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CHAPTER I
WILLIAM BRADFORD
THE FOUNDER OF THE PRESS IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES
WHETHER the introduction of printing into New York is more due to the disturbances aroused in Pennsylvania by the ambition of George Keith to succeed George Fox as leader of the Quakers, than to the vainglorious desire of Governor Fletcher to parade in print his exploits with the French and Indians, is a point not now to be discussed. The fact remains that William Bradford removed from Philadelphia in March or April, 1693, and established his press in New York. Born
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in the parish of Barwell, Leicestershire, on May 20, 1663, of humble folk of the Established Church, he first came into notice as the apprentice of Andrew Sowle, the principal London Quaker publisher of his day, and a proselyte to his master’s religion. At the expiration of his time he married his master’s daughter, Elizabeth, and in. 1685 emigrated to Philadelphia. Here a series of troubles with ecclesiastical and civil authorities culminated in his imprisonment in 1692, followed by his release by Fletcher in 1692-93, and his migration to New York to become Printer to the King.
His first publication was probably a pamphlet entitled “New England’s Spirit of Persecution Transmitted To Pennsilvania,” issued without a printer’s name or place. The broadside “Proclamation” of June 8, 1693, however, bears his imprint, and has usually been deemed the first issue of his press.
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During the year he printed several other broadsides, a “Catalogue of Fees,” the first printed protest against “keeping slaves,” an exploitation of Fletcher called “A Journal of the Late Actions of the French,” and Leeds’s Almanac for 1694. All these were merely pamphlets. The first book printed in New York was Keith’s “Truth Advanced,” issued early in 1694. This was followed during the year by that volume now so precious, “The Laws & Acts of the General Assembly for Their Majesties Province of New-York, As they were Enacted in divers Sessions, the first of which began April, the 9th, Annoq; Domini, 1691. At New-York, Printed and Sold by William Bradford, Printer to their Majesties, King William & Queen Mary, 1694.” In 1695 and 1696 his known publications were mainly of an official character, “Le Tresor des Consolations Divines et Humaines,” a little book in French, printed in fulfilment
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of a vow of a Mr. Pintard, being the principal exception; and in 1697 he issued a tract called “New-England Pesecutors [sic] Mauled With their own Weapons,” which caused a stir in Massachusetts, and a new almanac by a Manhattan innkeeper named Clap, an imperfect copy of which sold for $420 at the sale of the third part of the Brinley Library.
Among his publications in 1698 were “A Letter From A Gentleman of the City of New-York,” one of the half-dozen known copies of which brought $320 at the Barlow sale; “Propositions made by the Five Nations,” the Brinley copy of which sold for $410; and “A New Primmer or Methodical Direction to attain the True Spelling, Reading and Writing of English,” by Francis Daniel Pastorius, of Germantown, of which Manchester, England, boasts the possession of the only known copy, and which may have suggested
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to Bradford the compilation of his own volume of like nature, “The Secretary’s Guide,” the first edition of which appeared about this period.
From 1699 to 1710 Bradford’s press was busy mainly with public documents and the stream of controversial pamphlets issued by Keith and his adherents. “A Cage of Unclean Birds,” “The Spirit of Railing Shimei,” “The Bomb,” and “The Mystery of Fox-Craft” are some of the tracts hurled against the Quakers. The more important works issued within this decade were the “Tryal” of Nicholas Bayard, in 1702, Makemie’s “Narrative,” in 1707 (in which year he also printed what is now the earliest extant edition of the “Laws, Orders & Ordinances” of the City of New York, and the first issue of the “Charter of the City of Albany”). Falckner’s “Grondlycke Onderricht van Sekere Voorname Hoofd-stucken, der Waren,
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Loutern, Saligmakenden, Christelycken Leere, Gegrondet op den Grondt van de Apostelen en Propheten, darer Jesus Christus de Hoeck-Steen,” printed in 1708, was the first book printed in Dutch on this side of the Atlantic, so far as is now known.
The year 1710 saw issued, besides a new compilation of the “Province Laws,” the first of the two issues of the only edition of the Book of Common Prayer printed in America. This work was undertaken at the instance of the vestry of Trinity Church, who in 1704 voted a loan without interest of thirty or forty pounds to Bradford to enable him to purchase the necessary paper. From this it may be assumed that the edition was a large one, but of the first issue only one perfect and one imperfect copy are known to exist, the latter having been the property of Mr. George Brinley, at the sale of whose library it realized $350. It is a small quarto
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volume of 332 pages, the last 79 of which contain Tate and Brady’s version of the Psalms. The first issue omitted Psalms XII-XVII. In the second issue this was corrected by the insertion of a leaf containing these Psalms and a repetition of verse 8 of Psalm XI. This and a new title-page constitute the only differences from the first issue. But one copy is known to be extant, and its title-page is somewhat defective. The venture seems to have been unsuccessful, for, upon complaint to the vestry, Bradford, “in consideration of the great loss he has sustained in printing the Common Prayer,” was released from his obligation for the loan made in 1704.
