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The Philadelphia Printer: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Businessman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Peter J. Parker
Peter J. Parker
Affiliation:
Teaching Fellow in History, University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract

This composite portrait of a “community” of printers reveals the composition of their trade and the unique mixture of businessman and publicist they represented in early America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , Spring 1966 , pp. 24 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1966

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References

1 MS Bill, William Young to Edward Solt, February 22, 1759, Young Correspondence, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP).

2 Evans, Charles, American Bibliography (14 vols., New York, 1941–1959), III, 446–47.Google Scholar

3 Thomas Van Dyke to William and Thomas Bradford, October 7, 1770, Colonel William Bradford Papers, HSP; William Strahan to David Hall, February 21, 1763, Strahan Letters, HSP.

4 The Pennsylvania Gazette lists 24 sheriff's sales in the issue of January 21, 1768, and this number climbs to 37 on January 23, 1770. See Jensen, Arthur L., The Maritime Commerce of Colonial Philadelphia (Madison, 1963), 122–23Google Scholar, for the experiences of other importing businesses.

5 Thomas, Isaiah, The History of Printing in America (Worcester, 1810)Google Scholar, in Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, V (1874), 212.

6 Cornelius to Thomas Bradford, January 24, 1771, Bradford Papers, HSP.

7 Franklin & Hall MS “Account Currant … Pennsylvania,” 1757, Hall Papers, American Philosophical Society (APS).

8 William Bradford to ( ) Curtis, Chester, Pa., November 4, 1773, Bradford Papers, HSP.

9 D. Douglas to Thomas Bradford, June 2, 1770, Bradford Papers, HSP.

10 William Bradford, MS day books, 1742–1760, 1780–1791, passim, Bradford Papers, HSP.

11 Wolf, Edwin II, “The First Books and Printed Catalogues of the Library Company of Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (PMHB), 78 (1954), 45–70.Google Scholar See column 2, Table 2 for this pattern of growth.

12 One must use considerable caution with the Evans list. Lawrence Wroth noted in his The Colonial Printer (2nd ed., Portland, Me., 1938) that Evans found only one title for 4.7 actually struck off. Daniel Boorstin suggests the reason: “The most important evidence of everyday reading tastes is self-destroying. Hornbooks, primers, and newspapers tend to be used up, and the items best preserved … are preserved because they are not much used.” The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York, 1958), 413.

13 This, at least, was the opinion of Francis Hopkinson who called Dunlap, Hall, and the Bradfords “correct printers” in the preface to his Errata: or, The Art of Printing Incorrectly (Philadelphia, 1764).

14 Joseph Jackson, “John Dunlap,” DAB, V, 514–15. On Dunlap's Irish properties in Strabane, County Tyrone, see his MS letter to Robert Rutherford (Strabane) of May 12, 1789, in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, # T 1336/1/20. Dunlap's competition: Hall's Gazette, William Goddard's Chronicle, the Bradfords' Journal, and Christopher Saur's Germantauner Zeitung.

15 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain (New York, 1958), 51–66.Google Scholar

16 Isaiah Thomas, Massachusetts Spy, February 10, 1775, quoted by Schlesinger in Prelude to Independence, 304.

17 Dr. Thomas Bond, for example, was permitted to be ten years in arrears. Labaree, Leonard W., et al. (eds. ), The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, III (1959), 158n.Google Scholar

18 Pennsylvania Journal, December 21, 1742.

19 These calculations are based on composition estimates in Francis Bailey's waste book in the HSP, and advertising rates of 1/10½ for a new ad, and 11 pence for each additional insertion, which figures were quoted by both Dunlap and Hall.

20 Robert Aitken, MS Account Book (daybook), Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP), June 2, 1771.

21 David Hall to Alex. Kincaid, London, March 17, 1764, David Hall Letter Book, APS.

22 Aitken, MS Account Book, LCP.

23 Frequent notations occur in the day books of Robert Aitken that Aitken sold Bibles and practical works on the installment plan, charging no interest. See, for example, the entries in June 1771, and following, which record the transactions with one Mr. Kinsley, carpenter.

24 The invoice enclosed by David Hay of Dublin to the Bradfords in a letter of April 13, 1770, when checked against the British Museum catalog, shows this time-lag. Bradford Papers, HSP.

25 Minute of November 14, 1763, LCP MS Minute Book.

26 See, for example, the book orders of David Hall to Johnson and Unwin, December 15, 1759, David Hall Letter Book, APS; William Strahan, July 2, 1760 and December 1760, Strahan Letters, HSP; or the Bradfords' invoice from David Hay, April 13, 1770, Bradford Papers, HSP. Milton appears in three of these orders, Telemachus in three, and the Turkish Spy in two – all ordered in quantities of at least a dozen.

