Benjamin Franklin’s Journey from Slaveholder to Abolitionist

Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Fathers, was a master printer, inventor, and statesman whose ideas helped shape the nation. He created the lightning rod, contributed to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and ran thriving printing establishments throughout the Colonies that spread news and sparked debate through his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and his Poor Richard’s Almanack. Yet, Franklin’s story includes a complex relationship with slavery. He owned slaves, profited from printing advertisements for slave sales, and initially accepted the system without question. However, Franklin’s willingness to change in response to new information set him apart. Influenced by his time in England, his work with the Dr. Bray’s Associates, and his observation of the education of an enslaved boy named King, Franklin transformed from a slaveholder into an advocate for abolition. It is essential to understand Franklin’s life as a printer, his evolving views on slavery, and the experiences that led him to challenge the institution he once supported.

Franklin the Printer: A Business of Words and Influence

Born in Boston in 1706, Benjamin Franklin moved to Philadelphia as a teenager and became a printer, a trade that defined his early success. In the 18th century, printers were vital, producing newspapers, books, and pamphlets that connected people across the colonies. Franklin’s print shop was a busy hub, creating the Pennsylvania Gazette, a leading newspaper, and Poor Richard’s Almanack, packed with clever sayings and practical advice. Printing was a labor-intensive trade, requiring printers to set tiny metal letters by hand, ink them, and press them onto paper. Franklin relied on apprentices, young men who were bonded to a master printer to learn the trade, and built a network of print shops by helping partners start their own businesses in cities like New York and Charleston, much like a modern franchise system. This approach made him wealthy and spread his influence, as his publications shaped colonial thought and fueled revolutionary ideas.

Franklin’s print establishments produced more than just news. It printed government forms, legal notices, and advertisements, including advertisements for the buying and selling of enslaved and indentured people. These ads were common in colonial newspapers, and Franklin profited from them, though no evidence suggests he used enslaved compositors, press operators, or bindery workers in his printing establishments. Instead, his apprentices and hired workers handled the printing. However, throughout his life, Franklin’s household included free, white servants and several enslaved servants of African descent. Among the enslaved servants were Peter and Jemima, a married couple, purchased by the Franklins sometime before 1750. After preparing a will in which Peter and Jemima would be freed in the event of Franklin’s death, Franklin and his son William left for London in 1757. They brought Peter and another enslaved manservant named King with them. Jemima stayed behind with Franklin’s wife, Deborah, and a young boy named Othello, who may have been Peter and Jemima’s son.  These household slaves performed tasks like cooking and cleaning, tying Franklin to slavery through his personal life and the ads his newspaper carried.

Franklin’s Early Acceptance of Slavery

In the 1700s, slavery was woven into the fabric of colonial life, with regional variations. In the South, like Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 slaves, enslaved people worked on large plantations growing tobacco and cotton. In the North, like Philadelphia, slavery was smaller-scale, with enslaved individuals serving as housekeepers, cooks, carpenters, or dock workers for wealthy families and businesses. Franklin, who became prosperous through printing, owned a few enslaved people, as was typical for successful Philadelphians, where owning slaves signaled wealth and status.

Franklin treated his slaves relatively well compared to some owners, allowing Peter and Jemima to live as a family and avoiding harsh punishments. However, owning people denied them freedom, and Franklin controlled their lives. In his 20s and 30s, Franklin gave little thought to slavery’s morality, viewing it as a standard part of society. His Pennsylvania Gazette regularly published ads for slave sales and runaways, which by the 1750s accounted for nearly a quarter of the paper’s advertisements, sometimes requiring extra pages to fit them all. Franklin transferred management of the Gazette to his partner, David Hall, in 1748, but the profits from those ads helped build his fortune, linking his printing success to the economy of slavery. 

Franklin’s Life in England: An Anglophile’s Awakening

Franklin was a true Anglophile, deeply admiring British culture, science, and politics, and he spent nearly 20 percent of his life in England, from 1757 to 1775, across two extended stays. In 1757, at age 51, he arrived in London as Pennsylvania’s representative to resolve disputes with British authorities. He brought his son William and two enslaved individuals: Peter, who served Franklin, and 11-year-old King, who served William. Franklin settled in a house on Craven Street, near London’s vibrant core, and immersed himself in British life. He met scientists, joined intellectual clubs, and wrote articles, gaining fame as a brilliant American. He held royal appointments, such as deputy postmaster for the colonies, and believed the British Empire could unite Britain and America for mutual prosperity.

In 1758, Franklin, William, and Peter traveled to Ecton, a village 60 miles northwest of London, to trace Franklin’s family roots. At the local church, the rector showed them a 200-year-old register recording the births, marriages, and deaths of Franklin’s ancestors. The rector’s wife took them into the churchyard and showed them several gravestones covered with moss. She produced a stiff brush and a water basin, which Franklin’s slave, Peter, used to scrub the gravestones, enabling the discovery of Franklin’s relatives and allowing William to copy their inscriptions. They also discovered that the Franklin family had owned a 30-acre plot in Ecton since at least 1555, and Franklin considered repurchasing it, reflecting his deep connection to England.

England also exposed Franklin to antislavery ideas. In 1758, he met Anthony Benezet, a Philadelphia Quaker who visited London and condemned the cruelty of slavery. British Quakers, early leaders in the abolition movement, urged Franklin to reconsider his views. In 1759, Franklin visited schools run by the Dr. Bray’s Associates, an English group educating enslaved and free Black children. He was struck by Black students’ ability to read, write, and learn math, challenging his earlier belief that Black people were incapable of education. These encounters began to shift his perspective, setting the stage for his later transformation.

King’s Education: A Catalyst for Change

The experiences of King, the enslaved boy Franklin and William brought to London, may have contributed to Franklin’s evolving views. In 1758, shortly after the Ecton trip, King, then about 12, ran away from William in London. In 1760, Franklin wrote to Deborah, explaining that King had fled to Suffolk, eastern England, and was living with a Christian woman who taught him to read and write. This woman enrolled King in school, where he learned to play the violin and French horn, and other skills Franklin described as “accomplishments more useful in a servant.” King adopted the name John King, signaling his pursuit of independence.

Ultimately, Franklin, who valued such learning, left King in Suffolk, likely recognizing that education had unlocked King’s potential. This experience contradicted Franklin’s earlier view that Black people were “uncivilized” and unfit for learning, prompting him to rethink their capabilities.

Franklin as a Reluctant Revolutionary

Franklin was a reluctant revolutionary, initially favoring compromise with Britain over independence. He cherished the British Empire, believing it could benefit Britain and the colonies if America were granted greater freedom. In 1765, he supported the Stamp Act, a tax on paper goods, thinking it was reasonable. However, his Philadelphia constituents explained its harm to colonial businesses, prompting Franklin to testify against it in Parliament in 1766, helping secure its repeal and earning him acclaim in America.

By the 1770s, Britain’s policies, like the Tea Act, convinced Franklin that independence was necessary. This shift estranged him from his son William, a Loyalist who remained devoted to Britain as governor of New Jersey. Their disagreement over the Revolution led to a permanent rift, and they rarely spoke after 1776, illustrating the personal cost of Franklin’s changing loyalties.

Antislavery Influences in London and Paris

Franklin’s time in England and later in Paris exposed him to prominent antislavery thinkers who further shaped his views. In London, beyond Benezet and the Quakers, Franklin met Granville Sharp, a lawyer whose 1772 case involving an enslaved man, James Somerset, resulted in a ruling that limited slavery in England. Sharp’s advocacy inspired Franklin to see slavery as incompatible with justice. In Paris, where Franklin served as America’s ambassador from 1776 to 1785, he encountered Enlightenment philosophers like Condorcet and La Rochefoucauld, who condemned slavery and championed universal rights. These ideas resonated with Franklin, reinforcing his belief that slavery contradicted the principles of liberty he helped enshrine in the Declaration of Independence.

The Dr. Bray’s Associates and the Power of Education

Franklin’s involvement with Dr. Bray’s Associates was a cornerstone of his transformation. In 1759, he observed their schools in London, and in 1760, he helped establish one in Philadelphia for Black children, both free and enslaved. Witnessing Black students excel in reading, writing, and math disproved the notion that they were intellectually inferior, a belief Franklin had once held. This experience solidified his conviction that education could unlock potential, regardless of race.

Franklin’s ideals were shared by his wife, Deborah. In a letter dated August 9, 1759, she tells her husband of her desire to educate Othello, Peter and Jemima’s son. Deborah details that she “went to hear the Negro Children catechised at Church. There were 17 that answered very prettily indeed, and 5 or 6 that were too little, but all behaved very decently. Mr. Sturgeon exhorted them before and after the Catechising. It gave me a great deal of Pleasure, and I shall send Othello to the School.”

By this time, Franklin saw Othello as deserving of schooling, much like the students at the Dr. Bray’s school or John King in England. This shift wasn’t mere generosity—it marked Franklin’s recognition that Black children, given opportunities, could achieve as much as their white peers, challenging the foundations of slavery.

Franklin’s Antislavery Advocacy

By the 1780s, Franklin’s views had fully evolved. In 1787, at age 81, he became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, one of America’s first abolitionist organizations. In 1790, he sent a petition to Congress urging the end of slavery, arguing it violated the Declaration’s principle that “all men are created equal.” He also penned a satirical essay mocking slaveholders’ justifications, using his printer’s wit to expose their flaws. Unlike Jefferson, whose $107,000 debt and Virginia’s restrictive laws prevented him from freeing most of his 600 slaves, Franklin’s slaves were freed upon his death in 1790. Pennsylvania’s 1780 gradual emancipation law facilitated this, but Franklin’s decision reflected his commitment to abolition. He left funds for Black schools in his will, underscoring his belief in education as a path to equality.

Franklin’s Printing Legacy and Transformation

Franklin’s printing career was central to his life, giving him a platform to shape ideas. His Pennsylvania Gazette profited from slave ads, tying him to slavery’s economy, but it also amplified his voice as he began to oppose the system. His franchise-like network of print shops, built on apprentices rather than enslaved labor, spread his influence and distinguished his work from that of southern planters like Jefferson, who relied on large enslaved workforces. Franklin’s willingness to change was remarkable. Early in life, he accepted slavery, but encounters with antislavery thinkers like Granville Sharp, Condorcet, and La Rochefoucauld, the success of the Dr. Bray’s schools, and King’s education opened his eyes. His rift with William over loyalty to Britain mirrored his broader shift from Anglophile to revolutionary and from slaveholder to abolitionist.

Benjamin Franklin’s journey with slavery reflects his capacity for growth in a world where owning people was common. As a printer, he built a business that profited from slave ads and owned slaves like Peter, Jemima, Othello, and King, seeing slavery as normal in his youth. Yet, his time in England, where he met antislavery advocates, and in Paris, where Enlightenment ideas flourished, changed him. King’s education in Suffolk, the Dr. Bray’s schools, and Franklin’s wish to educate Othello proved Black people’s potential, dismantling his earlier prejudices. By 1790, Franklin used his voice to demand the end of slavery, freeing his slaves and supporting Black education. His reluctant revolutionary path, marked by a split with his Loyalist son, shows the personal stakes of change. Franklin’s story teaches that even someone tied to a wrong system can learn, rethink, and act when faced with new truths, leaving a legacy of words and deeds that helped America move toward freedom.

5 Things You Never Knew About the Declaration of Independence: All But Forgotten

Imagine this: a document that shakes the world, gets read from pulpits and tavern steps, inspires soldiers to fight a king… and then… poof. It slips quietly into the background like an old newspaper tucked under a stack of bills.

That’s pretty much what happened to the Declaration of Independence after 1776. It served its purpose as a bold wartime manifesto, justifying the break from Britain and rallying support abroad. But once the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, the document itself virtually disappeared. For the next couple of decades, it faded, almost forgotten, while the young nation tried to figure out how to actually govern itself.

In those early years, the Declaration wasn’t the sacred icon we picture today. July 4th was marked here and there, maybe a parade in Boston or a dinner in Philadelphia where they’d raise glasses to liberty, but these were scattered, local affairs. (1) Nothing like the nationwide celebrations we know now. No mandatory school recitations, no framed copies hanging in every courthouse. The original engrossed parchment, the big handwritten sheet with John Hancock’s bold signature, was treated like any other government record. It was rolled up, stuffed in chests, and carted from city to city as Congress moved. Sometimes it just sat forgotten in a corner while clerks walked past.(2)

Why the drop-off? The country had shifted into survival mode. The war was over, but the real work was just beginning. While the Declaration gathered dust, printers stayed busy with the more immediate business of nation-building.

Building a Nation

The Articles of Confederation, adopted by Congress on November 15, 1777, became the first operating manual for the new republic. To get it ratified, Congress needed to spread the text far and wide. Much like the Declaration, the Articles were first engrossed on parchment. To distribute the information, Congress contracted with printer Francis Bailey, the same printer we discussed earlier in this series, to produce the first official pamphlet copies in 1777.(3) Those pamphlets were sent to state legislatures along with urgent letters urging ratification. States then reprinted them locally, in Boston by John Gill, in Williamsburg by Alexander Purdie, and elsewhere.(4) These were more bureaucratic, simple, functional pamphlets meant for delegates, governors, and assemblies, not dramatic rallying broadsides like the Declaration in 1776. The Declaration’s soaring words felt distant as the same printing networks that had once amplified revolutionary ideals were now focused on the gritty work of trying to make a weak confederation function, or, as it turned out, exposing why it didn’t.

Then came the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Delegates hammered out a stronger national framework amid fierce debates over representation, federal power, a bill of rights, and slavery. A printer we’re familiar with helped with the process: John Dunlap and his partner David Claypoole secretly printed the first major draft on August 6, 1787.(5) This “working” document was distributed only to the delegates and featured wide margins so they could take notes and make revisions during the intense debates.

U. S. Constitution (first printing) with annotations by Elbridge Gerry https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=2146&pid=17

In that early draft, the text still referred to the delegates as representatives of “the States of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode-Island,” and so on, emphasizing a loose confederation. But by the final version, signed on September 17, the famous opening had changed to “We the People of the United States.” In just six weeks, the vision had shifted dramatically, from a mere alliance of separate states to a unified nation with a single, stronger federal government.(7)

Just like the Declaration and the Articles, the Constitution began as a formal handwritten document. After four grueling months of work, the delegates ordered a large parchment version to be engrossed by Jacob Shallus, the assistant clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. He worked through the weekend of September 16 and finished the four-sheet parchment in time for the final session. On Monday, September 17, thirty-nine of the fifty-five appointed delegates signed it, adding their names under George Washington’s as president of the Convention.

That same day, to spread the proposed Constitution for ratification, the delegates turned to their official printers, Dunlap and Claypoole, and ordered 500 copies of the final text. These included the signers’ names, two accompanying resolutions, and a cover letter from Washington addressed to the president of Congress. The printers worked through the night, and by the morning of September 18, the official broadside-style sheets were ready and distributed to each delegate, several copies apiece, to carry home or send to state governments.7 The very next day, September 19, Dunlap and Claypoole used the same type to produce the first public printing in their newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, thus placing the full Constitution before ordinary readers for the first time and sparking widespread debate.(8)

Printing once again bridged the gap: the engrossed parchment symbolized official approval and unity, the official printed copies enabled transmission to the states, and the newspaper edition made the words accessible and actionable for the ratification fight ahead. This pattern, engrossed parchment for solemn record and printed copies for dissemination, shows how the young nation’s founders relied on the printing trade to turn ideas into shared reality.

While the parchment had been signed, the Constitution still needed to be ratified. The fight for ratification filled newspapers with arguments between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, debates over a bill of rights, and discussions of slavery. During that process, Benjamin Franklin, who had just become president of Pennsylvania’s abolition society, stayed silent on slavery, knowing any push to end it would sink the fragile union before it started. But once the Constitution was ratified, Franklin went public. In 1789, he issued a strong “Address to the Public” from the abolition society, calling slavery an “atrocious debasement of human nature” and urging gradual emancipation with real support for freed people. Then, in early 1790, he signed and forwarded a petition to the new Congress asking them to use every power they had to discourage the slave trade and promote liberty for the enslaved.(9) It was his last major act before he died that April.

The Constitution became the living blueprint for the country, the thing everyone talked about. The Declaration, by comparison, felt like yesterday’s news, a wartime footnote while the real work of building a republic took center stage.

It took well over two decades after its printing for the Declaration to really matter again in American life. Yet the ideas refused to stay quiet. They crossed the ocean.

American Ideals Cross the Ocean

Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s principal author, carried its principles to France as U.S. Minister starting in 1784. There, he collaborated closely with the Marquis de Lafayette, the Revolutionary War hero who had fought alongside Washington, to help shape the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789. That document echoed American ideals of natural rights, liberty, equality before the law, and popular sovereignty, proclaiming that men “are born and remain free and equal in rights.”(10) Thomas Paine also played a major role. The author of Common Sense arrived in France, defended the Revolution in his Rights of Man against critics, and spread Enlightenment ideas of rights and republicanism while serving in the French National Convention.(11) So while the Declaration faded from prominence at home, its core ideas, through Jefferson’s work with Lafayette and Paine’s writings, directly fueled and influenced the French Revolution.

Back home, the Declaration’s comeback began around 25 years after its adoption, tied to the messy election of 1800, one of the ugliest in U.S. history. The campaign pitted John Adams against Thomas Jefferson. Pro-Jefferson newspapers went all in, tying him to 1776 to paint him as liberty’s champion. They hailed him as “the framer of the Declaration of our Independence” and “the immortal JEFFERSON,” the man who had “penned the words that broke the chains.”(12) It was clever politics. Invoking the Declaration reminded voters of shared revolutionary values. When Jefferson won and delivered his inaugural address in 1801, he echoed the spirit of 1776, speaking of “equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.”(13) Historians mark this moment as when the Declaration began evolving from a wartime breakup letter into a foundational American creed. While its ideas were remembered and repeated, the physical document itself was largely overlooked.

“You had better remove the records.”

It was over a decade later, amid the War of 1812, often called America’s “second war of independence,” that the very document that had declared American independence faced its greatest threat.

In August 1814, British forces landed in Maryland, routed the Americans, and marched on Washington. Their aim was to burn public buildings as retaliation for American forces torching the capital of British Canada, York, modern-day Toronto, the year before. Secretary of State James Monroe, having spotted the advancing redcoats, sent an urgent message to President Madison, “The enemy are in full march for Washington.”(14) This sent the city’s residents into a panic. Government officials fled, residents were evacuated, and chaos reigned as the British approached.

