Library of Congress

“ Until this war is ended by a suppression of the Rebellion, unless a change is forced upon us, we shall walk with men of ALL parties, in an earnest, honest purpose to do what we can to strengthen the arms of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, in whatever acts he may deem best for the people who have called him to his present proud position. ”

“ The welfare of the Country is in a great measure Intrusted in your hands and it is indeed a matter Worthy of your best Thoughts and chiefest cares. It should be Ingraven, if not upon the Walls of your House, yet upon each of your Hearts, Ne quid Detrimenti Respublica Capiat, Let the Common-wealth receive no damage. It is in your power partly to frame Laws for the Direction & Government of the people of the Land. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These advantages, with our practical experience in the art, the aid of health and a free good will, and a moderate share of the other requisites, we hope will enable us to give the Chronicle and Register a place in the front rank of well executed, useful and instructive newspapers.... We have two new Washington Printing Presses, with all the recent improvements attached. We defy any establishment in the Union to produce superior pieces of machinery in the way of Hand Presses. ”

“ 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:
At the Shawanoe station is a printing press in operation, under the management of Jotham Meeker, Missionary for the Ottawas. ”

“ For as every Man is a Debtor to his Country, and we are not born only for our selves, so I tho't I could not do a more useful Service for the Province in which it has pleased God to cast my Lot for several years past, than to make such an Edition of the Laws, as might be of general Use to all the Inhabitants thereof ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MEN OF ENTERPRISE! TAKE NOTICE! The SITKA POST Is the only Paper printed in Alaska. It is the best medium of Advertising. It circulates in Sitka, Wrangel, Stikeen, Kodiak; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, Cal; Baltimore, Md, and Washington, D. C. Send your Advertisements to J. J. Daly Editor, Sitka Post, Sitka, A.
And there is a brief appeal at the end of the last page:
Wanted—More subscribers and contributors to this paper. ”

“ 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:
Shall I now turn my self to the General Assembly of the Colony at present met together. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 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") . ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 first thing that anyone will notice who opens this volume is that Pope began the practice of topical-alphabetical arrangement to which the lawyers of Illinois have now been accustomed for more than a hundred years. ”

“ The Overland Mail Company alone, employs some seventy five Americans, between here and the Rio Grande, and they justly think, they have a right to be included, as well as the farmers living on the San Pedro and the Miembres rivers, it is hardly fair to leave them out. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”