27 Kany, Robert Hurd, “David Hall: Printing Partner of Benjamin Franklin” (Ph. D., dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 1963)Google Scholar, on deposit at APS, 78.

28 David Hall to Hamilton and Balfour, Edinburgh, March 27, 1759, Hall Letter Books, APS.

29 Bridenbaugh, Carl, “The Press and the Book in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia,” PMHB, 65 (1941), 15–16.Google Scholar

30 Bristol, Index to Printers, 20.

31 A. Everett Peterson, “Robert Bell,” DAB, II, 161–62.

32 Sombart, Werner, “Medieval and Modern Commercial Enterprise,” in Lane, F. C. and Riemersma, J. C. (eds.), Enterprise and Secular Change (Homewood, Ill., 1953), 28.Google Scholar

33 Aitken to Jeremy Belknap, December 22, 1783, quoted by Willman, and Spawn, Carol, “The Aitken Shop – Identification of an Eighteenth Century Bindery and Its Tools,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, VII (New York, 1963), 431.Google Scholar

34 Francis Bailey, MS Waste Book, HSP.

35 Robert Aitken, MS Account Book, LCP.

36 Franklin Papers, III, 263–67.

37 David Hay to the Bradfords, April 13, 1770, Bradford Papers, HSP.

38 Robert Aitken, MS Account Book, LCP, 148.

39 There are many colonial and post-war editions of Dilworth. The 1782 Crukshank (Phila. ) edition is used here, 70–91.

40 Franklin Papers, III, 263–67.

41 Clark, Aubert J., The Movement for International Copyright in Nineteenth-Century America (Washington, 1960), 3.Google Scholar

42 James Muir, bookbinder, MS Day Book, HSP.

43 Thomas, History of Printing, V, 36. Franklin, Autobiography, 53.

44 Wroth, Lawrence C., “Book Production and Distribution from the Beginning to the War Between the States,” in Lehman-Haupt, Hellmut, The Book in America (New York, 1939), 66Google Scholar; Brown, H. Glenn, “Philadelphia Contributions to the Book Arts and Book Trade, 1796–1810,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XXXVII (1943), 278.Google Scholar

45 David Hall to Johnson and Unwin, London, March 18, 1763, and following. Hall MS Letter Books, APS, II, 58.

46 Francis Bailey, Waste Book, HSP.

47 Heartman, Charles F., The New England Primer issued prior to 1830 (New York, 1934)Google Scholar, lists editions chronologically.

48 Brigham, History … of American Newspapers, II, 824–993, passim.

49 Evans, American Bibliography, VIII, 26–27.

50 Column 16, Table 2.

51 Donaldson to Bradford, June 12, 1783, Bradford Papers, HSP.

52 Mathew Carey to Patrick Byrne, October 22, 1788, Mathew Carey MS Letter Book, I, 74–75, Lea and Febiger Collection, HSP.

53 Entry of August 13, 1789, Aitken Account Book, LCP.

54 Weems to Carey, July 10, 11, 14, 1780, from Wilmington; July 30 from Burlington, N. J.; July 31 from Bristol, Pa.; August 2 from Trenton, and finally August 20 from N.Y.C. An earlier letter, April 14, 1780, mentioned the paucity of suppliers in Norfolk, Petersburg, and Fredericksburg. Lea and Febiger Collection, HSP.

55 William Miller and William Coles to Thomas Bradford, July 15, 1783, Bradford Papers, HSP; See advertisements in Pennsylvania Packet, June 1, 1787.

56 For example, Young, Steward, & McCulloch or Dunlap & Claypoole.

57 Brigham, History of American Newspapers, II, 824–993, passim.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., II, 930–31.

60 American Museum, I,1; II, 77.

61 Sutherland, Stella H., Population Distribution in Colonial America (New York, 1936), 134.Google Scholar

62 Taylor, George R., The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York, 1958), 18.Google Scholar

63 Bristol, Index to Printers, 53, 138.

64 Brigham, II, 934, 938.

65 Ibid., II, 930–31.

66 Evans, American Bibliography, XIII, XIV, passim.

67 The virulence of the Yellow Fever epidemic may have convinced Bailey that it was expedient to move to Lancaster, where he owned property. Nevertheless, after the epidemic had subsided, he continued to maintain an office in Lancaster, and took on his son Robert as partner and office manager for the re-opened Philadelphia office.

68 Ibid., passim; Jane Aitken letters to Bittenhouse and Robert Patterson, Aitken, APS.