There’s a story about First Lady Dolley Madison, who refused to leave the White House until key items were saved. She directed staff to pack important papers into trunks and insisted on rescuing the large portrait of George Washington from the East Room. With the frame too heavy and screwed to the wall, she ordered it broken apart, the canvas cut out and rolled up, ensuring the iconic image of the first president did not fall into enemy hands to be mocked or destroyed.(15)

While this was taking place at the White House, employees at the State Department were more concerned about the postscript to Monroe’s note. It read, “You had better remove the records.” State Department clerk Stephen Pleasonton took Monroe’s warning seriously. Acting on his own initiative, and with help from clerks like John Graham and Josias King, he moved fast to preserve what he called “the valuable papers of the Revolutionary Government.”(16)

Some officials dismissed the danger. Secretary of War John Armstrong insisted the British wouldn’t seriously target or torch the capital, calling evacuation efforts unnecessary panic. Pleasonton later recalled that Armstrong made it a point to tell him that he was being foolish because the British were not coming to Washington, so there was no reason for alarm. “I replied that we were under a different belief,” Pleasonton later recalled. “It was part of prudence to preserve the valuable papers of the Revolutionary Government.”

Pleasonton went out and bought some coarse, durable linen from a nearby shop and had it quickly fashioned into sturdy bags. He then began packing the State Department’s treasures: treaties, laws, Washington’s correspondence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Amid the mounting chaos, as clerks scrambled and smoke drifted closer, it’s been reported that Pleasonton glanced up and spotted something almost unbelievable: the original Declaration of Independence, still hanging in its frame, forgotten on a State Department wall. It had been overlooked in the panic. Without hesitation, he smashed the glass, extracted the parchment, rolled it tightly, and tucked it into one of the linen bags, ensuring the nation’s most sacred words would not be left behind to burn.

With 22 borrowed carts waiting outside, Pleasonton and his team loaded the documents and led the convoy out of the city as fires already lit the horizon. They first stopped at a flour mill near Chain Bridge, but fearing it was too exposed, he reloaded and pushed another 35 miles to Leesburg, Virginia. There, they locked the valuable documents into a brick cellar vault of an abandoned house and gave the keys to a trusted local, Leesburg’s sheriff, Rev. Mr. Littlejohn. The documents remained safe until the danger passed.

A View of the Capitol After the Conflagration of the 24th August 1814 https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/photo-5-3

That night, British troops burned the Capitol, the White House, and other buildings, including the State Department. Without Pleasonton’s quick thinking, prudence, and disregard for the naysayers, the original Declaration, Constitution, and other founding records might have gone up in flames, lost forever amid the humiliation of the capital’s burning.

Turning Eyewitness Words into Instant Patriotic Fuel

Just three weeks after Pleasonton rescued the Declaration from the flames, another powerful patriotic document was born. Francis Scott Key, detained on a British ship in Baltimore Harbor, watched the 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry. Moved by the sight of the American flag still flying at dawn, he drafted the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” which would later become “The Star-Spangled Banner.”(17) He shared the verses with his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson, a militia captain who had commanded artillery inside the fort during the battle.(18) Nicholson, fresh from the fight, recognized the poem’s power to lift morale in a time of war. He turned to fellow militiaman and printer Captain Benjamin Edes to rush the poem into broadsides, turning eyewitness words into instant patriotic fuel.

Defence of Fort M'Henry https://www.loc.gov/resource/music.musihas-100010457/

If that name sounds familiar, it’s because we discussed a printer by that name in the fourth part of our series, Events That Sparked the Grievances. This printer, though, was the grandson of the famous Boston Tea Party printer Benjamin Edes Sr., whose Boston Gazette had helped ignite the Revolution half a century earlier.

Within days, the Edes shop, with apprentice Samuel Sands handling the work while Captain Edes was on militia duty, produced the first anonymous broadside on September 17, 1814.(19) Soon, the poem was reprinted in newspapers and broadsides throughout the United States. Once again, the printing press, carried forward by a third-generation family of patriot printers, turned a personal eyewitness account into a national rallying cry almost overnight.

A few months later, the War ended quietly on Christmas Eve 1814. Though neither side actually “won,” Americans felt a sense of pride, having held their ground at Fort McHenry, and with Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans. As the states were united against Britain, many Americans felt they had won the war and gained a “second independence.” A wave of national pride followed, which historians call the “Era of Good Feelings,” and helped bring the Declaration of Independence back into the spotlight.

The document, once nearly forgotten, resurfaced as a living symbol of America’s hard-won sovereignty. Newspapers reprinted its full text with renewed fervor, broadsides carried excerpts to taverns and town squares, and printers rushed to create the first elegant engraved facsimiles.

The Competition was Intense.

Two printers fiercely competed to print a commemorative edition of the Declaration. Benjamin Owen Tyler, working with engraver Peter Maverick, produced a version that emphasized elegant calligraphy and remarkably accurate reproductions of the signatures. John Binns took a more elaborate approach, surrounding the text with state seals and portraits of Hancock, Washington, and Jefferson in an ornate border.(20)

So how did they copy those 56 original signatures? In the early 1800s, before photography, they relied on old-school methods. Tyler, a professional penmanship teacher and calligrapher, personally hand-copied the entire text in elegant calligraphy. For the signatures, both Tyler and Binns most likely used a wet-transfer process, dampening paper and pressing it against the original parchment so some of the ink would lift off, then traced or engraved from that copy.(21) Tyler really emphasized accuracy. Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush, who was filling in until John Quincy Adams officially took office, certified that Tyler’s signatures were ‘curiously exact imitations.’(22) He also noted the effects of “the hand of time” on the original. A few months later, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams personally examined Binns’ version and certified that he had compared every signature and found them to be ‘Exact Imitations.’

The competition was intense. Binns was still refining his design when he submitted an unfinished proof to secure copyright. Tyler, however, reached the finish line first and published his engraving in 1818. Undeterred, Binns continued working and completed his much more ornate masterpiece in November 1819, more than three years after he first proposed the project.

The process of creating these facsimiles was tough on the original. Every time the parchment was dampened and pressed, a little more ink was pulled away. That’s one of the main reasons the signatures look so faded today.

Ironically, these efforts to promote the Declaration further accelerated its deterioration.  Remember, it hadn’t been well cared for. During the Revolutionary War alone, the parchment was packed and unpacked at least eight to ten times as Congress fled advancing British forces. From Philadelphia to Baltimore, then back, then to Princeton, Annapolis, and Trenton. After the war, it was moved to New York City, the first capital of the United States. Then to Philadelphia, the temporary capital. It finally moved to Washington, D.C., but as we just learned, it was evacuated to Leesburg, Virginia. Then, back to Washington. During these trips, the parchment was usually rolled or folded to fit into trunks and boxes.(23)

Here’s an interesting fact: when it was rolled, they started from the top edge, the side with the large title and preamble. This meant the blank reverse side faced outward as the protective outer layer, shielding the inked text from abrasion, dust, and handling damage. On the back side, the reverse of the parchment, near the bottom edge, there is a handwritten inscription that reads:

“Original Declaration of Independence dated 4th July 1776”

This served as a handwritten label, so it would be visible on the outside of the rolled document, without having to unroll it every time someone needed to identify or retrieve the parchment.

By the 1820s, the ink had faded badly, and the signatures were barely legible. The parchment was creased and torn at the edges.  Alarmed by the deterioration, Secretary John Quincy Adams commissioned engraver William J. Stone to create a true facsimile. While Tyler and Binns had made decorative copies mainly for public sale, Stone’s project was meant to be the most accurate reproduction possible.(24)

Working directly from the original parchment, Stone labored for three years, meticulously engraving a single copperplate. His process likely included elements of the wet-transfer method, which may have contributed to even more fading. From that copperplate, the State Department printed 200 official facsimiles on parchment in 1823 and distributed them to surviving signers’ families, officials, and libraries.

Here’s the kicker: the crisp, readable version of the Declaration we see in textbooks, posters, and replicas is not the original—it’s Stone’s 1823 engraving. The real parchment had become too faded and fragile to display regularly. Today, the original is preserved in special argon-filled cases at the National Archives. What most of us think of as “the Declaration” is actually a careful copy of a damaged document, made just in time for the 50th anniversary in 1826.

In 1826, the United States celebrated the semicentennial, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in what was widely called the “Jubilee.”(25) Celebrations exploded nationwide. Towns held parades featuring Revolutionary War veterans, some of whom marched in their faded old uniforms. Newspapers reprinted the full text of the Declaration, orators delivered speeches praising its principles, and ordinary citizens suddenly wanted to own and display the words that had first declared their nation free.(26)

In Washington, D.C., Mayor Roger Weightman invited all the surviving signers of the Declaration and all the living ex-Presidents. Adams and Jefferson fell into both categories. They replied, as did Charles Carroll of Carrollton, James Madison, and James Monroe. But none of them could attend the main events in the capital. While this was undoubtedly disappointing to the committee, the letters of regret, printed in the Washington newspapers on July 4th, were beautifully worded, and several contained sentiments well worth remembering.(27)

Jefferson, then 83 and in failing health, sent a poignant reply to Mayor Weightman. He expressed regret that “ill health forbids me the gratification of an acceptance,” and hoped the day would “forever refresh our recollections of these rights.”(28) John Adams, 90 years old and equally frail, also declined due to his health. In his response to local organizers, he included the now-famous toast: “Independence Forever!”(29) Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only other surviving signer and then 89, attended some local festivities in Baltimore, where he lived, rather than traveling to Washington.

While the entire nation was joyfully celebrating the 50th anniversary of independence, Monticello lay quiet and still. Around noon on July 4, 1826, Thomas Jefferson took his last breath. Hours later, in Quincy, Massachusetts, just south of Boston, John Adams, the man who had fought so fiercely beside Jefferson for independence, also slipped away.

On the exact day America turned fifty, the two towering figures most responsible for its birth certificate left this world within hours of each other. The coincidence electrified the country. People saw it as nothing short of divine providence, a final, poetic seal on the story of the Declaration of Independence.

So the Declaration’s journey was a rollercoaster: a wartime thunderbolt, then decades of near-obscurity as the nation built its bones with the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. Its ideas sparked revolutions abroad through the work of Jefferson, Lafayette, and Paine. Politics revived it in 1800, turning it into a creed, and the 1826 jubilee mythologized it amid those poignant deaths. Physically, it survived nomadic travels, a capital in flames thanks to Pleasonton, and well-meaning copyists who hastened its fade. Yet those core truths, equality, unalienable rights, and government by consent, endured, resurfacing when America needed reminding of its roots. In a way, its near-forgetting makes its revival all the more powerful.

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1)Pages, R. (n.d.). July 4, 1776, First Independence Day: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know | Warriors Renewal Coalition. https://warriorsrenewalcoalition.org/july-4-1776-first-independence-day-5-fast-facts-you-need-to-know/

2) Founding fathers’ blunders aged the declaration of independence. (2015, June 11). NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/founding-fathers-blunders-aged-declaration-independence-n148381

3) Brammer, R. (2019, November 15). Rare book video – The Articles of Confederation | In custodia legis. The Library of Congress. https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2019/11/rare-book-video-the-articles-of-confederation/

4) Articles of Confederation reprint by Gill Britannica Editors. (2026, February 27). Articles of Confederation | Summary, Date, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Articles-of-Confederation

5) MHS Collections Online: U. S. Constitution (first printing) with annotations by Elbridge Gerry. (n.d.). https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=2146&pid=17

6) Two versions of the Preamble to the Constitution, 1787 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. (n.d.). https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/two-versions-preamble-constitution-1787

7) First printing | Center for the Study of the American Constitution | University of Wisconsin–Madison. (n.d.). https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/first_printing.htm

8) Pennsylvania Packet Page 4. (n.d.). https://content.libraries.wsu.edu/digital/collection/masc/id/325

9) Signed by order of the Society, B. Franklin, President. Philadelphia, 9th of November,. (n.d.). The Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.14701000/?st=text

10) https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/lafayettes-draft-declaration-rights-man-and-citizen

11) https://thomaspaine.org/beacon/thomas-paines-role-in-the-french-revolution/

12) May Highlight: An Instrument which will Perpetuate the Fame of its Author | Declaration Resources Project. (2016, May 4). https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/may-propaganda

13) Washington, D.C. : U.S. G.P.O. : for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1989. (n.d.). The Avalon Project : Jefferson’s first inaugural address. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau1.asp

14) “P.S.: You had better remove the records.” (2024, September 10). National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2014/summer/war-of-1812-save-records

15) George Washington’s Mount Vernon. (n.d.). Dolley Madison Rescues George Washington. https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/artwork/dolley-madison-comes-to-the-rescue

16) White House Historical Association. (n.d.). Rescue of the Papers of State during the burning of Washington. WHHA (en-US). https://www.whitehousehistory.org/rescue-of-the-papers-of-state-during-the-burning-of-washington

17) Facts about the Star-Spangled Banner | Smithsonian Institution. (n.d.). https://www.si.edu/spotlight/flag-day/banner-facts

18) Francis Scott Key’s Poem Before It Became the Star Spangled Banner Rbsc, V. a. P. B. (2026, March 17). Francis Scott Key’s Poem Before it became the Star Spangled Banner – RBSC at ND. https://sites.nd.edu/rbsc/fourth-of-july-2018/

19) Poetry and Politics: Baltimore’s Small Presses Then and Now Stevenson University. (n.d.). Stevenson University. https://www.stevenson.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/history/blog-news-events/poetry-and-politics-baltimores-small-presses-then-and-now/

20) Kratz, J. (2025, June 10). The BINN's engraving of the Declaration of Independence. Pieces of History. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2022/07/01/the-binns-engraving-of-the-declaration-of-independence/

21) The Declaration of Independence and the hand of time. (2023, July 6). National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/fall/declaration

22) Letter from John Binns to Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush. (n.d.). https://catalog.archives.gov/id/68887972

23) “P.S.: You had better remove the records.” (2024, September 10). National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2014/summer/war-of-1812-save-records

24) The stone engraving: icon of the declaration. (2022, November 16). National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2003/fall/stone-engraving.html

25) Known as a “Jubilee” celebration... U.S. Department of War. (2026, February 20). Military supports semicentennial celebrations. https://www.war.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/4370345/military-supports-semicentennial-celebrations/

26) Butterfield, L. H. “The Jubilee of Independence July 4, 1826.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 61, no. 2 (1953): 119–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4245917.

27) University of Virginia Press. (n.d.). Founders Online: To Thomas Jefferson from Roger Chew Weightman, 14 June 1826. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-6163

28) Jefferson sent a poignant RSVP to Weightman... University of Virginia Press. (n.d.). Founders online: From Thomas Jefferson to Roger Chew Weightman, 24 June 1826. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-6179

29) University of Virginia Press. (n.d.). Founders online: July Fourth Toast by John Adams, 30 June 1826. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-8030

Five Things You Never Knew About the Declaration of Independence: The Case for Revolution

The Declaration of Independence isn’t just some grand statement; it was born out of real frustration. Many of the key players, like Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock, started out as reluctant revolutionaries. They hoped for peace with England, but a series of harsh actions by King George III pushed them over the edge. The Declaration lists 27 specific grievances, essentially a laundry list of complaints ranging from unfair taxes to military overreach. What’s fascinating is how many of these stemmed from events involving printers and the press, since printing was the main way of spreading ideas back then. Printers weren’t just bystanders; they were often right in the crosshairs, and their stories highlight why the colonists finally said “enough.”

The Stamp Act: Taxing the Press into Rebellion

Our story begins on November 1, 1765, the date the Stamp Act went into effect in the colonies. What, exactly, was the Stamp Act? We can read it directly from the Stamp Act pamphlet, printed by the Loyalist printing house of Richard and Samuel Draper, and Green and Russell, just as our colonial forefathers did.(1) At the top, it starts with Latin: ‘Anno quinto Georgi III. Regis. Chap. I.’ which translates to, ‘In the fifth year of King George III’s reign, Chapter 1.’ This is the formal way every British law began back then, but to the colonists, seeing those words on paper must have felt like the king personally reaching across the ocean to tax them.
It reads:
”An Act for granting and applying certain Stamp Duties, and other Duties, in the British Colonies and Plantations in America, towards further defraying the Expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same; and for amending such Parts of the several Acts of Parliament relating to the Trade and Revenues of the said Colonies and Plantations, as direct the Manner of determining and recovering the Penaities and Forfeitures therein mentioned.”

So, the British were trying to recoup some of the money they had spent during the French and Indian War, and to do that, they planned to impose “certain Stamp Duties,” basically taxes on the colonists. And what were they going to tax? Let’s read on.

“For every Skin or Piece of Vellum or Parchment, or Sheet or Piece of Paper, on which shall be engrossed, written, or printed, any Declaration, Plea, Replication, Rejoinder, Demurrer, or other Pleading, or any Copy thereof, in any court of Law within the British Colonies and Plantations in America, a Stamp Duty of Three Pence.”

As we read on, there’s a Stamp Duty of Two Shillings on Bail documents in court. On a Certificate of any Degree taken in any University, there was a duty of two pounds; and it goes on and on, including newspapers, playing cards, basically anything having to do with paper.

We all know how taxes can rile people up. That’s exactly what this Act did. It was a direct hit not just on printers but on anyone who used paper. And, the main problem was that this tax was passed without any representation from the colonists.

The Stamps

The stamps themselves are interesting. The image below is a proof sheet of a one-penny Stamp printed in dark red ink on thick laid paper.(2) These are not the stamps; these are just proofs of the die used to emboss the stamp into the paper. This proof sheet was made in London to check the design before they began embossing the paper sheets.

If you look closely, you can see the royal symbols: St. Edward’s Crown inside the Order of the Garter, a mantle, a scepter, and a sword. At the top, it says ‘AMERICA,’ at the bottom ‘ONE PENNY,’ and then there’s a number. That’s the die number. The Board of Stamps made 200 copper dies, that’s the number you see under each impression of each die. You can also see them on the larger proof sheet.

Now, in the image, you see what the actual tax stamp looked like on everyday items, like this deck of playing cards. Notice there’s no red ink. That’s because the stamp was embossed, pressed directly into the paper with a heavy copper die. It’s a raised, colorless impression, what we in the printing industry call ‘blind embossing.’ If you were to run your finger over it in real life, you’d feel the texture.(3)

And for important documents written on vellum or parchment, like deeds or contracts, where you couldn’t emboss directly into the material, they used a different method. (4) The revenue stamp was embossed on separate paper, usually beige or dark blue, like this one seen here, which was then glued and stapled directly onto the vellum. If you look closely at the image, you can see the metal staple. To stop anyone from peeling it off and reusing the stamp, they covered the back of the staple with a small cipher bearing the Coat of Arms of George III. You can see that in the second image below. Again, no ink on the stamp itself—just that subtle raised impression proving the tax had been paid.

So when printers bought paper for newspapers, pamphlets, deeds, or even playing cards, they weren’t just buying sheets; they were buying government-controlled, pre-taxed paper. That direct, physical intrusion into everyday life is one of the things that fueled so much anger among the colonialists and led the writers of the Declaration of Independence to include in the list of grievances against King George, that he was: “…imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” Basically, no taxation without representation.

