carbon in flues, while varnish was made of pine resin boiled in linseed oil until a clear liquid resulted. Most printers “rubbed” or mixed the lampblack and varnish thoroughly. If the mixture was too thick, it could be thinned with linseed oil or whale oil. If red ink was desired for two-color printing, vermilion could be substituted for lampblack.

Once the printer or his apprentices had set the type, pulled a proof, “made up” the type into pages with the proper spacing and ornaments, and then locked it into forms by means of furniture and quoins, he placed his form on the press and adjusted it to get the most even impression. Then he was ready to begin the actual process of printing. Whereas printing is commonly done today by automatic presses, fed with paper either mechanically or by hand, it had to be done one sheet at a time in the eighteenth century. Two men usually worked the press, and the printing of a single impression required approximately a dozen different manual operations.

To ink his press, preparatory to printing, the “beater” spread the necessary amount of ink on his mixing block and rubbed it to an even consistency—that of stiff molasses—with a wooden brayer. With two leather-covered balls attached to wooden handles, he then collected ink from the stone, beat the “ink balls” together to distribute the sticky fluid over their surfaces, and then with a rapid rocking and rolling motion, transferred it onto the type. Then the “puller” placed his paper on a skin-covered wooden frame called a tympan and folded over it another light covered frame, called a frisket. These two frames in turn folded down onto the bed of the press, where the type was locked in its iron form or chase.

The actual impression was made by rolling the bed of the press, complete with folded tympan and frisket, beneath the platen, which was suspended from a large metal screw. By applying the force of the screw, the puller pressed the paper firmly against the inked type. The size of the printed matter might vary from a small bookplate or lottery ticket to a sheet twelve by eighteen inches, which was roughly the page size of Purdie and Dixon’s _Virginia Gazette_ of 1759. Whatever the dimension, the beater had to ink his form and the puller had to close and open his press again each time a surface was printed. Since the platen was so small, only one-half of a two-page wide newspaper could be printed at a time on the early press, and a repeat operation was required to complete one side of the sheet. Thus the press was sometimes called a “two-pull” press.

Two experienced pressmen, working at full speed, could turn out a “token” or 240 printed sheets (with two pulls and on one side only) per hour. Such a speed could not long be maintained; the practical output was closer to 200 sheets per hour. But wages were low, working hours were long, and the printer could keep his force on the job until the work was done.

_THE PRINTER AND HIS MEN_

Because of its close association with literature, the craft of printing has generally attracted a more intellectual type of craftsman and enjoyed a prestige greater than most others. Over the centuries, master printers have jealously enforced the standards of their predecessors, insisting today, as in the eighteenth century, on a long apprenticeship for learners. Upon completion of the stipulated learning period and achievement of the required proficiency, the apprentice then, as now, became a journeyman. A mature and experienced worker at this stage, he was qualified to take his leave of his master, if he desired, and to practice his craft where he wished. When such a printer engaged in work for himself and employed others, he became a master printer.

The apprentice system was in some respects a great boon to eighteenth-century craftsmen, for it provided cheap labor in return only for training and the necessities of life. Each master took into his establishment a number of youngsters, hoping that some might prove of “bright genius and good disposition.” To these he obligated himself to provide food, shelter, and in most cases, clothing. The apprentice thereupon became a member of the printer’s household, performing any chores assigned to him in the home, shop, or printing office. But although apprentice labor was cheap, it was unskilled and often inept. Apprenticeships were frequently broken off, and only the relatively few youths who were suited for the work and desirous of learning the “art and mystery” of the craft kept at it until accepted as journeymen at the age of twenty-one.

Many accounts have come down to us of the abuses as well as the uses of the apprentice system. Runaways were frequent, as attested by advertisements such as the one William Parks ran in the _Virginia Gazette_ in 1745 for the return of a “smooth-tongued” apprentice “who makes Locks, and is dexterous at picking them.” Sometimes mere children were apprenticed by poorer families who were unable to support them. Isaiah Thomas, a New England printer, was indentured at the age of six. In return for his training and keep, he bound himself to avoid drunkenness and carnal pursuits and to serve his master until he became twenty-one. However, the majority of apprentices were indentured at fourteen, to serve until they reached man’s estate.

The apprentice system largely supplied the printer’s need for unskilled labor, but he could supplement it with slaves or with indentured servants. The latter were usually young Englishmen of the lower classes who had emigrated to America and who had bound themselves to a term of labor in return for their voyage. Unlike apprentices, however, they were not required to be taught to print.

Trained, or journeymen, printers were scarce in colonial times, and they seem to have been often on the go. Even master printers moved about frequently. William Parks had engaged in printing in three English towns and in Annapolis before coming to Williamsburg in 1730. William Rind, who established his paper in Williamsburg in 1766, came there from Annapolis. Of Williamsburg’s other master printers and journeymen, some were locally trained but others had been apprenticed in England.