The first separate American edition of Tate and Brady appeared in New York in 1713. Of this but a single copy is known, and that is imperfect. During the same year Wise’s
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famous revolt against the Mathers, “The Churches Quarrel Espoused,” was also issued here. In 1714 Bradford printed Governor Hunter’s drama called “Androboros,” and Keach’s “War with the Devil,” a then popular poem. The latter is a small duodecimo volume whose chief interest now lies in the doggerel recommendatory verses prefixed to it by the printer and his wife. Of the former, but a single copy can now be located, that in the library of the Duke of Devonshire, once the property of John Philip Kemble; another copy was sold at auction in Edinburgh about 1860, but its whereabouts is now unknown.
The principal book issued by Bradford in 1715 was the “Ne Orhoengene neoni Yogaraskhagh Yondereanayendaghkwa,” commonly known as the Mohawk Prayer Book, a small quarto volume, interesting from a linguistic point of view and as one of the earliest
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efforts of the English to supply the aborigines of New York with printed religious instruction. George Petyt’s “Lex Parliamentaria,” and “Remarks upon Mr. Gales Reflections,” the first publication of the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson, sometime President of the College of New Jersey, appeared in 1716. Almanacs, public documents of New York and New Jersey, to which province Bradford had been King’s Printer since 1703, and a few religious tracts are all that are known to have been printed in New York until 1724, when there appeared Governor Burnet’s “Essay on Scripture-Prophecy,” Bradford’s typographical chef d’œuvre, and Colden’s “Papers relating to . . . the Indian Trade,” containing the first map engraved in New York, a copy of which sold for $685 at the second Brinley sale. In the following year Bradford seems to have formed a partnership with his former apprentice Zenger; but
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the single book issued with their joint imprint, Frilinghuisen’s “Klagte Van Eenige Leeden der Nederduytse Hervormde Kerk, Woonende op Raretans,” shows it was of short duration.
But the event of 1725 was the publication, on October 16, of the first number of the “New York Gazette,” the first newspaper printed in New York. Until 1729 the paper was usually printed on a single leaf, although it occasionally contained four pages. From that time it was generally four pages, but sometimes two, three, or six. It was at all times ill printed, contained but scanty news, and of advertisements sometimes none and rarely more than five in an issue. It is to be wondered how it dragged on its wretched existence for nineteen years. No perfect file of it exists; the earliest number I have seen is No. 18, February 28 to March 7, 1725-26, and the latest No. 990, October 29, 1744. During its last year it
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bore the joint imprint of William Bradford and Henry De Foreest, and was the former’s last connection with the press. It expired with No. 993 on November 19, 1744, and was succeeded, not, as has generally been asserted, by Parker’s “New York Gazette,” but by De Foreest’s” New York Evening Post.”
In 1726 Bradford issued the last of those bibliographical puzzles which he called “The Laws of Their, [Her or His] Majesties [sic] Province [or Colony] of New-York,” the previous issues of which had been put forth in 1694, 1710, 1713, 1716, and 1719, of which it can be said that no two copies of the same date are ever exactly alike after page 72. In his last effort to print a collection of the laws he evidently modeled his book on the edition printed in London in 1719 by order of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, but even with
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this handsome book before him he managed to make enough errors of one kind or another to create two varieties of this edition, and his subsequent annual additions and an attempt to continue the collection to 1736 have converted this work into almost as great a muddle as its predecessors. Bradford’s press produced in 1727 the first historical work printed in New York, Colden’s “History of the Five Indian Nations,” a duodecimo volume of less than 150 pages, of which the same copy has sold at the Menzies sale for $210, at the Brinley sale for $320, and at the Ives sale for $425.
Of Bradford’s publications after 1727 not much need be said. The most important, historically, were those issued on the Government side of the Zenger case, and the public documents issued by him as printer to the Province. The rest were mainly sermons and almanacs; to the English “ephemerides”
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of Birkett and Leeds, in 1738 or earlier, he added an almanac in Dutch, which was continued by De Foreest.
Bradford maintained throughout his long life a reputation for probity and ability which brought him both business and office. Admitted a freeman of New York in 1695, he became a vestryman of Trinity Church in 1703, and in 1711 Clerk of the New Jersey Assembly. He was printer to the Province of New York from 1693 to 1742, and for those fifty years all the public documents of the province were printed at his press, except during 1737 and 1738, when the Assembly, in a spasm of republicanism, gave its work to Zenger. He was also printer to the Province of New Jersey from 1703 to 1733, with a brief interruption by Keimer in 1725, and a junction with his son Andrew, of Philadelphia, in 1733. His first wife died in 1731, and some time afterwards he married a widow, Cornelia Smith,
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with whose relatives he ultimately became involved in disputes resulting in serious pecuniary losses. At eighty years of age he retired entirely from business, and spent the declining years of his life with his son William, at whose house he died on the 23d of May, 1752, in the ninetieth year of his age.