Benjamin Franklin and the Stamp Act

Franklin was in England when the Stamp Act passed, and at first, he didn’t see much wrong with it. He figured it was a reasonable way to help pay for the colonial defense after the French and Indian War.(5) But then the angry letters started rolling in from back home, describing how many people boycotted stamped paper and printed defiant articles. To mourn the “death” of a free press, newspapers ran editions with thick black borders, symbolizing grief and resistance and serving as a visual protest that spread the message far and wide. In Boston and New York, printers teamed up with groups like the Sons of Liberty to spread anti-Stamp Act messages. Protests erupted, with effigies of tax collectors, as that of Andrew Oliver was hanged in the streets. Printers helped amplify the fury through pamphlets and broadsides. Historians note that this unified the colonies’ printers, turning them into key voices for resistance.

For Franklin, those letters from back home changed everything. By February 13, 1766, Franklin was in front of the British House of Commons for a marathon four-hour grilling. During that time, 174 questions were fired at him from members of Parliament who wanted to understand, or maybe just poke holes in, the colonial uproar. He answered calmly and sharply, explaining that the colonies already paid heavy local taxes, that there wasn’t enough hard currency circulating in America to cover the stamp duties for even a single year, and that forcing the act would backfire badly. One of his most quoted lines came when he warned that, if the British sent troops to enforce the Stamp Act, the troops wouldn’t find a rebellion—they might well create one.(6)

Franklin’s testimony, printed as the pamphlet Examination before the Committee of the Whole of the House of Commons, was soon widely circulated in both Britain and the colonies, helping tip the scales. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act just over a month later. For printers, it was a huge win: the tax that had threatened to kill their businesses was gone, and Franklin’s performance showed how one well-prepared voice could sway policy and keep the press free to stir the pot.

The Townshend Acts

Victory over the Stamp Act repeal was short-lived. In response to the backlash against that act, the British imposed the Townshend Acts, which placed taxes on imports such as paper, glass, and tea. For printers, again, this meant higher costs for the raw materials they needed to produce newspapers and pamphlets. And, again, this was enacted without any representation from the colonists. Just another event to reinforce why the 17th grievance was included in the Declaration.

In response to this sneaky and oppressive act, printers fought back by publishing essays like those from John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania lawyer and farmer who penned “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.”(7) These letters argued against taxation without representation and were reprinted across the colonies, unifying colonial opposition. Women also became deeply involved, forming groups like the Daughters of Liberty to lead boycotts of British goods. They organized spinning bees to make homespun cloth to replace imported fabrics and signed pledges to avoid taxed items, thus showing how the acts drew in everyday folks beyond just merchants. In places like Philadelphia, boycotts hit British goods hard, and printers used their presses to organize resistance. This act deepened the divide, as it showed Britain wasn’t backing down after repealing the Stamp Act. These actions by the British pushed more moderate folks toward revolution.

John Hancock’s Wine Smuggling Fiasco

Everyone has heard of the Boston Tea Party, but it was actually wine that turned John Hancock into a full-on revolutionary. Hancock, like Franklin, was a reluctant patriot. At first, he was all for keeping the peace with Britain. It was great for his business, as he was one of Boston’s richest merchants. He made a fortune importing wine and other goods on his ship, the Liberty. But in 1768, British customs officials accused his crew of underreporting the cargo to dodge import duties. They seized the ship right in the harbor, which set off huge riots across Boston as people saw it as another example of heavy-handed British overreach.(8) This event, again, emphasizes the grievance regarding “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” And the outrage led to more British troops flooding into Boston, prompting the 14th grievance in the Declaration, in which the author charged King George with “…quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.” Those soldiers set the stage for the Boston Massacre two years later, where tensions boiled over into bloodshed.

The accusation of tax avoidance led to Hancock facing charges without a jury trial. Now, another grievance, the 18th in the list, which accused King George of “…depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury,” comes into play.

Hancock got off, thanks to public support, but the ordeal caused him to align with radicals like Samuel Adams, and he started bankrolling Patriot groups like the Sons of Liberty.(9)

The Boston Massacre and Paul Revere’s Engraving

Hancock’s ordeal caused the British to ramp up their military presence, and things exploded with the Boston Massacre, where British soldiers fired on a crowd, killing five colonists. But what really amplified it was the printing press. Paul Revere, a silversmith and engraver (engraving being a key part of the printing industry back then), rushed out a dramatic engraving called “The Bloody Massacre,” showing soldiers gunning down innocent people.(10, 11) It was pure propaganda, exaggerated for effect, and copies spread like wildfire across the colonies. Printers reprinted Revere’s image in newspapers, along with broadsides, pamphlets, and other materials detailing the event, like eyewitness accounts in the Boston Gazette. These printers didn’t just report the news; they created tools to rally support, showing how print could turn a local tragedy into a colonial cause. These graphic visuals highlighted several grievances listed in the Declaration, including the 14th, about quartering troops, and the 18th, about the lack of fair trials, as soldiers received light sentences from Crown-appointed judges.

The Boston Tea Party and the Role of Benjamin Edes

The Tea Act of 1773 wasn’t a brand-new tax, but it kept an old duty in place and gave the British East India Company a monopoly on tea sales, which felt like more taxation without consent. Protests had been building for weeks, with the Boston Gazette, run by Benjamin Edes and John Gill, publishing sharp critiques that kept the pressure on. On December 16, after failed negotiations, a core group of the Sons of Liberty met at Edes’s house on Brattle Street to finalize their protest plans. Later that evening, Edes and his guests made their way to his print shop on Queen Street. They then moved to the upstairs office to disguise themselves as Mohawk Indians by painting their faces, donning blankets, and wearing ragged outfits to conceal their identities while making a bold symbolic statement about American independence.(12) Edes, a member of the Loyal Nine, the directing group behind the Sons of Liberty, was central to this; his newspaper had helped finance and publicize the resistance.(13) The disguised men joined other protesters at Griffin’s Wharf, boarded the three ships carrying the tea, and dumped 342 chests, 46 tons, of tea into the harbor. This direct action prompted the Intolerable Acts, which shut down Boston’s port and hardened attitudes toward revolution. Printers like Edes and Gills weren’t just observers; they were active organizers, using their presses, shops, and homes to make it happen. This was demonstrated two years later, in 1775, when the British imprisoned Gill, accusing him of “printing Treason, Sedition, and Rebellion.”

Isaiah Thomas’s Daring Press Smuggling—and Beyond

Isaiah Thomas wasn’t born into privilege like Franklin or Hancock; he came from genuine hardship. His father abandoned the family to chase fortune in the South sometime after Isaiah’s birth, then died in North Carolina around 1752, when Isaiah was only three. That left his mother struggling to support five young children on almost nothing. In colonial Boston, families in such situations often turned to the city’s Overseers of the Poor, a group of local officials who supervised public relief for the destitute. They provided basic aid, such as food, but focused heavily on preventing long-term dependency. For children without support, they arranged apprenticeships that legally bound them to a master to learn a trade, receive room and board, and eventually become self-sufficient. This was the era’s version of welfare: pragmatic, mandatory, and sometimes harsh, as it frequently separated kids from family.

Thomas received only six weeks of schooling before the Boston Overseers arranged an apprenticeship with printer Zechariah Fowle.(14) He was only six years old, much younger than the typical 13- to 14-year-olds who became apprentices. For families in deep poverty, like Thomas’s, the Overseers often placed children in apprenticeships at a younger age to relieve the town of the financial burden immediately.

Fowle put him to work setting type. His first typesetting job was a popular ballad called The Lawer’s Pedigree.(15) At six years old, he was too small to reach the typecases, so he stood on an 18-inch bench.(16) Thomas wrote, “I set the types, which were double Pica, for this ballad in two days, tho’ I then knew only the letters, but had never been taught to put them together and spell.”(17) Thomas later recalled that Fowle skimped on teaching him the basics, leaving him to figure much of it out on his own.

By his teens, Thomas was already handling much of the day-to-day work in Fowle's print shop, so when the Stamp Act protests began in 1765, sixteen-year-old Thomas fully understood what that meant for the business: every newspaper, pamphlet, and sheet of paper now carried a tax that could have a devastating impact on the shop. That personal stake drove him to join the demonstrations. He was there at the hanging of a stamp-master effigy at the Liberty Tree.(18) Shortly after, the authorities questioned him about the others involved. He flat-out refused to name names. They threatened him with jail time. This action by the authorities illustrates the reason behind the 18th grievance in the declaration, which accused the king of “depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.”

Thomas was a feisty, rebellious teenager, bold enough to stand up to authorities, and that same independent spirit soon led him to break his indenture with Fowle and run away. He headed first to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he took over much of the Halifax Gazette and turned it into a protest against the Stamp Act: printing tax stamps upside down, adding devil-with-pitchfork woodcuts mocking the royal emblem, and eventually ditching the stamps altogether. His antics got him fired, but they showed he wasn’t backing down.(19) From there, he wandered as a journeyman printer through Portsmouth, Charleston, and other cities, honing his printing skills before returning to Boston in 1770, where he patched things up with Fowle. The two printers formed a partnership and launched The Massachusetts Spy.(20) Later that year, Thomas bought out Fowle’s share, making him the sole owner. The purchase of the business included the 1747 London-made press he had learned on as a child. He later nicknamed it “Old Number One.” It is on exhibit today at the American Antiquarian Society.(21)

Thomas aimed his newspaper at working people, a group he was very familiar with. The paper’s motto was “Open to all parties, but influenced by none.” In his paper, he sharply criticized the British for their taxes and other grievances that would eventually be included in the Declaration.

Thomas’s paper also resurrected a political cartoon that Benjamin Franklin once used at the beginning of the French and Indian War. Franklin’s “JOIN, or DIE” cartoon, originally printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1754, depicts a rattlesnake separated into pieces. The cartoon warned the colonists that if they didn’t unify, they would not survive. Thomas revived and reimagined it for the Revolution, integrating it into the masthead of The Massachusetts Spy, with Paul Revere engraving the fiercer, updated design.(22)

It’s no surprise that Thomas’s print shop doubled as a meeting place for the Sons of Liberty, which is why the British called it a “sedition foundry.” That made it an obvious target for seizure. John Hancock, his ally in the Sons of Liberty, warned him that the press could be seized and advised relocating it from Boston to a safer inland location. On April 16, 1775, just days before the ride of Paul Revere and the battles at Lexington and Concord, Thomas, with the help of his firends, disassembled his printing press, grabbed his cases of type, and, under the cover of darkness, rowed his equipment across the Charles River, and then, with help from another Sons of Liberty member, Timothy Bigelow, hauled it 40 miles to Worcester. The press was then reassembled in Bigelow’s basement.(23)

As a side point, it’s important to recognize that Thomas’s decision to move his press from Boston to Worcester, driven by the growing British military threat, foreshadowed the very real perils that awaited many signers of the Declaration in the months and years to come. While Thomas acted to protect his printing operation before independence was formally declared, many signers, who we will discuss in our next blog post, faced imprisonment, property loss, and constant danger precisely because they had openly pledged their lives and fortunes to the cause.

When Thomas left Boston, he wasn’t able to bring any paper with him during the hurried nighttime escape, so Hancock stepped in and wrote to the Provincial Congress to secure some paper. British trade restrictions, like those behind the 16th grievance listed in the Declaration: “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,” choked imports; thus, getting supplies inland took time.

A few days later, on April 19, Thomas, Hancock, and other Sons of Liberty figures like Sam Adams were there at Lexington and Concord, and witnessed “The shot heard 'round the world,” which initiated the American Revolutionary War.

Within the next two weeks, the paper arrived, the type was set, the press was rolling, and Thomas printed his eyewitness account of the battles. And, on May 3, The Massachusetts Spy carried the news. Turning to page three, readers saw, ”AMERICANS! Forever bear in mind the BATTLE of LEXINGTON! where British Troops... wantonly... fired upon and killed a number of our countrymen, then robbed them of their provisions, ransacked, plundered and burnt their houses!”(24) These words amplified the 14th and 15th grievances, quartering armed troops among us, and shielding troops from real punishment.

The Massachusetts Spy continued to regularly print news, updates, and commentary on major developments, underscoring its role as a vital line of communication during the war.

In fact, here’s an interesting news story. In our previous blog post, number two, on the Printed Copy of the Declaration of Independence, we discussed how, once printed, it was sent all through the colonies and read in taverns, churches, town greens, or anywhere else people could gather. Well, on July 22, 1776, Isaiah Thomas stood on the steps of the Old South Church in Worcester and read the Declaration of Independence aloud to a crowd that had gathered from miles around; it was the first public reading of the document in Massachusetts. People cheered, bells rang, and the celebration spilled into a tavern afterward, where toasts were drunk to mark the moment. And, of course, two days later, his own paper reported the entire event.

According to the paper, as people were drinking, they took turns toasting the event. The paper lists 24 toasts from that night. Most are what you’d expect.

“Prosperity and perpetuity to the United States of America.”

But then you get this one that really stuck out; number 14. “Perpetual itching without the benefit of scratching to the Enemies of America.” You can almost hear the laughter, the clinking of the glasses, the pride, the happiness of becoming America.(25)

Isaiah Thomas’s story, like those of so many other printers, shows exactly why the Declaration spelled out that list of grievances in plain language.

Benjamin Franklin’s Print Shop Ravaged

When the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777–78, troops were quartered near the city’s printing shops, including those tied to Franklin’s old Market Street operation, which was run by his grandson and partners. Soldiers damaged presses, scattered type, melted lead for bullets, and looted or burned paper stocks, leaving a lot of the equipment inoperable. Franklin noted the widespread injury in letters, and a 1778 report from the Continental Congress even mentioned Philadelphia print shops as sources of seized materials.(26) This disruption hit the Pennsylvania Gazette and the local trade hard, exemplifying the complaint of quartering “large bodies of armed troops among us” and the broader pattern of property destruction that turned reluctant figures like Franklin into committed revolutionaries. Personal losses like these reveal the everyday realities that underpinned the Declaration’s list of grievances.

These stories, from tax revolts to midnight smuggling, paint a picture of why the colonists listed those 27 grievances. Printers like Franklin and Thomas weren’t just reporting the news; they were making it, often at great personal cost. It all culminates in the Declaration’s powerful closing: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” These guys lived that pledge, risking everything to print the truth and rally the cause. Next time you read the Declaration, remember it wasn’t hypothetical, it was forged in these gritty, real-world clashes. 

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Footnotes

1. MHS Collections online: [Stamp Act (1765)]. (n.d.). https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=219&mode=large&img_step=1&pid=2#page1

2. 1p Stamp Act of 1765 proof | Smithsonian Institution. (n.d.). https://www.si.edu/object/1p-stamp-act-1765-proof%3Anpm_0.022044.1

3. The Stamp Act. (n.d.). https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/discover/resource-hub/timelines/stamp-act/

4. Stamp from the Stamp Act of 1765. (n.d.). Smithsonian Learning Lab. https://learninglab.si.edu/resources/view/61127#more-info

5. Benjamin Franklin’s notes about the Stamp Act. (n.d.). The New York Public Library. https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/galleries/beginnings/item/3562

6. University of Virginia Press, “Founders Online: Examination Before the Committee of the Whole of the House Of …,” n.d., https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-13-02-0035

7. “MHS Collections Online: Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies ...,” n.d., https://www.masshist.org/database/707

8. University of Virginia Press, “Founders Online: [Seizure of Hancock’s Sloop, 1768–1769],” n.d., https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-03-02-0016-0021

9. Neal Nusholtz, “How John Adams Won the Hancock Trial,” Journal of the American Revolution, August 30, 2016, https://allthingsliberty.com/2016/08/john-adams-won-hancock-trial/

10. HISTORY.com Editors, “The Boston Massacre | March 5, 1770 | HISTORY,” HISTORY, July 22, 2025, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/march-5/the-boston-massacre

11. The Boston Massacre https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/march-5/the-boston-massacre

12. “MHS Collections Online: Edes Family Tea Party Punch Bowl,” n.d., https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=1828&pid=3

13. Edward St Germain, “Loyal Nine – Explained | Founding, Actions, Legacy,” AmericanRevolution.org, n.d., https://www.americanrevolution.org/loyal-nine/

14. Isaiah Thomas indentured to apprentice with Zachariah Fowle of Boston, 4 June 1756 https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:j6731585m

15. In pursuit of a vision: Isaiah Thomas. (n.d.). https://collections.americanantiquarian.org/inpursuit/case1/case1_1.htm

16. The diary of Isaiah Thomas. 1805-1828 : Thomas, I. [from old catalog] : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (1909). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/diaryofisaiahtho01thom/page/n15/mode/2up p.IV

17. Isaiah Thomas: Becoming a printer. (n.d.). Related Resources: The Lawyer’s Pedigree https://patriotprinter.org/becoming/resources.html

18. Hastings, P. (2025, November 19). Isaiah Thomas: Revolutionary Printer | Bibliomania. The Library of Congress. https://blogs.loc.gov/bibliomania/2025/11/19/isaiah-thomas-revolutionary-printer/

19. The Halifax Gazette, or The Weekly Advertiser · The News Media and the Making of America, 1730-1865. (n.d.). https://collections.americanantiquarian.org/earlyamericannewsmedia/items/show/101

20. A General Diffusion of Knowledge An exhibition to show volumes from the Rare Book Collection of the Thayer Memorial Library, Lancaster, Massachusetts January 15-April 21, 2012 https://thayermemoriallibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Exhibit-Catalog_lr.pdf

21. Isaiah Thomas’s Printing Press | American Antiquarian Society. (n.d.). https://www.americanantiquarian.org/node/6989

22. Stone, D. P., & Stone, D. P. (2018, January 23). JOIN, OR DIE: Political and Religious Controversy Over Franklin’s Snake Cartoon. Journal of the American Revolution. https://allthingsliberty.com/2018/01/join-die-political-religious-controversy-franklins-snake-cartoon/#_edn3

23. Isaiah Thomas’s Printing Press | American Antiquarian Society. (n.d.). https://www.americanantiquarian.org/node/6989

24. “Worcester, May 3. Americans! forever bear in mind the Battle of Lexington!” · The News Media and the Making of America, 1730-1865. (n.d.). https://collections.americanantiquarian.org/earlyamericannewsmedia/items/show/19

25. Haveles, V. a. P. B. K. (2016, July 1). Raise a glass to freedom, independence, and perpetual itching. Past Is Present. https://pastispresent.org/2016/good-sources/raise-a-glass-to-freedom-independence-and-perpetual-itching/

26. Joseph M. Adelman, 'Patriots, Loyalists, and the Perils of Wartime Printing' (seminar paper, Library Company of Philadelphia, February 24, 2012), https://librarycompany.org/Economics/PDF%20Files/Adelman%20-%20Seminar%20ppr%202-2012.pdf 

Five Things You Never Knew About the Declaration of Independence: The Jefferson-Hemings Scandal

You can’t talk about the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and “all men are created equal” without discussing the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings controversy. That subject alone could fill books, and it has, for over two hundred years. But, since we’re in a printing museum, let’s explore how print has shaped that story.