_A NOTE ON THE PRINTING OFFICE_

Although the Printing Office of Colonial Williamsburg does not attempt precisely to re-create any particular colonial printing shop, it does represent the craft as it was practiced in the mid-1700s. Here the twentieth-century American is invited to pause and look about him. Perhaps, if he is in a receptive mood, he may sense the spirit of the talented William Parks, keeping a watchful eye over apprentices and journeymen while type is set, presses are inked, and impressions are pulled from the press. Perhaps he can discern some Virginia planter making his way to Parks’s bookshelf, to buy Allestree’s _The Whole Duty of Man_ or Bayly’s _The Practice of Piety_ to take with him to his plantation and read during winter evenings.

Entering the Printing Office, the visitor finds himself in a typical Williamsburg structure of the eighteenth century. Fireplaces on each floor of the shop warm the workers in cold weather and dry the printed sheets of paper hung on overhead racks. Many-paned windows provide most of the shop’s illumination during daylight hours, and also a place—in the bays on Duke of Gloucester Street—for the printer to post signs and samples of his work. At night and on dark days candelabra hanging from the ceiling and tin sconces against the walls hold candles whose smoky flames blacken the plaster as they help to light the working areas.

On the street floor are the post office, stationery, and bookselling counter—one of the important areas of the normal colonial printing office, since it combined three of the most important sidelines. Along with the shelves of books for sale, some bound in leather and some in temporary paper covers, there is a mail rack with slots for letters and newspapers.

On the same floor is the printer’s “counting room” or what would nowadays be called his “accounting department.” Here he kept the numerous business records called for by the cumbersome bookkeeping systems of that day, penned business letters, and perhaps wrote out in longhand the material he intended for publication in the _Virginia Gazette_. Eighteenth-century printers often engaged in several other businesses at the same time—importing goods of almost any kind, selling farm products on commission, and trying anything that might turn a penny.

Excavation of the Printing Office site and careful study of the surviving eighteenth-century foundations and brick flooring gave evidence—in the form of reinforced footings—as to where at least one press may have stood. This was in the lower floor of the building, where again today the shop’s printing operation is concentrated. There the three presses mentioned earlier occupy the center of the room, all of them in working order. Large racks for the storage of type line the wall, surmounted by open, slanting cases of type in current use. The cases contain a complete set of Caslon letters, from the diminutive Nonpareil (6-point) to Six Line Pica (72-point), which is one inch tall. Usually the printer employs the Pica (12-point) and English (14-point) sizes, which were customarily used in colonial times. He and his colleagues identified type sizes by name only; since the present point system was not in use then.

Printer’s ink and its ingredients—varnish, lampblack or vermilion, and linseed oil—are kept in saltglaze jugs. Other vessels contain drinking water, and the wetting trough is filled, ready for dampening paper before printing. On the floor, weighted boards atop stacks of wetted paper keep the sheets from curling as the dampness permeates evenly throughout the pile.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE Rights of the BRITISH Colonies,

Intended as an Anſwer to

_The Regulations lately made concerning the Colonies, and the Taxes impoſed upon them conſidered._

In a Letter addreſſed to the Author of that Pamphlet.

By _RICHARD BLAND_, of Virginia.

_Dedit omnibus Deus pro virili portione ſapientiam, ut et inaudita inveſtigare poſſent et audita perpendere._ Lactantius.

WILLIAMSBURG: Printed by Alexander Purdie, & C^o. MDCCLXVI.

Here the printer and his helpers set type, pull proofs and correct their galleys, make up pages on the marble imposing stone, prepare paper and ink, run off the job on one or more of the presses, and finally, redistribute the type to the cases. The printed sheets, in the meantime, may have to be hung on ceiling racks to allow both ink and paper to dry out.

In the small back shop, a separate building, the similarly cluttered bookbinding shop may be found. In it the bookbinder of today, working with the tools and methods of his eighteenth-century predecessors, sews together the printed and folded signatures that make a book, binds them in boards, and covers the boards—perhaps in elegantly decorated leather bindings. He may use marbled paper of his own making for end-papers or on the outer covers of smaller books. For tooling and lettering the cover he has a collection of brass dies, some of which are designed from lettering stamps excavated in the vicinity of his—and William Parks’s workshop.

_OUR PRINTING HERITAGE_

From the crude presses of Williamsburg came an ingredient essential to the movement toward American self-government and independence—the political pamphlet. In the world of the eighteenth century, devoid of radio, television, or the bulky daily paper, the substance of political debate came from such pamphlets. It was also an era which took its political philosophy seriously, and the author of a pamphlet could count on wide readership among the planter-aristocrats who controlled the machinery of government. Williamsburg, as the colony’s capital and its political and intellectual center, was the obvious city to lend its imprint to the speculations of Virginia’s pamphleteers.

One of the most significant early tracts was Richard Bland’s _An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies_, printed by Alexander Purdie in March 1766. Writing in the aftermath of the previous year’s fiery Stamp Tax debates, Bland vigorously proclaimed his belief in Locke’s doctrines of natural rights and natural law. Reprinted in London, Bland’s tract was evidence of the mounting sentiment for self-rule in the colonies. Bland’s _Inquiry_ was also a memorial to its author, a man who devoted much of his life to public service. An aged delegate to Virginia’s first state legislature in October 1776, Bland collapsed in the Williamsburg streets on his way to a session, and died hours later in the home of his friend, John Tazewell.