Various - Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863

All honor to such mothers! – Ed.

To write an article on the history of the Art of Printing, without paying our respects, in the first instance, to the Devil and Doctor Faustus, will be considered not only a violation of all precedent, but, as regards those individuals, a positive breach of good manners. They have so long been associated together, not only in popular tradition but in books, that the greater part of the reading world seem to think them to have been the original partners in the republic of letters. Indeed, for some absurd reason or other, the opinion is even yet quite prevalent that one of the original concern has been a silent partner, though not a sleeping one, in every printing establishment since. The proposition, to this extent, is certainly inadmissible; and yet, from the moral condition of a large portion of the press, it must be confessed there is strong presumptive evidence that in the unhappy influences exercised by the personage referred to over the affairs of men, he is not altogether neglectful of the press. Be this, however, as it may, the press has become, in this country especially, an engine of such great importance in the daily affairs of life – its energies are of such tremendous power, either for good or evil, that it is believed a few moments can be profitably spent in glancing at its rise and early progress in Boston and New York.

The honor of setting up the first printing press in the American Colonies belongs to Massachusetts. Only eighteen years had elapsed from the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, before a press was in operation at Cambridge – then as populous as Boston. The project of establishing a press in the New World was conceived and almost executed by the Rev. Jesse Glover, a dissenting clergyman in England, who had interested himself largely in planting the colony, and a portion of whose family was already in America. Mr. Glover raised the means of purchasing his press, types, and other necessary apparatus by contributions in England and Holland. With these materials he embarked for America in 1638, but died a few days before the ship reached the shore. Cambridge was at that time the seat of the civil and ecclesiastical power in Massachusetts; and as the academy which subsequently grew into Cambridge University had then been commenced, it was determined by the leading men of the colony to establish the press there; and there it remained for sixty years under their control, and forty years before a press was established in any other colony. The first printer was Stephen Day, engaged in London by Mr. Glover, and supposed to be a descendant of the celebrated John Day, the noted printer. The second printer in the Colonies was Samuel Green, to whom Day relinquished the business in 1649. Colonel Samuel Green, the late venerable editor of the New London Gazette , was a descendant in a direct line from the original printer of that name; the family having uninterruptedly engaged in that business for nearly two hundred years. The elder Green printed the Indian Bibles and Testaments for those early apostles of the New World who first engaged in the benevolent work of attempting the civilization and evangelization of the aboriginals of this country – a noble race of wild men, who have melted away before the palefaces, like the hoarfrost beneath the beams of the morning sun.

The sturdy republican religionists of New England became very soon as chary of allowing the freedom of the press as were the Pontiff and the crowned heads of Europe. Some religious tracts having been published which the clergy and the General Court deemed of too liberal a character, licensers of the press were appointed in 1662; but in the year following, it was ordered by the Provincial Government that 'the printing press be as free as formerly.' This freedom, however, was soon exerted more freely than ever. The attention and the fears of the Government were accordingly again awakened; and in October, 1664, it was enacted that no printing press should be allowed in any other town or place of the colony than Cambridge; and that no person or persons should be permitted to print anything even there, but by the allowance of at least two of a board of three censors appointed for that purpose. But even the licensers were not sufficiently rigid to please the General Court – for, having permitted the publication of that most excellent and pious little work, 'The Imitation of Christ,' by Thomas à Kempis, it was held to be heretical by the Legislature, and its further publication without a new revision was prohibited in 1667. The principal specification against it was that it was written by a Popish minister.

In 1671, the General Court directed the revision and publication of the laws of the colony. Until that time the laws had always been printed at the expense of the commonwealth. But a wealthy bookseller, by the name of John Usher, applied for permission to publish them on his own account; and to prevent Green from printing extra copies for himself, he procured the passage of an act prohibiting the printing of any more copies than he should direct; and in this enactment we find the origin of copyright in this country. In 1673, the copyright was secured to Usher for seven years. Green soon became a prolific printer. He came to this country so destitute as to be obliged to sleep under the shelter of a barrel; but lived to an advanced age, and had two wives and nineteen children. He was early in life elected an ensign of the Cambridge militia company, and subsequently rose to the rank of captain, under which commission he served thirty years. So exceeding fond was he of his martial life, that, when extremely old, he was carried to the parade ground in a chair to direct the exercises of his company. Some of his descendants have been engaged in the printing business for more than a century past in Connecticut. Others of his family established their business at Annapolis, in Maryland, in 1740, where it has been continued by their descendants until the present day.