This controversy shows just how much print can influence what people think and remember. Newspapers, books, letters, and journals have sparked scandals, spread rumors, defended reputations, and sometimes brought hidden truths to light, while reflecting the biases and power dynamics of their time.

Our story begins in the early 1800s, when the Jefferson-Hemings story first emerged. There was an election taking place, and things got nasty. The race was brutal. Historians call it one of the dirtiest ever. There were smear campaigns, name-calling, and partisan newspapers going wild. Someone even spread a rumor that Thomas Jefferson was dead.

One journalist stood out in this group of partisans, James T. Callender. He was a real troublemaker. Born in Scotland around 1758, he fled to America in 1793 after writing pamphlets criticizing the British government, which led to an indictment for sedition. Once in the United States, he supported the Jeffersonian Republicans, and Jefferson quietly backed him financially and helped him publicize his anti-Federalist writings. (1) Callender went after Alexander Hamilton, exposing his affair with Maria Reynolds. He attacked George Washington, calling him a traitor, and then he attacked President John Adams, which got him jailed under the Sedition Act. (2)

When Jefferson won the 1800 election and took office in 1801, he pardoned Callender. But Callender wanted more. He believed he’d earned a reward, such as the position of Postmaster of Richmond. Jefferson turned him down, likely wanting distance from such a volatile figure now that he was president. Feeling used and betrayed, Callender turned against his former ally and promised “ten thousand fold vengeance” and launched attacks in his paper, the Richmond Recorder. That’s when, in September 1802, he published the Hemings’ accusation. He wrote that Jefferson “keeps, and for many years past has kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY.” (3) Pulling from rumors in the local county, he claimed Jefferson had fathered several children with her. Callender tried to turn local gossip into a full-blown national scandal. (4)

Federalist newspapers, which already opposed Jefferson, reprinted and embellished the story, spreading it nationwide. Jefferson’s supporters mostly ignored it or called the paper itself the real scandal. Print worked like today’s viral posts: one story snowballed.

“A Philosophic Cock,” James Akin, Newburyport, Massachusetts, c.1804. Hand-colored aquatint. Courtesy of the American AntiquarianSociety, Worcester, Massachusetts (https://encyclopediavirginia.org/a-philosophic-cock/)

And it wasn’t just the newspapers. Others, too, jumped on the bandwagon.

In colonial times, people hung maps, newspapers, and satirical prints in taverns such as the Green Dragon, where, with drinks in hand, the Sons of Liberty and others gathered to debate politics. You could buy these printed materials for a few shillings and take them home to fuel debates and mock opponents. They were basically the memes of the time.

It was in that world that engraver James Akin, around 1804, created a hand-colored aquatint titled “A Philosophic Cock.” It depicts Jefferson as a strutting rooster courting a black hen, meant to be Sally Hemings. (5) The image mocked the whole rumor in a way that stuck. Jefferson never responded to any of these accusations. Basically, he wouldn’t dignify such statements with a response. In a letter to James Monroe, he said, “It has been so impossible to contradict all their lies that I have determined to contradict none; for while I should be engaged with one, they would publish twenty new ones.” (6)

Jefferson figured answering would just give the stories more life and drag him down to Callender’s level. So what happens next? Callender followed up with a series of editorials mocking Jefferson’s silence. He taunted Jefferson, accusing him of cowardice and hypocrisy.

But these accusations had little effect on the general public, and political reaction at the time was relatively muted. It didn’t escalate into a major crisis. In fact, many supporters dismissed the story outright. Even Jefferson’s political rivals at the time, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, rejected Callender’s charges because they knew Jefferson’s character. And, as I mentioned earlier, they had their own personal experiences with Callender’s lies.

As for Callender, his life did not go well: drinking, fights, and an altercation with a former lawyer. He even had a falling out with his newspaper partner. In July 1803, he was found dead by the James River, drunk. Some said accident, others suicide, or worse. Either way, he was gone. (7) We’ve seen that early on, print started the fire, but also kept it contained within partisan circles. Democratic-Republican papers brushed off the accusations, so the story faded and didn’t hurt Jefferson’s 1804 reelection. For a while, it mostly disappeared from public discourse.

Four Score and Seven Years Ago…
By the mid-1800s, Jefferson and his “all men are created equal” line received renewed attention as the country debated slavery—the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dred Scott decision, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Republicans used the Declaration to push against slavery; Democrats pointed to Jefferson’s own slaveholding and states’ rights views. The country was on the verge of civil war, and magazines like Harper’s Weekly and Putnam’s Monthly were front and center of the discussion.

It was in that climate that two very different accounts emerged regarding Jefferson’s private life and the Hemings rumor.

One was from Isaac Granger Jefferson, a former slave who worked as a blacksmith at Monticello. In 1847, as a free man in Petersburg, Virginia, he told his story to Reverend Charles Campbell. The dictated memoir provides a rare glimpse into plantation life. Isaac called Randolph Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s younger brother, a “mighty simple man” who hung out with the enslaved people. He said that Randolph “used to come out among black people, play the fiddle and dance half the night,” portraying him as sociable and comfortable among the enslaved people during his visits to Monticello. (8)

Some modern researchers point to Randolph Jefferson as possibly being the father of Edwin Jefferson, a son born to Betty Brown Hemings, Sally Hemings’s half-sister and a longtime domestic servant at Monticello. In her 2014 book From Whence We Came, M. Marilynn Jefferson makes this case using family oral traditions, DNA evidence, and genealogical records. She presents herself as a direct descendant of that line, using her work to draw Randolph into the broader discussion of Hemings-Jefferson family ties. (9)

In 1858, Henry S. Randall’s three-volume biography of Jefferson, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, drew on letters, writings, family papers, and conversations with Jefferson’s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. During a visit to Monticello, Randolph told Randall, “there was not the shadow of suspicion that Mr. Jefferson in this or any other instance ever had commerce with his female slaves.” He said he ran the place day-to-day, lived close enough to notice anything unusual, and saw nothing out of the ordinary, nor any unusual closeness with Sally or anyone else.

Randolph also pointed the finger at Jefferson’s nephews, Peter and Samuel Carr, as the likely fathers of Sally’s children. (10) That explanation got passed along privately but showed up in later publications.

In 1871, Sarah N. Randolph, Jefferson’s great-granddaughter and Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s daughter, published The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson. Using family letters and memories, she painted a warm picture of Jefferson at home: with his kids and grandkids, the everyday Monticello moments. It felt personal and gave an insider look at the family.

“Life Among the Lowly, No. 1,” https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/life-among-the-lowly-no-1-by-madison-hemings-march-13-1873/)

This work targeted a dedicated and influential audience, those individuals interested in Jefferson’s private life rather than his public achievements. The book remains influential today. It has been reprinted in modern editions, and biographers often draw anecdotes and details directly from it. The book has become the primary source for the “official” family view of Jefferson’s domestic life.

By contrast, in 1873, Madison Hemings, the son of Sally Hemings, gave a very different account in an interview published in the Pike County Republican, an Ohio newspaper. Titled “Life Among the Lowly, No. 1,” his story provided a firsthand perspective from someone who had been enslaved at Monticello. He described how his mother, Sally, accompanied Jefferson to Paris in the late 1780s, became pregnant there, and made an informal “treaty” with Jefferson: if she returned to Virginia with him, her children would eventually be freed and granted certain privileges. Madison also stated plainly that Thomas Jefferson was his father and that he had fathered several children with Sally, whom he called his “concubine.” (11)

This published article directly supported the old rumor. But for a long time, most historians and the public ignored it, trusting the denials from Jefferson’s family more and seeing enslaved people’s words as less reliable.

DNA and the Journal Nature
Into the 20th century, print kept the story going strong. Biographies and history books stuck with the family line, usually dismissing the Hemings claims as old smears concocted by a shady character like Callender.

Then, on November 5, 1998, the scientific journal Nature published a DNA study that flipped the whole debate. The headline was blunt: “Jefferson fathered slave’s last child.” It showed a clear genetic link between a Jefferson male line and Eston Hemings, Sally’s youngest son, and it ruled out the Carr nephews as possible fathers. (12) Between the article and the media storm that followed, many people quickly accepted that Thomas Jefferson was the father.

Jefferson fathered slave’s last childNature, November 5, 1998 (https://www.nature.com/articles/23835)

A couple of months later, in January 1999, Nature ran a correction. The authors of the study, including the lead author, Eugene Foster, admitted, “The title assigned to our study was misleading in that it represented only the simplest explanation of our molecular findings…” They continued, “We know from the historical and the DNA data that Thomas Jefferson can neither be definitely excluded nor solely implicated in the paternity of illegitimate children with his slave Sally Hemings.” So, the science only proved that “a” man from the Jefferson family line fathered Eston Hemings. It did not prove Thomas Jefferson himself was the father, and it didn’t rule out other relatives, such as Randolph Jefferson. In other words, the science narrowed the field but didn’t deliver a final answer. (13)

The Nature piece prompted groups such as the Thomas Jefferson Foundation to state in its 2000 report that there was a “high probability” that Jefferson was the father. While the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, “after reviewing essentially the same material, reached different conclusions, namely that Sally Hemings was only a minor figure in Thomas Jefferson’s life and that it is very unlikely he fathered any of her children.” (14)

Today, print, in books, articles, and even digital formats, is providing a platform for voices that were long ignored, and it’s pushing back against old prejudices that were once taken for granted. Annette Gordon-Reed’s 2008 book The Hemingses of Monticello (15) examines how earlier recorded histories often ignored or dismissed what enslaved people said about their own lives. Newspapers, such as The New York Times, publish articles on the subject. Others, such as the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, and genealogists and historical researchers, like Cynthia H. Burton, publish reports and books favoring alternatives, thereby maintaining debate.

We can see from this examination of the Jefferson-Hemings debate that print doesn’t just record history; it actively shapes it. It helps decide what we remember and believe. From Callender’s scandal sheets to personal memoirs to modern scientific studies, it has taken us from wild gossip to a more nuanced historical account. It can spread rumors, protect reputations, silence certain voices, or finally let them be heard. And it reminds us that how we understand the past often depends on who had access to the printing press and who did not. 

---

Sources:
1. Biography: James Callender https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-james-callender/

2. James Thomson Callender (1757 or 1758–1803) https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/callender-james-thomson-1757-or-1758-1803/

3. Primary Sources (see Appendix E) https://monticello-www.s3.amazonaws.com/files/old/inline-pdfs/jefferson-hemings_report.pdf#page=20

4. Biography: James Callender https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-james-callender/

5. Political attack ads in the era of the founding fathers https://loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefffed.html#140

6. Biography: James Callender https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-james-callender/

7. “Life of Isaac Jefferson of Petersburg, Virginia, Blacksmith” by Isaac Jefferson (1847) https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/life-of-isaac-jefferson-of-petersburg-virginia-blacksmith-by-isaacjefferson-1847/

8. From Whence We Came Paperback https://www.amazon.com/Whence-We-Came-Marilynn-Jefferson/dp/1496906608

9. Letter from Henry S. Randall to James Parton (June 1, 1868) https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/letter-from-henry-s-randall-to-james-parton-june-1-1868/

10. Recollections of Madison Hemings https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/recollections-of-madison-hemings-1873

11. Hemings, M. (2022, July 28). “Life Among the Lowly, No. 1” by Madison Hemings (March 13, 1873) - Encyclopedia Virginia. Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/life-among-the-lowly-no-1-by-madison-hemings-march- 13-1873/

12. Jefferson fathered slave's last child. Nature 396, 27–28 (1998) https://www.nature.com/articles/23835

13. Reply: The Thomas Jefferson paternity case. Nature 397, 32 (1999) https://www.nature.com/articles/16181

14. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account https://www.monticello.org/slavery/jefferson-and-sally-hemings/a-brief-account

15. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, Paperback https://www.amazon.com/Hemingses-Monticello-American-Family/dp/0393337766 

5 Things You Never Knew About the Declaration of Independence: The ‘Original’ Declaration

The Declaration of Independence that most people picture, the one with John Hancock’s bold, sweeping signature surrounded by the autographs of the other delegates, the one with the date July 4, 1776, at the top, is a copy. Yes, that grand, engrossed parchment, now enshrined behind glass at the National Archives, the one that became the official record, wasn’t the first Declaration. There was another that actually announced independence to the world. What was it, and how did those revolutionary words first reach the people far beyond the State House doors?

Our story begins on the afternoon of July 4, 1776. Congress had finished drafting the language and had adopted the final text of the Declaration. A handwritten fair copy was prepared, probably by the Secretary of the Continental Congress, Charles Thomson, and his clerical staff. Once completed, a courier carried it out of the State House and stopped on the building’s steps. A small crowd of Philadelphians had gathered. There, the Declaration was read aloud for the first time, its words echoing over Chestnut Street.

Imagine their excitement on hearing the words: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

They must have been hanging on every word. Who read it? Likely Thomson’s senior clerk, Timothy Matlack. According to John Adams, Matlack had been a “principal orator” and had a powerful voice. One boy in the crowd, ten-year-old Anthony Morris, remembered Matlack’s delivery years later; a teenage girl nearby, Deborah Norris Logan, heard it clearly from her yard but couldn’t see the speaker. It was intimate, anxious, and bold, and that small group of ordinary people received the news first, before any grand ceremony. (1) Only after that impromptu reading did the fair copy reach John Dunlap’s print shop a few blocks away. There, the real, the “original” Declaration of Independence came to life.

Dunlap’s Print Shop

That afternoon, Dunlap, a 29-year-old Irish immigrant and the official printer to Congress, turned his shop into a whirlwind of activity. He, his typesetters, press operators, and bindery workers may have had some special visitors that day. As recorded in the Journals of the Continental Congress for July 4, 1776, Congress directed that “the committee appointed to prepare the declaration, superintend and correct the press.” (2)

It’s nice to think that at least one or two of the committee members were at Dunlap’s print shop that evening. Since Jefferson was the author of the Declaration, it’s quite likely that he was present. We have some evidence that may support this.

Let’s start with Dunlap’s printer’s proof. As printers, before a project goes to press, you make a proof. In colonial times and even today, when people do letterpress printing, we make a proof to check our spelling and spacing. We actually have a machine called a proof press. Today, before a job goes to press, people conduct a press check to ensure the colors are correct and that everything is spelled correctly. The same held true with Dunlap and the printing of the Declaration of Independence.

John Dunlap Declaration of Independence printer's proof, 1776.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Treasures collection, DAMS #181 (https://hsp.org/education/primary-sources/john-dunlap-printing-declaration-independence)

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has Dunlap’s printer’s proof. When you look closely at the document, you notice some marks that resemble quotation marks. These were set by the compositors, and they followed the words written on the fair copy. How and why were these on the fair copy? Well, earlier, we discussed that Matlack had read the declaration while standing on the steps of the State House. And, if he were to read the declaration as intended by its author, he would no doubt have consulted with the author who was sitting with him in the State House as he prepared the fair copy. These quotation marks were, in reality, diacritic marks created by Jefferson to indicate how the Declaration was to be publicly read. (3)

Jefferson was famously a terrible public speaker. He had a soft, low voice, almost a whisper, due to shyness and anxiety. He avoided public speaking whenever possible. Contemporary accounts describe him speaking in such a quiet tone that most of the audience couldn’t hear him clearly.

While Jefferson was poor at oratory, he was a diligent student of rhetoric, public speaking, and the art of reading aloud. He owned numerous books on these subjects. To compensate for his poor speaking skills, he developed these diacritical marks to indicate emphasis, pauses, rhythm, accent, timing, and cadence when reading a text aloud. Thus, it’s likely that Jefferson included those marks in the fair copy so that Matlack would add the proper emphasis when reading the document earlier that day.

We, the People... 1787
The Printing Industry of the Carolinas,Mort Künstler, 1987 (https://www.mortkunstler.com/products/we-people1787-limited-edition-print)

In Dunlap’s final printing of the Declaration of Independence, these diacritical marks, the quotation marks, were removed. Thus, this may be evidence that Jefferson was present that night. He probably told the printers, “Wait a minute, those marks should not be there.” They were only there to help the speaker.

What about another of “the committee appointed to prepare the declaration”? Could Benjamin Franklin, the printer, have been on hand overseeing operations? It’s possible. Franklin’s favorite type font was Caslon. He was the first printer in the colonies to use Caslon. They used Caslon to typeset the declaration that night, and they needed a lot of Caslon. Dunlap’s compositors hand-set more than 1,320 words—nearly 7,800 letters and spaces. There’s evidence that at least three different sets of Caslon were used that night. (4) So, was Franklin, and a few cases of his type, there? We may never know.

And how did those compositors typeset nearly 7,800 characters in time for the pressmen to print 200 copies and prepare them for delivery by morning? Well, to move quickly, they used a standard printer’s trick. In colonial times, compositors would divide a long manuscript into small sections called “takes” and distribute them to several compositors working in parallel. These “takes” likely explain why historians cannot locate the original fair copy. It was probably cut up and scattered across type cases, and never reassembled. (5)

It was a busy time in the print shop that night. We know this because some copies were printed slightly slanted, and small errors were corrected mid-run. Many of the existing copies have ink on the back of the paper, offset, indicating they were printed but not left to dry before being folded in a hurry. The paper, too, shows the excitement in the shop. The watermarks on many of the extant copies are reversed. (6) Now, every quality printer knows to check and re-check the direction of the watermark on the paper stock before you run it through the press. So, these printers must have been in a hurry.

In addition to the watermark, there’s evidence of paper shortages. Sons of Liberty member and printer, Isaiah Thomas, had difficulty obtaining paper to print the account of the “shot heard 'round the world,” fired at Lexington and Concord at the beginning of the revolution. In fact, it was John Hancock who helped Thomas acquire the paper he needed. On the night of July 4, when Dunlap and his team were printing the Declaration of Independence, they used whatever stock they had available, as evidenced by surviving copies that exhibit a variety of watermarks and sources. And some of the paper was really nice.

Most of the paper used that night was fine Dutch paper, marked with elegant crown-and-posthorn designs that varied slightly from mill to mill. Many carried the letters “GR,” linked to the respected L.V. Gerrevinck mill. Thomas Jefferson used this brand of paper to take early notes on the Virginia Constitution. The Declaration of Independence at the National Historical Park has the watermark of an important Dutch papermaking family that began making paper in 1621. The Dutch father-and-son papermakers, Dirk and Cornelis Blauw, operated five wind-powered papermills in North Holland and survived for more than 250 years under various names. Historians have called them “perhaps the most important of all Dutch papermakers.” (7)

This paper was of such high quality and had such a strong reputation that James Whistler, the artist who painted Whistler’s Mother, used it to print some of his etchings. (8)

Dunlap Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 (https://www.loc.gov/item/2003576546/)

By morning, roughly 200 broadsides were ready. Riders carried them immediately to state assemblies, army camps, and towns across the colonies.

