Printing History

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I was looking at one of those “This Day In History” sites when this tidbit caught my book-loving attention:

September 25, 1639 – First printing press in America set up in Cambridge under the guarantee of Harvard College.

Wow, right?

First off, it goes to show what the Puritans valued. Nineteen years after establishing Plymouth Colony (eighteen years after half the original settlers died from malnutrition and disease!) they had a college and a printer. (In contrast, in was more than a century before Massachusetts began training up professional lawyers.)

 

The story itself is encompasses every hallmark of the Massachusetts colony in the 17^th century: death, remarriage, religious non-conformism, law suits, money, freedom of the press and the inherit contradictions of a community that made the individual conscience supreme – and then tried to control it. Also, as usual, it eventually winds up in Vermont, a “lawless backwater” populated by adventurers and Anglicans.

It begins with the Rev. Joseph Glover, who slipped into non-conformity (ie, against the Church of England) and decided to emigrate to the New World, bringing with him his family, men- and maidservants, and most importantly, a printing press, bought with his considerable funds and a kind of “friends of the Puritans” group. He also indentured a locksmith, Stephen Daye, to serve as the printer, and bought transportation for Daye’s family (and servants!)

Glover, alas, didn’t survive the trip, leaving Mrs. Elizabeth Glover the owner of the printing press and the indenture contract. Yes, dear readers, the first printing CEO in North America was a woman. Elizabeth, for reasons, ignored the house her late husband had had built in Boston, and instead purchased two existing homes in Cambridge, one for her household and the press, another for the Dayes.

A reproduction; no original copies survive.

The first product of the press, The Freeman’s Oath, was welcomed by the colony, although there were quite a few complaints about the quality of Daye’s work. Maybe don’t hire a locksmith as a printer? Later in 1639 he produced William Pierces’ Almanack and the next year, 1,700 copies of The Bay Psalm Book. Catechisms, sermons, schoolbooks, more almanacks – the Glover-Daye press was a hit.

 

 

Elizabeth Glover was also a hit with Henry Dunster, the President of Harvard. Hopefully, it was her good sense and affability, rather than her thriving business, multiple houses and eleven feather beds, that prompted him to propose in 1641. Her property, of course, became his, and her printing press was soon joined by a second imported from England.

The fact the college came to control the printing business was a lucky break – its reputation shielded the press, and no less than two legislative attempts to impose English-style licensing (where nothing was printed without the approval of an official censor) failed.

Elizabeth Glover passed away in 1643, followed not long after by several law suits as her sons from her first marriage tried to wrestle her property away from her second husband – and by extension, Harvard. They failed, but perhaps got some satisfaction when Dunster was kicked out of the college (and the colony) in 1654 for professing his belief in adult, rather than infant baptism. That individual conscience. What are you gonna do?

 

The Glover-Daye press itself continued to churn out reading material for the colony. Daye (briefly jailed for fraud and the object of more law suits) was replaced by professional printer Samuel Green, who spawned a whole family of printers across new England. One of his sons brought the physical press to New London, CT. in 1714, and from thence to New Hampshire and, eventually, Vermont, where it produced that colony’s first newspaper, The Vermont Gazette. The press was finally retired after 150 years of use – they built ‘em to last in those days. It can be seen (!) at the Vermont Historical Society in Montpelier. Road trip, anyone?