This Dunlap broadside, not the later signed parchment, was the “original” declaration that announced independence to the world. And, it carried Dunlap’s name boldly at the bottom, Philadelphia: Printed by John Dunlap, a risky act in an era when printing such words could be seen as treason. In an era when the British Crown had declared the rebellion treasonous, putting his name on such a document was a dangerous act of defiance. If British forces or Loyalists had captured him, Dunlap would have been treated as a traitor, facing the same fate as other signers who fell into their hands.

Richard Stockton of New Jersey provides a grim illustration. In late 1776, Loyalists dragged Stockton from his bed at night, stripped him, looted his home, and delivered him to British custody. Confined in the Provost Jail in New York, notorious for poor treatment, overcrowding, and the death of prisoners, he endured extreme cold, long periods without food, and harsh treatment that left lasting damage. Even after his release in 1777, he never fully recovered his health. His large library, which was one of the best in private hands at the time, was burned, his domestic animals, including his horses, and nearly all personal property were stolen or destroyed, and his farm was laid waste. The losses forced him to rely on friends for basic necessities. The ordeal ruined his health and spirits. He suffered from a long illness that ended in cancer, so painful that he needed constant medicine for relief. He died on February 28, 1781, at his home, at age fifty-one.

Before the war, Stockton had been a respected figure: a clear and forceful speaker with strong reasoning; a skilled and knowledgeable lawyer whose judgment was widely respected. The contrast between his earlier standing and his post-capture suffering shows the real danger Dunlap faced by openly printing and claiming the Declaration. In British eyes, both the signer and the printer who spread the treasonous words were equally guilty, and the consequences, imprisonment, property destruction, and ruined health, could be devastating.

One curious detail of Dunlap’s Declaration that most people don’t notice is the number of lines of type from top to bottom; they total exactly 76. Was this a nod to the year 1776, or just pure coincidence?

The Dissemination of the Declaration 

Despite members of Congress having taken oaths of secrecy, news had already begun leaking before the official printing. The Huntington Library holds a July 2 issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post that boldly proclaimed, two days before Congress had finalized the text, the colonies “free and independent states.” Right beside that announcement are advertisements offering rewards for the return of an escaped enslaved man named Ishmael and another for a runaway apprentice and his mother. (9) The irony is stark and painful.

The Declaration reached Pennsylvania’s large German-speaking population almost immediately. At the time, nearly a third of the colony’s residents spoke German as their first language. On July 5, 1776, Johann Heinrich Miller, a 50-year veteran of the newspaper business and former employee who worked as a printer for Benjamin Franklin, announced in his Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote the existence of the new Declaration. (10) It read:

Der Wöchentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote, July 9, 1776
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Treasures collection, DAMS #10601. 1 (https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/10601)

Original:
“Gestern hat der Achtbare Congreß dieses Westen Landes die Vereinigten Colonien Freye und unabhängig Staaten erkläret. Die Declaration in Englisch ist jetzt in der Presse; sie ist datirt, den 4ten July, 1776, und wird heut oder morgen im druck erscheinen.”

Translation:
“Yesterday, the honorable Congress of these Western Lands, declared the United Colonies free and independent states. The Declaration is in English and is now at the Press; it is dated July 4th, 1776, and will be published either today or tomorrow.”

The next day, July 8th, German printers Melchior Steiner and Carl Cist published a broadside containing the translation. (10) They appear to have been working with Miller, because the next day, on July 9, Miller published his version of the German translation of the Declaration in his newspaper, which closely resembled Steiner and Cist’s version. In this way, thousands of German American families could read the words of independence in their own language. (11, 12)

On July 6, 1776, John Hancock sent General George Washington a letter enclosing one of the freshly printed Dunlap broadsides. In it, Hancock asked Washington to have the document read to the troops.

Impressed with this Sentiment, and at the same Time fully convinced, that our Affairs may take a more favourable Turn, the Congress have judged it necessary to dissolve the Connection between Great Britain and the American Colonies, and to declare them free & independent States; as you will perceive by the enclosed Declaration, which I am directed to transmit to you, and to request you will have it proclaimed at the Head of the Army in the Way, you shall think most proper. (13)

Three days later, on July 9, Washington issued orders:

The several brigades are to be drawn up this evening on their respective Parades, at six OClock, when the declaration of Congress…is to be read with an audible voice. (14)

At the time, morale was low because British troops had landed on Staten Island and an invasion was imminent. Washington used the reading to rally his soldiers and reinforce their commitment now that independence had been declared. It worked. The reading sparked three hearty huzzas from the troops, and the excitement spilled into the streets, where a crowd pulled down the lead statue of King George III at Bowling Green. That statue was later melted down into musket balls for the fight ahead. (15)

Unlike the troops, most Americans first encountered the Declaration of Independence through newspapers or printed broadsides, either reading the text themselves or hearing it read aloud. The very first newspaper to publish it appeared on July 6, 1776, in Benjamin Towne’s Pennsylvania Evening Post. From there, the words spread quickly. (16)

In the following days and weeks, the Declaration was printed in newspapers across the nation. 

Historians estimate around 24–30 printings by late July.

While not exhaustive, the list below includes many of the newspapers printed by late July in 18+ towns.

• July 4–5, 1776: John Dunlap (Philadelphia) prints the first broadsides (~200 copies). These are the master copies sent out to governors, assemblies, and the army.

• July 6, 1776: Benjamin Towne publishes the first newspaper printing in the Pennsylvania Evening Post (Philadelphia). This is the earliest appearance in any newspaper.

• July 8, 1776: John Dunlap prints it in his own newspaper, Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet or the General Advertiser (Philadelphia).

• July 9, 1776: Heinrich Miller prints a full German translation in the Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (Philadelphia), aimed at Pennsylvania's large German-speaking community.

• July 10, 1776: The Declaration appears in the Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia) and Pennsylvania Journal (Philadelphia); Maryland Journal and the Baltimore Advertiser

• July 11, 1776: Printings begin in other states, including the Maryland Gazette (Baltimore/Annapolis area) and possibly early New York papers.

• July 12, 1776: The Connecticut Gazette (New London, Connecticut) prints it.

• July 13, 1776: The Pennsylvania Ledger (Philadelphia) finally includes it (delayed by its weekly schedule).

• July 15, 1776: The Connecticut Courant and Hartford Weekly Intelligencer (Hartford) and Norwich Packet (Norwich, Connecticut) print it.

• July 16, 1776: Robert Luist Fowle prints it in the New Hampshire Gazette (Exeter, New Hampshire) and as a separate broadside (though Fowle was a Loyalist, he still ran the text).

• July 17, 1776: The Connecticut Journal (New Haven, Connecticut) and possibly the Massachusetts Spy (Worcester, Massachusetts) include it.

• July 18, 1776: Boston papers like the Continental Journal (Boston), operated by John Gill, print it, coinciding with the public reading there from the balcony of the Old State House.

• July 19–20, 1776: In Williamsburg, Virginia, the Virginia Gazette (both Dixon & Hunter and Alexander Purdie editions) prints the full text.

• July 26, 1776: Another Virginia Gazette issue (Purdie) reprints it, as ordered by the Privy Council.

By the end of July 1776, the Declaration had been reprinted in newspapers from New Hampshire to Virginia, often in multiple issues per town. The spread was incredibly rapid for the time.

The Goddard Broadside

Probably the most important printed broadside of the Declaration, besides Dunlap’s, was printed by a female colonial printer who operated a print shop in the 1770s. Mary Katharine Goddard learned the printing trade from her younger brother William, who started a printing business in Providence, Rhode Island. As a family, William, Mary Katharine, and their mother, Sarah, ran the Providence Gazette and Country Journal from the basement of their house. When referring to Mary Katharine, Isaiah Thomas, “She was an expert and correct compositor of types…”(16)

As a side note, the image many have thought to be Mary Katharine is, in fact, that of Anne Brunton Merry (1769-1808). No known image of Mary Katharine Goddard exists. (17)

The first issue of the family’s paper appeared on October 20, 1762. This was the first successful newspaper in Providence, and it was consistently published weekly, with only minor interruptions, for decades until about 1795, though under various owners.

Later that year, William left for Philadelphia, while Mary and Sarah stayed and published the paper under the name “Sarah Goddard and Company.” The mother-daughter team eventually sold the Providence Gazette and joined William in Philadelphia. After their mother died in 1770, both William and Mary Katharine wound up in Baltimore.

While in Baltimore, William started a new publication, the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, but soon shifted his focus to working with Benjamin Franklin on building the colonial postal system in 1774. (18) Mary Katharine Goddard assumed editorial control of the paper and continued publishing it under her own name. The colophon on the paper changed on May 10, 1775; it read: “Baltimore: Published by M.K. Goddard, at the Printing-Office in Market-Street, next Door above Dr. John Stevenson’s.” She managed it successfully for the next decade, even through the Revolution, when paper and ink were scarce. On July 10, 1776, just six days after Congress adopted the Declaration, she printed the full text in The Maryland Journal. (19)

Mary Katharine Goddard first printed the names of the signers of the Declaration of Independence in January 1777 (https://www.loc.gov/item/90898037/)

The Goddards were true patriots. Early in his career, William purchased one of the first printing presses to be “made in America.” The machine, manufactured by Isaac Doolittle, was a beautiful mahogany printing press, “the neatest ever made in America and equal, if not superior to any imported from Great-Britain.” (20) As a printer, he was critical of the Stamp Act and published an article on the controversy in his paper. Soon after, he joined the Sons of Liberty.

As for Mary Katharine, in January of 1777, she added her name to the list of signers of the declaration, not as a delegate to the convention, but as the printer of the “authenticated copy” that had been ordered by the Continental Congress. For two weeks, she printed the broadsides, the first to include a list of the signers’ names. And, as Dunlap did, she included her full name at the bottom of the document, Baltimore, in Maryland: Printed by Mary Katharine Goddard, not simply her initials, as was found on her newspapers and other printed documents. (21)

Actively supporting the Revolution by printing those broadsides was considered high treason under British law, punishable by death, including hanging, drawing, and quartering. She was fully aware of George III’s 1775 Proclamation of Rebellion, which declared the colonists in rebellion and authorized military action against leaders. She was also undoubtedly aware of the experience of Elizabeth Lewis, a few months earlier, at the hands of the British in the autumn of 1776.

Elizabeth was the wife of New York signer Francis Lewis, who suffered greatly when British troops looted and destroyed their Long Island home along the East River, while her husband was away in Philadelphia.

According to accounts of the raid on the Lewis estate, the British troops were sent “to seize the lady and destroy the property.” As the soldiers advanced from one side of the house, a warship fired cannonballs from the other. A shot hit a board Elizabeth was standing on. One of her servants shouted, “Run, mistress, run.” She simply replied, “Another shot is not likely to strike the same spot,” and stood her ground; she didn’t move. As some soldiers entered the house and destroyed books, papers, pictures, and furniture, another threw himself at her feet and tore the buckles from her shoes. He thought they were gold, but they weren’t. Elizabeth looked down and said, “All is not gold that glitters.”

Within minutes, she was arrested. At the time, she was in her late fifties and already in poor health. They took her to prison in New York City, where she was held for months with no bed, limited food, and inadequate clothing, and she was not allowed to communicate with anyone outside. In that damp, filthy prison, Elizabeth became very ill. But she had a “guardian angel.” According to reports, an old family servant had followed her to the city, found out where she was, smuggled in small items of clothing and food, and delivered letters to her friends.

After nearly three months, she was released through a prisoner exchange arranged by General Washington. According to family accounts, just after her release, her “guardian angel” fell seriously ill. As a Roman Catholic, he wanted his last rites before he died, but a priest in New York, under martial law, was impossible to find. So Elizabeth sent a messenger to Philadelphia, who found a priest and smuggled him through the British lines just in time to administer the last rites; the man passed away peacefully.

Elizabeth’s health never recovered. She contracted a fever that developed into lingering consumption, and she died in June 1779, within a few years of her release, all because of her husband’s signature on the Declaration.

As a side point, that 1775 Proclamation of Rebellion was printed by Charles Eyre and William Strahan, who held the royal patent as King’s Printers in London. Eyre started his business in 1739. His partnership with Strahan was formalized in 1770, and the company survived in various forms through family succession, mergers, and consolidations for over 250 years. It remained a major London printer and publisher of Bibles and government publications through the mid-20th century, before being absorbed into larger publishing groups by the end of the century. (22)

As for Mary Katharine Goddard, she never married and had no children. When she died on August 12, 1816, she freed her enslaved woman, Belinda Starling, and left her everything she owned. In her will, Goddard wrote that she “give[s] and grant[s] to my female slave, Belinda Starling, aged about 26 years, her Freedom at my death; and I also give and bequeath unto said Belinda Starling all the property of which I may did posessed; all which I do to recompense the faithful performance of duties to me.” (23)

Dunlap, too, showed his true patriotism. He didn’t stay behind the press forever. Five months after printing the Declaration of Independence, in December 1776, Lieutenant John Dunlap rode out with the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry, a volunteer unit, of which he was a founding member, to serve as General Washington’s personal bodyguard during the Trenton and Princeton campaigns. On 25 December, the Troop crossed the icy Delaware River during Washington’s famous crossing. (24) Once at Trenton, in the thick of one of the war’s turning-point victories, Dunlap led a detachment that demanded, and received, the surrender of Hessian soldiers.

The Declaration didn’t start with elegant signatures on parchment. It began with the smell of wet ink, the “pick and click” of type being set, and the courage of printers who risked everything to spread the word. That’s the story the presses still tell us today—a reminder that print didn’t just record the Revolution; it helped shape it. Those newspapers and broadsides of the Declaration of Independence made it real for the people of the 13 colonies.

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Sources

1. Chris Coelho, “The First Public Reading of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776,” Journal of the American Revolution, July 1, 2021, https://allthingsliberty.com/2021/07/the-first-public-reading-of-the-declaration-of-independence-july-4-1776/

2. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., JOURNALS OF THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 1774-1789, vol. Volume V (GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, 1906), https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llscd/lljc005/lljc005.pdf

3. Max Marin, “The First Declaration of Independence Was Printed by a 29-year-old Immigrant,” Billy Penn at WHYY, January 17, 2023, https://billypenn.com/2019/07/04/this-29-year-old-immigrant-printed-the-first-declaration-of-independence

4. “Printing and Type in the Revolutionary Era,” Penn Libraries, n.d., https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/typography-independence/makers-blog/printing-and-type

The Typesetting and Designs of the Declaration of Independence Broadsides, Craig Welsh, Associate Professor of Communications & Humanities, Penn State Harrisburg https://youtu.be/PY0ND0sZl1E?si=ukI4mGg3qlXsydjN

5. Chris Pomar, “Proclaiming Independence | the Huntington,” n.d., https://www.huntington.org/verso/proclaiming-independence.

6. “John Dunlap Prints the First Copies of the  Declaration of Independence: History of Information,” n.d., https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=425

7. Listings. (n.d.). National Gallery of Australia. https://nga.gov.au/art-artists/conservation/paper/listings-watermark-and-countermark-library/

8. Rotherhithe (Wapping), from the Thames Set (A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects) Yale University Art Gallery. (n.d.). Yale University Art Gallery. https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/39429

9. Chris Pomar, “Proclaiming Independence | the Huntington,” n.d., https://www.huntington.org/verso/proclaiming-independence.

10. Rotherhithe (Wapping), from the Thames Set (A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects) Yale University Art Gallery. (n.d.). Yale University Art Gallery. https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/39429

11. Will Christman, “The Declaration of Independence: In German!,” Historically Speaking, September 7, 2018, https://vugradhistory.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/the-declaration-of-independence-in-german/.

12. The United States Declaration of Independence (Part 4). (n.d.). https://www.dhm.de/archiv/magazine/unabhaengig/adams4_d.htm#staatsbot

13. University of Virginia Press. (n.d.). Founders online: John Hancock to George Washington, 6 July 1776.  https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-05-02-0153

14. University of Virginia Press, “Founders Online: General Orders, 9 July 1776,” n.d., https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-05-02-0176.

15. Boys, Bowery. “George Washington’S Copy of the Declaration of Independence.” The Bowery Boys: New York City History, July 4, 2022.  https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2022/07/george-washingtons-copy-declaration-independence.html.

16. “The History of Printing in America, With a Biography of Printers : Thomas, Isaiah, 1749-1831 : Free Download, Borrow, a7d Streaming : Internet Archive,” Internet Archive, 1874, https://archive.org/details/historyofprintin01thom/page/328/mode/2up.

17. March Highlight: Mary Katharine Goddard | Declaration Resources Project. (2016, March 4). https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/march-goddard

18. History of the United States Postal Systems https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20120427192543/http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmailus1.htm#COLONIAL

19. First Newspaper Printing of the Declaration of Independence https://www.amrevmuseum.org/collection/first-newspaper-printing-of-the-declaration-of-independence

20. Carl Bridenbaugh, “The Press and the Book in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia,” 1941, https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/view/29658. p.3

21. “March Highlight: Mary Katharine Goddard | Declaration Resources Project,” March 4, 2016, https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/march-goddard

22. Essex Archives Online - Catalogue: D/F 182. (n.d.). https://www.essexarchivesonline.co.uk/Result_Details.aspx?DocID=90243

23. “Mary Katharine Goddard, MSA SC 3520-2809,” n.d., https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/002800/002809/html/2809bio.html#3.

24. Admin, “First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry,” The Army Historical Foundation, April 29, 2024, https://armyhistory.org/first-troop-philadelphia-city-cavalry/.

Five Things You Never Knew about the Declaration of Independence: The Engrossed Parchment

The document most commonly associated with the Declaration of Independence is the engrossed parchment version. It’s the formal, beautifully handwritten copy that features the delegates’ signatures. Although it is not the earliest draft, it is the iconic one widely recognized as the “original.” How did this version come to be?

The Declaration Committee Lithograph; Published by Currier & Ives, 125 Nassau St., New York, [1876]

Our story begins on June 11, 1776, when the Continental Congress chose Thomas Jefferson, JohnAdams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston to draft the Declaration ofIndependence. In June 1776, the question of who would actually write the first version sparked a quiet but revealing exchange between Adams and Jefferson. Years later, the two men recalled the moment differently. Adams remembered a private subcommittee of just the two of them in which he urged Jefferson to take the pen, citing Virginia’s prominence, his own unpopularity inCongress, and Jefferson’s superior talent as a writer. Jefferson, by contrast, described aunanimous committee decision that placed the task squarely on his shoulders from the start, with no mention of a subcommittee or debate. These conflicting memories, written decades after the event, offer a glimpse into how even the authors of one of history’s most famous documents shaped their own roles in its creation, each quietly claiming a slightly different piece of the story. (1)

Over several weeks, history tells us that Jefferson, seated in a small room in Jacob Graff, Jr.’s house on High Street in Philadelphia, drafted the Declaration of Independence. He sat at a portable writing desk of his own design, revising the document to capture the core principles of American liberty. (2)

After completing his rough draft, he shared it with Franklin and Adams for feedback; they suggested several revisions. One notable change came from Franklin: Jefferson had written, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable...” Franklin revised this to “We hold these truths to be self-evident...” (3)

Here are two additional examples of changes made during this review:

Jefferson’s Original
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained...

Final Version
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...

Jefferson’s Original
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness...

Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence, page 3 Thomas Jefferson, June 1776

Final Version
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Beyond these committee edits, the full Continental Congress made further changes during debates from July 1 to 4, 1776. The most significant deletion was Jefferson’s lengthy condemnation of the slave trade, which appears on page 3 of the rough draft and constitutes the longest grievance in his original text. (4)

This condemnation of slavery survived the Committee of Five’s review. It also remained in the early stages of congressional debate, as evidenced by its inclusion in the printedJournals of the Continental Congress for the first reading on June 28, 1776. However, it was removed on July 2,1776. Jefferson later attributed this deletion to deference “in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia.” (5)

Is it a mere coincidence that, in the years that followed, South Carolina, the site of the Denmark Vesey slave revolt in Charleston in 1822, and Georgia experienced significant tensions over slavery? These same states were among the first to secede from the Union. In fact, the first shot sof the Civil War came at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

The text of this removed paragraph from Jefferson’s rough draft (June 11–28, 1776) reads:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom healso obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties ofone people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

Note that “MEN” is capitalized in this grievance. This raises the question: when Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal,” did he intend to include enslaved people as well?

Finally, Congress added a concluding passage invoking divine authority: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States...” This statement also required the declaration to be printed. We’ll discuss that subject in our next blog post.

With the text finalized on July 4, 1776, Congress ordered on July 19, “That the Declaration passed on the 4th, be fairly engrossed on parchment... when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.”

It was then that Timothy Mat lack, an assistant to the Congress secretary, engrossed(calligraphed) the document between July 19 and August 1. The majority of delegates, 49 of the56, signed on August 2, 1776. The remaining signers added their names later, over subsequent months.

One notable late signer was Thomas McKean of Delaware. His name is absent from MaryKatharine Goddard’s broadside, which was printed in January of 1777 and lists only 55 names. In later reprints, such as Francis Bailey’s 1782 edition of The Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which was printed six years after the August 2nd signing, all 56 names appear, including McKean’s. The dates of the printings are one way for historians to determine approximately when McKean signed the engrossed copy.

And, why did it take so long for him to sign the Declaration? He was actually in Philadelphia for the July 2 vote for independence, but he had to leave right after that. He was a colonel in the Pennsylvania militia and deeply involved in Delaware politics, so duty called him away before the official signing day on August 2. It took over a year before he could safely get back to Philadelphia and put his name on the document.

And here’s why it was so dangerous for him to return sooner. McKean later wrote to John Adams that during that time, he was being ‘hunted like a fox by the enemy.’ At the time, British forces were pushing through the Mid-Atlantic region, so he had to move his family five times in just a few months to stay one step ahead of capture. These constant relocations and the real threat hanging over him explain why he couldn’t risk going back to sign earlier. His delay wasn’t hesitation—it was survival. This illustrates how the Revolution’s chaos hit those who’d voted boldly for independence, forcing them to protect their families first. (6)

As an interesting side point, Francis Bailey, who printed the 1782 version of the Declaration, was a prominent Philadelphia printer during the Revolutionary era. His niece, Lydia Bailey, later became a notable printer herself. After her husband, Robert, died in 1808, she assumed his debt-ridden business, raised four children, trained numerous apprentices, shifted to job printing, and served as Philadelphia’s official city printer for decades, running a successful shop for over half a century until her death in 1869.

If you look closely at their portraits below, you’ll see Francis has a piece of movable type in his hand (the letter A), and Lydia has a composing stick in hers.

Lydia Steele Bailey Jacob Eichholtz (American, 1776 - 1842)

francis-bailey Francis Bailey Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827)

You can read more about Lydia in our blog post, “Women in Printing: Women Printers in the 19th Century”.

The Signatures are not Random

Upon examination of the engrossed copy, the signatures appear to be placed at random; however, this is not the case. John Hancock, as President of the Continental Congress, signed first and most prominently in the center. The remaining signatures were organized by state, grouped geographically from north to south (starting with New Hampshire on the right and proceeding to Georgia on the left), and arranged in columns from right to left. This mirrored the order in which Congress conducted roll-call votes: by state, from north to south. Within each state's group, names were generally arranged in order of seniority, proceeding from the most senior delegate to the others. This geographical arrangement helped avoid potential disputes over perceived importance among the colonies. (7)

And here’s one more thought about those signatures, this one more sobering. The act of signing the Declaration of Independence was, in the eyes of the British Crown, high treason. Every name that appeared on that document understood exactly what was at stake. If GeneralWashington and the Continental Army were defeated, the king’s forces would almost certainly hunt them down. Capture would mean trial, conviction, and execution, most probably by hanging. Yet they signed anyway, fully aware that their names on that parchment could one day serve as their own death warrant.

Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
When people picture the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they often think of JohnTrumbull’s famous painting, The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, with the dignified founders gathered in a grand room, looking united and purposeful. But here’s the thing: that dramatic scene never actually happened, and it doesn’t depict the signing. It captures the moment when the drafting committee presents Jefferson’s draft to Congress on June 28, 1776, not the approval on July 4 or the later signings in August. In reality, as we learned earlier, the delegates weren’t all there at once. We’ve discussed how the process was messy, spread out over days or even months. Trumbull deliberately compressed time and events into a single symbolic image, like a class photo of the Revolution, to honor the collective spirit rather than adhere to strict facts. Trumbull set out to include all 56 signers of the Declaration, but he could only secure reliable likenesses for 42 of them, so the final painting shows 48 figures in total. He also included a few non-signers who were present for parts of the debates, and he deliberately placed everyone in a single symbolic scene, even though many delegates weren’t present on June 28 when the draft was presented, and some never signed at all. His real aim was to preserve the faces and spirit of the revolutionary generation for posterity, not to create a strictly factual snapshot of a single moment.

Thomas Jefferson played a key role in shaping this vision. While Trumbull was in Paris in 1785, Jefferson, impressed by the artist’s plans for a series of Revolutionary War paintings, invited him to stay and helped kickstart the composition. Jefferson sketched the layout of the assembly room in Independence Hall and advised on the details, insisting that the painting include the full committee, Adams, Sherman, Livingston, Franklin, and himself, handing the document toJohn Hancock. Historically, we know the committee submitted the document, and Jefferson, who had written it, reported it to the House.

The Declaration of Independence Artist: John Trumbull (American, 1756–1843)

During Trumbull’s discussions with both Jefferson and Adams, they urged him to include as many delegates as possible in the scene, even those who were absent on the day the draft was presented or who never signed the Declaration, because they wanted the painting to serve as a lasting tribute to the full range of men who risked their lives and fortunes for independence. This artistic liberty turned the painting into an idealized tribute to unity and sacrifice, far from the fragmented reality of debates, revisions, and staggered attendance.

Trumbull devoted more than three decades to the work, beginning in 1786, shortly after theRevolution, and not finishing until around 1820. He traveled extensively to paint 36 figures from life, copying others from existing portraits or even using sons as stand-ins when he couldn’t get the originals. His dedication to accuracy in likenesses, if not in events, made it a lasting icon. The painting reminds us that history is often more about inspiration than precision, blending fact with a touch of myth to define a nation’s birth.

Trumbull’s painting has permeated popular culture far beyond history books, perhaps most notably on the Two-Dollar Bill. Since the 1976 redesign, which coincided with the nation’sBicentennial, the reverse side of the two-dollar bill features an engraving based on the work, depicting the Committee of Five presenting the Declaration to Congress, with John Hancock presiding at the table.

This vignette, while not an exact reproduction of Trumbull’s full composition (it omits some figures and rearranges others to fit the note’s format), has made the scene one of the most recognized images of American founding history, even on a bill that remains relatively uncommon in circulation.

The Engrossed Parchment and What It Cost

The engrossed parchment of the Declaration of Independence stands as the final, formal product of a deeply human process. When the fifty-six men signed it, they were ready to risk everything, as they mutually pledged “to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The parchment itself, now faded and fragile, still carries those signatures as both a promise and a warning: liberty was declared not just in words, but in the willingness to stake everything on them. That willingness, more than any single sentence or flourish of ink, is what makes this document enduring.

As we reflect on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, remember the late nights, painful compromises, delayed signatures, and the myths we’ve built around it. We need to appreciate that the Declaration isn’t just a document; it’s a story written in courage, conflict, and ink.

As we wrap up the first part of our five-part series on the Declaration of Independence, we’ve learned how the engrossed copy came into being. But what if I told you this document wasn’t the “Original” declaration? Join us in our next blog post to learn about the first, the original Declaration of Independence.

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Sources

1. The Declaration of Independence: A History https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-history

2. A Closer Look at Jefferson's Declaration https://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/07/02/closer-look-jeffersons-declaration

3. 1776: Declaration of Independence (various drafts) https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1776-declaration-of-independence-various-drafts#lf0034_footnote_nt073

4. Image 3 of Thomas Jefferson, June 1776, Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtjx.mtjbib000156/?sp=3

5. Extract from Thomas Jefferson’s Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress https://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/54

6. University of Virginia Press.(n.d.). Founders online: Thomas McKean to John Adams, 8 November 1779. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-08-02-0172

7. March Highlight: Mary Katherine Goddard https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/march-goddard

8. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 Artist: John Trumbull (American, 1756 –1843) https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/69

THE ULTIMATE PRINTING MAP AND A FAREWELL TO OUR MUSEUM MANAGER

< Back to Blog

Like many of you, being stuck at home has given me an extreme case of wanderlust. This has inspired me to create THE ultimate print, book, and paper nerd map! 

Six years ago when I was first hired for the job of Museum Manager of The International Printing Museum I knew almost nothing about printing. You see the dirty secret of many museum jobs is that you don’t have to be an expert in the subject of the museum, you just have to know how to work in a museum. So I set out on a journey to soak up anything and everything about printing. At the time I was living in Washington DC and Mark sent me a handy list of local places of interest I might visit to start getting a hang of printing history. My first stop was the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which I had previously interned at in the Division of Political and Military History. Thanks to my connections I was able to finagle a meeting with Joan Boudreau, Curator of The Printing and Graphic Arts collections. She took me to see one of the collection’s storage rooms where none other than Benjamin Franklin’s printing press itself was temporarily being stored. Here I was, barely knowing if I’d ever seen a printing press before, and the first one I see is Benjamin Franklins! From then on I started noticing printing everywhere, in antiquarian books on display at Museums, in local letterpress shops on the street, even in small displays in offices and apartment building that had been repurposed from a printing facility.

From Left to Right: Mark Barbour (Director and curator), Sara Halpert (Museum Manager), and Madeline Helland (assistant manager)

I’m so lucky because I have my very own letterpress travel concierge named Mark Barbour who always knows of some printing museum, letterpress shop, or even private collection wherever I travel. But others are not so lucky and I’ve spent my time making a map, a resource for those not lucky enough to have an unending fountain of knowledge like Mark. In his excellent book “The Itinerant Printer” (seriously you should really get a copy) Chris Fritton made a very astute observation “Social media and the ubiquity of information in contemporary society all but guaranteed that everyone in the modest letterpress community knew what everyone else was doing.” but he soon realized he “couldn’t have been more wrong.”  With this map I’m attempting to right that wrong if only a little bit. 

Previously I had used resources like the AAPA Printing Museums listing and BriarPress, but my travels taught me that there was just so much more out there than any one list contained. With that in mind I set out to compile this map with an untold number of resources from the aforementioned “Itinerant Printer” book, to Atlas Obscura, and even to findagrave.com. I did deep google dives and ended up in great but unexpected places.

As some of you might know, after six wonderful years at The Printing Museum I will be leaving the position next month. Think of this as a parting gift to thank you for all the printing passion and knowledge you’ve all sparked in me.

Till We Meet Again,

Sara Halpert
Museum Manager

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UPDATES AND ADDITIONS

The world is an ever changing and moving environment where businesses and museums shut down, move, or otherwise change. I’m sure there are many errors in the map with wrong addresses, long shut down shops, or other mistakes. If you can a correction or an addition to the map please feel free to email me Sara@printmuseum.org

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PARAMETERS

I had to decide what I wanted to focus in on and what parameters to place. The map is split into 10 sections, although many of the locations could fit into multiple categories

1. Printing Museums and
Working Historic Shops

These are Museums that focus primarily on the history of printing or museums that have working historical print shops or working presses.

2. Book Art Centers, Workshops, Private Presses, and Galleries

The main parameters for this section were that the gallery had to have displayed printed art and the art centers or print shops had to offer workshops or welcome visitors to see the shop. Basically it’s a resource for anyone who wants to find where to see or learn printing near them.

3. University Book Arts

These are print shops connected to a University program or Universities that offer some kind of book arts programs or classes.

4. Typography and Typecasting

These places focus primarily on typography or typecasting.

5. Libraries, Archives,
and Book Collections

This very broad category includes libraries with rare books or historic collections, rare book shops, archives, and other related places.

6. Historic Sites & Public Art

These are historic print shop buildings and sites, plaques noting printing history, statues dedicated to printing history, gravesites of notable printing industry people and other printing and book related public art.

7. Paper History

These are mostly historic paper mills or places dedicated to paper history specifically.

8. Museums with Objects of Interest

I can’t be the only one to get excited just because a little museum has one small printing press right? This category is extremely broad, it’s basically any public institutions that has notable printed objects or printing equipment, even if only a small amount.

9. Shops

Places to spend your money on printed goods and ogle pretty presses.

10. Other

Anything and everything vaguely related to this map but doesn’t necessarily fit into another category.

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The History of the Mimeograph >

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THE HISTORY OF THE MIMEOGRAPH

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In March 2021, a full year after the first Covid shutdowns, Mark, the Museum Director, and one of our presses got to venture out of Southern California. Mark traveled across the country with our 5000 lb Grasshopper press in tow to do a film shoot for an upcoming tv show. The rest of the Museum staff were in for a treat upon Mark’s return– he had found a number of printing treasures on the East Coast that he brought back with him. The largest of these was a Philadelphia Press, which you can read about here. And one of the smaller items was a very rare No. 1 Edison Mimeograph, one of the earliest duplicators.

This first mimeograph was created by Thomas Edison and the A.B. Dick Company.

Edison was one of America’s most famous inventors, best known for his work with lightbulbs, phonographs, telephones, and other electrical innovations that shaped the modern world. Among his many inventions, Edison also played a role in creating the first duplicator. Edison was something of a patent fiend– during his lifetime he acquired over a thousand patents for his inventions. His patents that became noteworthy to the printing industry included “autographic printing” with an electric pen and flatbed press and “autographic stencils.” Nothing much came of these patents however until the Chicago based A.B. Dick Company took an interest in the technology in the mid-1880s.

A.B. Dick got its name from its founder Albert Blake Dick, who started the business in 1883 as a lumber company. Within the next ten years, the A.B Dick Company transformed into a major manufacturer of printing equipment. Dick designed his own version of the electric pen and stencil and reached out to Edison, who controlled the patents for the technology. The two established a working relationship as they began to design the first stencil duplicator. The result was the Edison Mimeograph.

Our No. 1 Edison Mimeograph is packaged in a wooden box that still contains all the chemicals and tools needed to produce a stencil. It even has an old stencil that may have been by its previous owner. Inside the lid of the box are instructions on how to use it and a price list for other models of mimeographs (Our No. 1 model cost $15 back in the 1890s, which is equivalent to $500 today).

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THE CONTENTS OF OUR EDISON MIMEOGRAPH:

Here at the Museum, we also have a number of later models of mimeographs. They evolved dramatically from a handmade stencil in a box to a flatbed press to a rotary style machine. Each iteration of the mimeograph improved it slightly. The flatbed model replaced the free-floating screen and brayer from the earliest models. The rotary mimeograph could automatically apply ink and produce prints by turning a hand crank. The machines shown below are examples of the rotary iteration of the mimeograph.

AB Dick Mimeograph Model 77

AB Dick Mimeograph Model 78

Nowadays, the mimeograph is best known as a low budget duplicator that was popular in schools before xerox machines and digital technology became widespread. It was an affordable alternative to professional printing and much faster than typing each copy of a page. The mimeograph also became popular with DIY publishers who wanted to cheaply produce booklets, zines, and other materials that they could distribute without being inhibited by the constraints of traditional media.

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Farewell to our Museum Manager

International Kelmscott Press Day >

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International Kelmscott Press Day

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June 26, 2021 marks a new holiday in the world of printing and book arts– it’s International Kelmscott Press Day! To celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Kelmscott Chaucer, the William Morris society announced a worldwide celebration of the press that produced this incredible book.

William Morris

For those who are not familiar, Kelmscott Press was a printing studio run by the prolific English artist, William Morris, and his edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is the work the press is most renowned for.

William Morris was an artist with a very specific creative ideology. He was born into the age of industrialization, and the work he created was a direct reaction to the times. Morris was a figurehead of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which stood against the shoddy manufacturing, poor working conditions, and cheap products that came out of factories at the time. Instead of embracing new industrial processes, the movement idealized the craftsmanship of Middle Ages. Morris and his fellow artists drew inspiration from Medieval art and valued working by hand to produce high-quality goods. In the 1860s, Morris founded a design firm, which manufactured decorative items like textiles, stained glass, and wallpaper. Despite their contrarian views on labor and aesthetics, the company’s designs were extremely popular with its Victorian audience and Morris became quite successful.

After a long life of artistic success and social activism, Morris retired to his summer home, Kelmscott Manor, and set up a press in a nearby cottage. This was the beginning of the Kelmscott Press. Morris created the Press as a personal project, to create books he found beautiful. He printed his own writings, texts by his contemporaries, and Medieval works.  

The William Morris Society’s Albion Press

An 1863 Albion press at the Printing Museum

In setting up the press, Morris put considerable thought into both the design of his books and into the process by which he made them. He purchased a number of Albion hand presses to print books that would emulate the designs in Medieval manuscripts. Although more modern presses, like the cylinder press and platen press, had been invented, Morris preferred the old-fashioned method of hand printing, feeling that it was more in keeping with traditional craftsmanship.

Morris rejected modern ink and paper and had these supplies outsourced by various artisans. The book bindings produced for the press were also a nod to the past. Instead of using leather bindings, which were popular at the time, Morris had his publications bound in a historic limp vellum style or in a simple linen and board cover. The illustrations in Kelmscott publications were engraved on woodblocks and the type and decorative elements were made with punches that had been cut by hand.

A replica kelmscott binding by karen hamner

the Title page of the kelmscott chaucer

Morris’s ideas were drawn from historic influences but ultimately he created books in a style all his own. The designs he made were inspired by the Medieval era, more than they were a direct reproduction of Medieval art, and the same can be said for his production process at the Kelmscott Press. The elaborate books created at the Kelmscott Press are incredible feats of innovation and artistry. The most elaborate of these works was the Kelmscott Chaucer, which was completed on June 26, 1891– 125 years ago today. While all Kelmscott books were immaculately designed and made with labored precision, the illustrations and decorative borders that distinguish them were usually limited to a few pages. In contrast, every single page of the Kelmscott Chaucer has an illustration, borders, and decorative typography. It is truly a masterpiece and an unparalleled feat of printing.

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Here at the Museum, we have two small works produced by the Kelmscott Press, which came from our founder, Ernie Lindner’s, personal collection. These two books have simple linen covers but their title pages are intricately designed. The Museum is also home to a number of Albion presses of various sizes, which are contemporaries of the hand presses Morris himself used.

< The History of the Mimeograph

The History of the Book in Asia: Part One >

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THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK IN ASIA Part II

Part Two: Korea and India

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For Asian American Heritage month, we will be exploring the history of the book in Asia. We will dive into how papermaking, bookbinding, and printing varied between different regions and cultures.

Last week, we looked into how Japan they drew inspiration from Chinese innovation to create its own distinctive methods of papermaking and bookbinding. Today we’ll be exploring book production in Korea and how it differs from processes we discussed in our two previous posts.

Like Japan, Korea was in contact with China and imported a number of their ideas about printing and papermaking as soon as they developed. For several centuries, Korea used woodblock printing and paper made out of hemp to produce written texts. This process was almost identical to what the Chinese were doing at the same time. Things began to change, however, during the Goryeo period when Korea went through an artistic golden age.

In 1234, a man named Choe Yun-ui was tasked with printing a lengthy Buddhist text that would have taken thousands of wooden blocks to reproduce. Choe found a way around this by creating moveable metal type. The final form of this metal type is practically identical to what Gutenberg created 200 years later but Choe’s method for producing the type is vastly different. Gutenberg produced his letters with a type mold, pouring molten metal into an opening where it would fill a matrix that had been indented into the shape of the letter being cast. The Korean method that Choe envisioned did not use a mold at all. Instead, a character would be carved into a piece of wood and then pressed into a bed of sand, where it could be filled with metal. To expedite the process, multiple characters would be pressed into the sand and connected with thin trenches. The freshly cast type looked a little like a tree when it was pulled out of the sand, each character connected by a metal branch. Once it had cooled, the characters could be broken off their branches and used individually.

While the Chinese had come up with the idea of moveable type before the Koreans, it gained more traction in Korea. Korea had a simplified alphabet called Hangul that was about the same size as the Roman alphabet, which made typecasting and typesetting much more feasible. In China there were too many characters for moveable type to be a practical alternative to woodblock printing. While China gets credit for creating the first printed book, the oldest surviving book printed with moveable metal type is a Buddhist text called the Jikji, which was produced in Korea in 1377.

During the Goryeo Dynasty, Korea also made considerable strides in their papermaking methods. They developed a type of paper called Hanji, which was made from the bark of a paper mulberry tree called Dak and tree sap. This type of paper is extremely durable– there are surviving examples of Hanji that have lasted for hundreds of years. As printing flourished during the Goryeo period, so did papermaking. Paper mulberry trees were planted all across the country to meet the demands of printers and for centuries the government nurtured the growth of the paper market.

In the 1800s, Western technology was introduced into Korea. It reshaped the fields of papermaking and printing to become more industrialized and less traditional, in the same way it had in Japan. However, like Japan, Korea still recognizes the importance of traditional printing and papermaking and celebrates these processes.

India is a huge country with a hybrid of different cultural traditions, which makes for a very complicated history. There are lots of different artistic styles based on region and religion. The Jains, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians that occupied the subcontinent all had differing beliefs, which led to wildly different iconography in the books they created. They each brought different methods of papermaking, printing, and bookbinding to the areas they occupied. Today, we’re going to touch on some of those different processes and how they were introduced to the country.

In ancient times, Indian books were made of long strips of palm leaves or birch bark then bound together like venetian blinds, with thread at the edges of the book linking each page to the next. These books were meant to be read one page at a time, but they could be unfurled into one long text, sort of like a scroll. Artisans would carve or write religious texts into the page and paint vibrant miniatures alongside these texts as illustrations. Bookbinding as we know it was introduced to India during the Middle Ages, when an Islamic kingdom called the Mughal Empire assumed power. Like books in the West, Islamic books have pages sewn into signatures and a hard cover. What makes them distinctive is the triangular flaps on the front cover that hold the book shut.

A Islamic book with a protective flap on the cover

Image Credit: Radha Pandey

The Mughals also introduced paper-making to India. The legend is that Arabic invaders captured papermakers from China and forced them to share their secret craft. As these invaders moved from China into the Middle East, they spread their knowledge of paper-making wherever they settled. Although the story of the Chinese prisoners is probably more of a myth than a reality, the route paper-making took from Asia to the Middle East is pretty accurate. Islamic people coexisted with many different cultures, and they brought the traditions they learned to new territories, like India, as they migrated across the continent. Indo-Islamic papermakers, called Kagzi, took up residence in northern regions of India where they had access to fresh water, trade routes, and cooler climates. They made durable rag paper out of hemp fibers, rather than cotton or linen like Europeans. During the British Raj, this practice largely died out and industrial paper mills that used wood pulp became the norm in India.

While Indian bookbinding and papermaking were the result of centuries of cultural synthesis, the introduction of printing was more of a happy accident. In 1556, a group of Jesuits was traveling from Portugal to Abyssinia (now modern Ethiopia) with a printing press in tow and got detained in Goa, on the southwest coast of India. Shortly after, the head of the expedition passed away before the rest of the priests could resume their travels, so the printing press never left the region. The remaining Jesuits began teaching the locals about the art of printing and then created metal type in the native Indian script, Tamil. Unfortunately, by the 17th century missionaries began to make efforts to suppress indigenous languages, which put a halt to printing in the area. Printing really took off in India a century later when the British East India Company set up print shops in the region of Calcutta, but this was much more for the benefit of English colonists than existing Indian communities.

< The History of the Book in Asia: Part One

Paul Landacre’s Hand Press >

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THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK IN ASIA Part I

Part One: China and Japan

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A Chinese woodblock from the museum’s collection

If you were to ask someone “who invented printing?” there is a good chance they would answer, “Gutenberg, of course!” Although Gutenberg was the first person in Europe to invent the printing press and moveable metal type, printing predated him by several centuries. In fact, printing wasn’t invented in Europe at all– it started in Asia.

For Asian American Heritage month, we will be exploring the history of the book in Asia. We will dive into how paper making, bookbinding, and printing varied between different regions and cultures. We’re starting in East Asia, with the country that first invented printing and paper: China!

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The Paper making process

The invention of paper is attributed to an imperial official from the Han Dynasty named Ts’ai Lun, who purportedly came up with the idea in 105 A.D. In reality, the idea may have predated Ts’ai Lun, but his close relationship to the imperial court meant his name went down in history. Before paper, Chinese scribes would use pieces of bamboo or wood to write on, then later they began to use silk and cloth. All of these materials were difficult to write on and silk was too expensive for it to find widespread use. Paper was a huge improvement and proved to be a revolutionary invention. Chinese papermakers made pulp from readily available waste products, like rags and fishnets, as well as fresh plant fibers like bamboo and mulberry bark (called Kozo).

The invention of paper led to a significant increase in books and literacy across China, but printing moved things a step further. Printing took a number of different forms in China. The oldest of these forms was woodblock printing, which began about 500 years after Ts’ai Lun’s lifetime. With this method, an entire page of text would be carved onto a block of wood, coated in ink, and pressed onto a sheet of paper. Around 1040 A.D., a Chinese artisan named Bi Sheng came up with the idea of using moveable wooden type that could be repurposed for many books, instead of carving one page at a time. Later inventors replicated this idea but instead used clay to shape their characters. A man named Wang Zhen is credited with improving on these forms of moveable type and creating a distinctive circular type case that spun so you could easily access different characters. However, these clay and wood characters had a number of imperfections that kept them from taking off in China to the same extent that moveable metal type spread in Europe. Additionally, the Chinese alphabet contains thousands of characters, much more than European alphabets. It was very time consuming to carve all of them and to sort through them when typesetting. So, despite the invention of moveable type, wood blocks remained the most popular form of printing in China.

chinese scrolls

 Before paper became widely available, Chinese texts were written on silk scrolls. However, scrolls were inconvenient in many ways– silk was expensive, delicate, and difficult to write on, plus the scrolls were cumbersome to store and time consuming to unroll. The invention of paper and printing marked a shift away from this. Written texts in China began to look more like our conventional idea of a book. Accordion books began to appear in China around the fifth century as more efficient alternatives to scrolls. These books were made of folded strips of paper that were tucked inside a paper cover.

China was at the forefront of printing, paper making, and bookbinding long before Gutenberg was born. A Buddhist text called the Diamond Sutra, which was made using all the methods described here, in 868 A.D. during the Tang Dynasty, is believed to be the oldest printed book in the world. China used their technological advances to spread literacy while only a privileged few had access to handwritten manuscripts in the West.

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Japanese account books

Now we’re shifting our focus from China to the neighboring country of Japan. We will explore how Japan used existing ideas in China to come up with their own methods of book production.

Since China and Japan are neighbors, Japanese artisans adopted quite a few ideas from the Chinese when it came to producing books. They borrowed their methods of papermaking and woodblock printing. Like the Chinese, the Japanese also used silk scrolls to write down important texts and then began to make accordion style books once they had access to paper.

WASHI PAPER

The Chinese method of making paper was introduced to Japan in the 7th century by the Korean Buddhist monk, Doncho. Japanese papermakers thought Chinese paper was too delicate, so they modified the process to make their own paper stronger and more flexible. Japanese paper is called Washi and it is made using a very traditional process. Papermakers were typically farmers, first and foremost. They would grow plants for paper alongside their other crops and use the fibers to create pulp. These fibers included hemp, tree bark (specifically kozo, gampi, and mitsumata), and a substance called neri, that was added to pulp to help papermakers pull more even sheets. Making washi was a seasonal activity that took place in rural areas. In the winter, when it was too cold for farmers to work in their fields, they would pull sheets of paper using icy water to ensure their washi was free of impurities.

Between the 12th to 14th century, Japan began to come up with their own styles of bookbinding. The oldest book structure they used was a multi-section binding that looked very similar to the sewn signatures in Western style books. The most recognizable book form was a four-hole binding that many binders nowadays refer to as a Japanese stab stitch. Bookbinders would fold their pages in half, text side out, and sew through holes the paper cover to join the pages together. Folding pages in half so they were blank on the inside was a practical choice. The ink that was used for printing and calligraphy bled through thin washi paper, so it made sense to create book pages with a double leaf.

DIFFERENT EXAMPLES OF JAPANESE BINDINGS

Printed books had a limited scope in Japan until the 1600s. There were printed Buddhist texts for religious purposes and calligraphic manuscripts for the elite, but the processes for producing these books were so labor intensive and expensive that printed books did not spread very quickly. This changed during the Edo Period, when the stability of shogunate leadership led to an increase in paper production. During this time, books were printed on every subject imaginable and literacy began to spread. The biggest change came in the 1800s when Western technology was introduced to Japan, kickstarting an industrial revolution. Printing presses, thick machine-made paper, and metal type begin to permeate the field of book production.

Although industrialization changed the field of printing, bookbinding, and papermaking in Japan, it did not erase any of the country’s traditional practices. Japanese woodblock printing and bookbinding are still art forms that are practiced today. The craft of producing traditional washi is even registered as a form of intangible cultural heritage under UNESCO.

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The History of the Book in Asia: Part Two >

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Paul Landacre’s Washington Hand Press

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The Lindner Collection at the International Printing Museum has numerous gems of printing history. Some of those gems even tell a unique Southern California history. One such example is the Landacre Washington Press.

The early origins of the press we call The Landacre Press are unknown (although false legend had it that Mark Twain himself printed on it). It was manufactured just prior to the Civil War in Cincinnati and made its way west to California on a wagon. What can be verified is that the press was discovered in 1929 in the famous ghost town of Bodie, California. According to biographer Anthony L. Lehman in his book “Paul Landacre: A Life and A Legacy” the press was found “standing rusted and caked with grime in a ramshackle barn that was being held together more by habit than by nails.” It was found by acclaimed editor and photographer Willard Morgan. Morgan left this press to his friend and fellow artist Paul Landacre in 1930.

Paul Landacre was one of the most acclaimed wood engravers of the twentieth century, known for his technical acumen paired with the artistic beauty of his illustration and prints. His prints are featured in prestigious museum collections throughout the world and his house is a Los Angeles Cultural Historic Landmark. Landacre spent months lovingly restoring and repairing the press that would become his constant companion for the rest of his working life.

In an article for “The Relief Print Woodcut Wood Engraving and Linoleum Cut” (1945) he wrote:

“I print my engravings on an old Washington Hand Press, using a silk timpan and a printing blanket made especially for hand presses. This method is, for certain types of engraving, undoubtedly superior even to modern power presses which have more advantage in speed. The advantage of the hand press lies in the great pressure which may be sustained and the amount of pressure being felt in the pull of the lever.”

Paul Landacre and his press

“The Press” on a vinyl cover next to the actual press that inspired it

Paul Landacre so loved his press that he made an engraving of its toggle and lever entitled “The Press” in 1934. That print became one of Paul’s most famous images, being featured in shows at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the San Diego Fine Arts Guild, and the American Artists Group in New York. Prints of this wood engraving are now in the collection at The National Gallery of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the De Young Museum, The Huntington Library, and many more prestigious collections. It was even featured on the vinyl cover for the 1977 release of Symphony No. 6 by Walter Piston and Piano Concerto No. 1 by Leon Kirchner. Just last year a copy of that vinyl was donated to the Museum by our patron and friend John Horn of Little Rock, Arkansas.

Tragically in 1963, after Paul’s wife and companion passed away from cancer, the artist took his own life.  He made plans to leave his press in the hands of one of his students at Otis Art Institute who would love and care for it as he had. However, before the press could be passed on, unknown thieves managed to steal it in the night. For anyone who has tried to move a Washington Press, weighing in at one ton or more, you’ll no doubt know the amount of knowledge, strength, and skill these thieves must have had to pull it off. Anthony L. Lehman surmised, “It would have taken no less than several men, some type of hoisting apparatus, a truck, and a considerable amount of time and muscle. The larger parts of the press were extraordinarily heavy, and Landacre’s home was built on such a steep hillside that it was impossible to pull a vehicle alongside.”

Joe Landacre’s Initials (JL) center punched on the press

There was one possible sighting of the press shortly afterwards but other than that, it would be almost 20 years until it was rediscovered in 1981 by none other than the Los Angeles printing equipment collector Ernie Lindner (and later the Founder of the International Printing Museum). Ernie received a call by someone who came into possession of the press through an unpaid storage bill that the thief seemed to have skipped town on. According to Ernie the press seemed badly weathered and had been exposed to the elements for roughly three years. Its authenticity was later confirmed by multiple sources included Paul’s brother, Joe Landacre, who identified his initials J L which he had centerpunched into the ornate, cast iron decorations on the press shortly after Paul’s death. Ernie, knowing the importance of the item, bought the press and brought it home to restore it.

That’s when another Southern California legendary artist, Vance Gerry, became involved with the press. Vance was a letterpress printer and a close friend of Ernie Lindner, but most know him as a legendary storyboard artist for Walt Disney. Vance worked on such classic films as The Jungle Book, The Sword in the Stone, and One Hundred and One Dalmations.

Ernie and Vance collaborated on other press refurbishment projects, usually with Ernie fixing up the mechanics and Vance giving a new coat of paint and decorations. When restoring the press, it was searched in vain to find some identifying marks, but all that was found was the original serial number, 2331. Ernie was able to determine that it was manufactured in the mid-19th century by C. Foster & Brother in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is a very rare example of the Washington-style press, with less than five known to exist. The nameplate on our Landacre Press was copied from another C. Foster Press Ernie found at the Sacramento History Museum.

When Ernie co-founded The International Printing Museum in 1988 with his world-famous collection, the Landacre Washington Press was one of the first presses every visitor encountered when they walked through the doors; it remains one of the gems among the Lindner Collection. 

The Landacre Press may be enjoyed in the Museum’s main gallery every Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm or by appointment Tuesday through Friday. Let’s see if you can find those counterpunched initials!

The Landacre Press is part of the Cincinnati Press Project, a database of Cincinnati-made printing presses. If you have knowledge of a Cincinnati-made press not presently in the database, be sure to contact them!

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< The History of the Book in Asia: Part Two

Women’s Typographical Union No. 1 >

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WOMEN’S TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION NO. 1

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HOW SUSAN B ANTHONY PARTNERED WITH AN AMBITIOUS TYPESETTER TO CHANGE HISTORY

Women’s Auxiliary TypogrAPhical Union Labor Day Parade 1909 LOC

This past August, Americans celebrated the centennial of Universal Women Suffrage. The fight for that right blossomed at the infamous 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention was led by Women’s Rights pioneers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Lesser known is their involvement in forming the first Women’s Typographical Union in New York and as publishers of a women’s rights newspaper called “The Revolution.” Last March, we published a series of articles on Women in Printing, including the fascinating story of Mrs. Agnes B. Peterson and the forming of the Women’s Co-operative Printing Union (WCPU) in 1869 San Francisco. On the opposite coast, in New York City, women were also fighting back against male typesetting trade unions.

The mid-nineteenth century was the epoch of the typesetting trade. Printing technology was moving at an industrial pace and demand for material had never been higher. The mechanization of typesetting, however, lagged behind in comparison. This gave rise to the giants of typesetting, the age of whole compositing rooms and a large staff of typesetters for big city newspapers or book publishers. According to Print Historian Walker Rumble in his book about nineteenth century typesetting, The Swifts, “The advent of women on the printing shop floor threatened to lower wages, ‘feminize’ male workplace culture, and present a competitive challenge to job performance.”

But this attitude was contradicted by the fact that in small towns across America, thousands of women worked in the printing industry. Fincher’s Trades Review reported at mid-century that at least half of the compositors in American towns were women. Similar to the Rosie the Riveters of WWII, the number of qualified female typesetters increased during the American Civil War, replacing men who went to fight. However, these women were excluded from apprenticeships and shut out of trade unions that dictated hiring and pricing practices, especially in big cities. With no other option, women who needed the work, or were determined to work, took lower wages and were often used as strikebreakers, ultimately pitting them against the male trade unions.

In addition, the compositing rooms of big city newspapers were fast paced, rambunctious places filled with wily young bachelors, old hats, gambling, drinking, saloon going and similarly “masculine” activities. The unionist no doubt feared that including women in a workplace would temper that spirit (sound familiar?). Keep in mind at this time there were few professions that were equally male and female. Things were either “Men’s Work,” or “Women’s Work” and men did not appreciate being identified with “Women’s Work” There were a myriad of reasons whether justifiable, societal, or just plain sexist, why men wanted to keep women out of the composing room but, as historian Mary Briggs observed, “Their most fundamental opposition was not to women but to the competition of inferior and cheap labor.”

Sketch of Augusta Lewis Troup from the American Dictionary of Printing and Bookmaking, New York, Howard Lockwood & Co., 1894.

In New York the tension was palpable. There was more work there than most places, therefore there was more work for the men to lose. The New York Typographical Union Chapter, Local No. 6. Local No. 6 was one of the most powerful unions in the nation, sometimes referred to as the “Big 6”. A talented young typesetter named Augusta Lewis entered the picture. Lewis learned typesetting not from an apprenticeship (women were shut out of apprenticeships and therefore union membership), but simple on the job training when the New York World hired a number of women typesetters in an effort to reduce costs. The inclusion of women in the typesetting room was a huge reason the typesetting staff of the New York World walked out on the job in 1868. Once the Big 6 Union resolved their differences with the New York World management, all women were fired from their positions. It was clear that management viewed women typesetters as a bargaining chip and cheap labor. They pitted unions against women and had no interest in who won, as long as they ended up saving money.

Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton c.1870

That’s when August Lewis turned to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for help. Luckily, they just happened to have recently started publishing their own Newspaper called “The Revolution,” a weekly that covered issues of women’s rights, suffrage, and politics. The newspaper advocated for the female typesetters and, upon their firings, hired many of them to work for The Revolution. According to Elizabeth Cady Stanton “One of Miss Anthony’s most cherished plans is to have a magnificent printing establishment, and a daily paper, owned and controlled and all the work done by women, thus giving employment to hundreds and making the world ring with the new evangel for women.”

But the partnership was a shaky one from the start. When they established the Working Women’s Association in September of 1868, the divide between working and middle-class women became apparent. The middle-class women, who made up the majority of suffragists, pushed to gain political standing in order to further women’s rights while the working-class women pushed to first gain economic equality in order to further women’s rights. 

By October of 1868 Lewis and about forty others had formed the very first all women labor union in America, Women’s Typographical Union No. 1.  Before organizing, women’s financial threat to the men was easily overcome by the power of the union. But once the women organized into their own union, the threat became legitimate. Members of the ITU were well aware of the havoc competing unions could wreak on wages, so instead they swallowed their pride and invited the Women’s Typographical Union to apply for a charter from the ITU.

The first issue of The Revolution (January 8, 1868)

The Women’s Typographical Union was soon forced to prove their union loyalty when in January 1869 the New York No. 6 Union led a strike against the book and job printers who employed low waged non-union female typesetters. One of these firms was Gray and Green Printers, the feminist leaning financial backers of Susan B. Anthony’s “The Revolution” newspaper, where Augusta Lewis happened to be employed. Even worse in the Union’s eyes, Gray and Green Printers offered a crash two-week training program for women typesetters, essentially training rat printers. Susan B. Anthony saw the strike as an opportunity “to train women as compositors, it was the only way women could get experience in the trade” and to “open the way for a thorough drill to the hundreds of poor girls, to enable these women to earn wages with men everywhere.” Augusta Lewis protested and was fired. Although Augusta and the Women’s Typographical Union had cut ties with the mainstream suffrage and women’s rights movement, they had gained respect within the union itself, which is what Augusta thought was the best method to pursue gender equality. Susan B. Anthony considered August Lewis a union dope and Augusta Lewis saw Susan B. Anthony as an enemy of working women. Despite this splintering, both women would continue to pursue women’s equality throughout their lives in the way they thought best.

As for the Women’s Typographical Union No. 1 it burned bright and briefly, coming to an end by 1878. Walker Rumble put it best, observing that for the union “instead of welcoming women the tactic now enveloped the occasional extraordinary woman absorbing her but offering diminishing opportunities for most women to enter the trade.” Despite their efforts, the members of the Women’s Typographical Union No. 1 still lived in a society that made women choose between a family and career and many of them chose to marry, including Augusta Lewis. According to “Neither Printer’s Wife nor Widow: American Women in Typesetting, 1830-1950,” a historical study written in 1980, “Today two popular views of the situation exist: the union view of the typographers as pioneer egalitarians, and the feminist view of the union as destroyer of the first and best opportunity women had to participate in a remunerative skilled trade. As far as they go, both views are correct, yet the matter is still more complex.” The prologue to this being that in 2021 women are dominant in the field of printing and produce some of the best contemporary work there is. To this we say Happy Women’s History Month and keep teaching the next generation of amazing women printers to honor those that came before us.

Women compositors working at The Victoria Press London, England

Note from the Author:

Sara Halpert has been the Museum Manager at The International Printing Museum since 2015. Before that she worked as a tour guide at Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, the former headquarters of the suffrage organization “The National Woman’s Party.” She was thrilled to combine her love for printing and women’s history into writing this piece. 

Main resources for this article came from “The Swifts: Printers in the Age of Typesetting Races” by Walker Rumble and “Neither Printer’s Wife nor Widow: American Women in Typesetting, 1830-1950” by Mary Briggs. 

Access the full archives of “The Revolution”

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Benjamin Franklin Gets Our Stamp of Approval >

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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN GETS OUR STAMP OF APPROVAL!

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Sunday January 17th, 2021 is Ben Franklin’s 315th Birthday! Everywhere you look at The Printing Museum you can see the influence of Franklin from some of his original prints to the Gordon Job Press. He is the Father of American Printing, but he had many, many other sons. Because of the diversity of his life and accomplishments, it seems as if every sector of society claims Franklin for their own. The electricians claim Franklin for their own with his experiments with the kite and batteries; politicians pay homage to him as one of our Founding Fathers and as a diplomat and ambassador; even the fireplace industry gives out a “Franklin Award” because of his pioneering work in perfecting the fireplace! 

Today we’re going to focus on the postal carriers who remember him for his improvements in postal service and title as the first Postmaster General. For this reason, and all his other accomplishments, the United States Post Office has issued over one hundred and thirty stamps depicting Benjamin Franklin! In fact, Benjamin Franklin was featured on the very first 5 cent stamp seen here.

At the International Printing Museum we have a small collection of just a few of the many stamps featuring Benjamin Franklin.

This stamp was issued in 1955 on Benjamin Franklins 250th birthday

The oldest one in the Printing Museum Collection is this 1903 Franklin Stamp

This stamp was issued in 1947 commemorating 100 years since the issuing of the first stamp US stamps, one which featured Ben Franklin and the other with George Washington. The various transportation vehicles in the background demonstrate all the different ways the post office has used to deliver letters throughout the ages.

1927

This 1972 issued stamp highlights Franklin’s contributions as a Founding Father and Diplomat

1955

This stamp was issued in 1976

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The A-Z of Odd Printers Jargon >

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THE A-Z OF ODD PRINTERS JARGON

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Like many professions and communities, the world of printers comes with it’s own set of terms, phrases, and names that are specific to the printing trade. Some of them, like Uppercase and Lowercase, seeped into the larger culture (though few people actually know the origin of the terms uppercase and lowercase originates from the use of an upper case to store the Capitol Letters and a Lower case to stow the small letters). Other terms are rarely, if every, used anymore as the profession of printing moved into new technologies and the last generation of occupational hot metal printers dwindles. It’s a shame too because some of our favorite jargon really ought to be used more.

Here’s some of the best and oddest from 1888’s
“The Printer’s Vocabulary” by Charles Thomas Jacobi

< Benjamin Franklin Gets Our Stamp of Approval

New Arrivals to the Museum, Part One >

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NEW ARRIVALS AT THE PRINTING MUSEUM

Part Two: “Lost” Edgar Miller Windows

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The International Printing Museum curator, Mark Barbour, arrived in Los Angeles from Chicago with a truckload of antique printing presses and artifacts, only days before the state and national governments issued COVID19 stay-in-place orders. Among the donated items from Jerome Kosoglad in memory of his father a Chicago equipment dealer and collector, was a rare French stone lithographic press from 1870 with a printing stone used to print a famous Norman Rockwell edition. Also included was an 8’ wood type collage apparently created by an unknown Los Angeles artist (Santa Monica Blvd is spelled out in one part, as well as an image of the famous Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel).

And then there was the old crate with six carefully packed hand painted windows. Knowing next to nothing about the windows other than they depicted scenes from printing history and were hanging in Leonard Kosoglad’s private warehouse museum in Wheeling (Chicago) IL, since the 1980’s. Mark commented that the mystery of the windows intrigued him enough to give focus to the long truck drive across the country; only one of the windows was visible when the crate was loaded in Chicago and the images on the glass were stunning re-creations of early printing presses and famous printers.

Leonard Kosoglad and his International Printing Equipment Co. shop (1946)

Each window pane was carefully removed from the crate and set side by side in the Printing Museum gallery. We discovered each window was themed: Early Printing, Type, Papermaking, Lithography, Calligraphy, and Bookbinding. The images were taken from early books and illustrations, but the overall style of the painting and layout was distinctive. Mark began to look in detail at each glass panel for clues and information. Two of the panels had the signature of the artist, Edgar Miller, another had a date of 1961, and a third had a “Dedicated to The Society of Typographic Arts.” As the dust came off, the mystery of the windows slowly began to be revealed.

Our internet research uncovered wonderful details of this lesser known Chicago artist, designer and architect. Born in 1899 and dying in 1993, Edgar Miller was a superb and prolific graphic artist, designer, master craftsman of many disciplines but especially stained glass. Several innovative buildings he designed have survived, as well as interiors to many private homes, restaurants and buildings throughout Chicago. Because of his raw talent in so many artistic fields, Edgar Miller was given glowing contemporary descriptions of “the blond boy Michelangelo,” “a new luminary,” and “one of the most versatile artists in the America.”

We discovered the Edgar Miller Legacy, a Chicago non-profit, and contacted Zac Bleicher, Executive Director and Founder. Zac was elated that we had uncovered the “lost Edgar Miller windows.” Zac mentioned that they disappeared from their tracking some years ago. Our conversations filled in some important collaborating and missing details of the story.

Edgar Miller was a leader in the use of graphic art in advertising. His work included commissions from most of the leading printers and ad agencies in Chicago. He had a long relationship with many of the typographical masters of the time, explaining his connection to the Chicago-based Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional design organization started in 1927, to whom he dedicated the windows.

The six windows were commissioned in the early 1950’s by Veritone Printing Company, a leading Chicago printer. They were completed by 1961, matching both the date on one window and the painting of a modern lithographic press from that same year. Each window highlights a different theme related to printing and graphic arts, from early and modern printing presses, bookbinding, early writing methods and typography. Edgar explained in a contemporary article that he used sign paint on sandblasted glass, a method which required him “to be careful about mistakes – NO ERASING! A true artist could easily disguise any ‘mistake’ by compensating from one line to the next. “

IPEC Inc. was one of the largest distributors of Heidelberg Machinery in America. Leonard Kosoglad, who acquired the Edgar Miller windows, is in the center behind the press.

Following Veritone’s bankruptcy and liquidation in 1984, the windows ended up at IPEC Inc. in Wheeling, IL. Besides selling used printing equipment, Leonard Kosoglad of IPEC also maintained a small museum of printing at his warehouse. Leonard son, who followed him in the business, just donated these spectacular windows to The International Printing Museum, in Carson, along with the other remaining artifacts from his father’s museum, including the 1870 French Stone Lithographic Press.

We plan to have the windows up on display at the International Printing Museum shortly for our guests to enjoy. To Find Out More About Edgar Miller, please visit The Edgar Miller Legacy website. And if you ever visit Chicago and have time for a tour of the Edgar Miller House, Zac Bleicher will be an excellent guide for your discovery of this unsung American artist.

Click to zoom into the images below to take a closer look at the amazing details of these windows.

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< New Arrivals to the Museum: Part One

Printers and Pandemics: Part One >

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PRINTERS AND PANDEMICS: PART II

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Outbreaks, endemics, and pandemics were regular occurrences in America during the 18th century. And the printing industry served to announce, educate, and debate the best ways for the average citizen to survive these occurrences. Evidence of such can be seen in the broadside above.

The earliest American engraver and the first Boston printer, John Foster, printed the Brief Rule pictured above. He was born in South Boston. After graduating from Harvard College in 1667, he became a teacher in Dorchester. In addition to teaching, Foster also taught himself printing and by 1675, left teaching to open a print shop in Boston. The broadside pictured was printed in 1677 during one of six smallpox epidemics in Boston from 1636 to 1698.

The Revolutionary War and Disease

Smallpox and measles were just a few of the viral infections colonial Americans faced. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington and his Continental Army suffered a threat that proved deadlier than the British, a smallpox epidemic, lasting from 1775-1782.

Fortunately for the Americans, General Washington had some personal experience with smallpox. In 1751, while visiting the Caribbean island of Barbados, Washington wrote that he “was strongly attacked by the small Pox.” Due to his experience, Washington knew that smallpox spread only from person to person. He also knew it could take up to fourteen days before a person exposed to it would show symptoms. Thus, people had to be quarantined for up to two weeks, and quarantined soldiers made it hard for a general trying to fight a war. In addition to his personal experience with smallpox, Washington was also familiar with a medical procedure recently introduced to the colonies.

The Advancement of Science 

For centuries it was understood that some diseases never re-infect a person after recovery. As far back as 200 BC, the Chinese experimented with “variolation” or inoculation to fight disease. The procedure was commonly carried out by rubbing powdered smallpox scabs into superficial scratches made in the skin. The patient would develop sores identical to those caused by naturally occurring smallpox, but this usually produced a less severe disease than that acquired naturally. The patient would then be isolated for two to four weeks. By the end of the quarantine, the symptoms would subside, indicating successful recovery and immunity. This knowledge of variolation traveled through Asia into the Middle East and to Africa.

In 1706, Puritan minister Cotton Mather heard from Onesimus, his enslaved West African servant, “that he had undergone an operation, which had given him something of ye Small-Pox, and would forever preserve him from it.” He had described the process of variolation.

In 1721, when the residents of Boston once again began to fall ill with smallpox, Mather circulated information about variolation to the Boston medical community by pamphlet. Within days of reading the booklet, Zabdiel Boylston, a Boston physician, inoculated his son and two servants. William Douglass, a physician, trained in Europe, strongly opposed inoculation because it had not been tested or proven to be a safe procedure.

By 1722, variolation had become a flashpoint among the colonists. Just like today with the anti-vaccination movement, there were those in the 18th century who fought against inoculation. The inoculation controversy played out publicly through pamphlets and newspapers such as the Boston Gazette and The New England Courant.

The main arguments against variolation were on religious grounds. Some believed it was a direct affront to God’s innate right to determine who was to die, and how and when death would occur. Others thought smallpox outbreaks were punishments for the sins of those who contracted the disease.

The Courant, at the time, was under the leadership of 16-year-old Benjamin Franklin. The newspaper published satirical articles about Mathers and inoculation in the months following the epidemic. Despite the controversy, Mather and Boylston continued with the process during the Boston smallpox outbreak.

On February 22, 1722, it was officially announced that no new cases of smallpox appeared in Boston. The final figures from the outbreak supported the use of inoculation. Boylston’s 247 inoculated patients had a 2% death rate versus the 15% of people who died if they got smallpox naturally. After the outbreak, Boylston went to London, where similar experiments were taking place. By 1726, he published a very carefully documented book, An Historical Account of the Smallpox Inoculated in New England. It was the first systematic clinical presentation by an American physician.

Even with mounting evidence of the benefits of inoculation, many colonialists were still uncomfortable with the idea. The practice was banned in many colonies. Even Benjamin Franklin continued to oppose inoculation, but that would soon change. In 1736, Franklin’s four-year-old son, Francis Folger Franklin, died of smallpox. In his autobiography, Franklin said, “In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of the parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.”

After his son’s death, Franklin began to study Epidemiology, “that which comes upon the people.” Franklin researched smallpox cases in Boston. He compared the number of deaths attributable to smallpox “in the common way,” and people who received variolation.

Based on his research, Franklin promoted variolation in his 1750 Poor Richard’s Almanack. He also argued against one of the main arguments that variolation was immoral because it interfered with God’s will. Franklin said it was “impious to reject a Method discovered to Mankind by God’s good Providence, whereby 99 in 100 are saved,” compared with the “natural” mortality of one in seven.” Franklin’s belief in the power of variolation moved him to recruit the distinguished British physician, William Heberden, to write a pamphlet describing smallpox inoculation and its consequences.

According to Franklin, “In 1758, I encouraged my friend Dr. William Heberden, F.R.S., to prepare a pamphlet that might provide to many the means and encouragement they required to inoculate their children. This was done by that good man, and the results, Some Account of the Success of Inoculation for the Smallpox in England and America, was published on February 16, 1759. I wrote the preface for this pamphlet.”

In addition to writing the multi-page preface, Franklin sent 1,500 free pamphlets to Philadelphia to persuade impoverished parents to variolate their children. In 1774, he raised money for free inoculation of the indigent.

The Application of Science 

Luckily for the colonists and the Revolutionary Army, General Washington embraced the science-based medical treatments promoted by Franklin. This was not a popular stand, though, especially in Washington’s home state of Virginia, where variolation was illegal. Also, the Continental Congress ordered Army surgeons not to perform variolations.

Washington, however, was a firm believer in science-based medical treatments. He even went so far as to persuade his wife, Martha, to undergo the procedure in May 1776.

As a believer, Washington was in a tough situation. Even if he ordered the troops to be inoculated, he’d have to wait for them to complete quarantine of fourteen days before they could fight. Washington weighed his options. The disastrous defeat at Quebec moved him to action.

Washington had sent General Richard Montgomery and 10,000 soldiers to fight the British defenders of Quebec City. Later, when referring to the battle, Massachusetts statesman John Adams said, “The smallpox is ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians, and Indians together.” 

Due to the epidemic, Washington lost a third of his soldiers at the battle of Quebec. During the rest of 1776, smallpox would continue to plague Washington. Finally, on January 6, 1777, Washington told Dr. William Shippen, his leading medical officer, and the Continental Army’s Medical Director, “Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army. . . we should have more to dread from it, than from the Sword of the Enemy.” A month later, in February of 1777, Washington informed the president of the Second Continental Congress, John Hancock, that “I find it impossible to keep it from spreading thro’ the whole Army in the natural way.” Washington ordered all troops inoculated. This act alone may have saved the Revolution.

The timing of the inoculations was strategic. During winter, there was less fighting because more extensive military campaigns took place during warmer weather. This also gave the soldiers time to recover from the effects of inoculation. By the end of 1777, some 40,000 soldiers had been inoculated, and the infection rates dropped from about 20 percent to 1 percent. The drop in infection rates convinced the skeptical Continental Congress to repealed bans on variolation across the colonies. This was the first significant piece of American public health legislation. By winning the war against smallpox, the United States was able to fight and win the Revolution. A new nation was born.

We may have seen a different outcome if not for the printing of broadsides, pamphlets, and newspapers that guaranteed an educated and informed citizenry.

< Printers and Pandemics: Part One

8 Must Watch Documentaries About Printing >

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