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CHAPTER III
THE PARKERS
AND THEIR NUMEROUS ESTABLISHMENTS
JAMES PARKER was born at Woodbridge, in Middlesex County, New Jersey, in 1714. His father, Samuel Parker, was a son of Elisha Parker, who removed to Woodbridge from Staten Island as early as 1675, and was a man of some means and local prominence in his day. In 1725 James Parker was apprenticed to William Bradford in New York. Of his apprenticeship I only know that he showed his dissatisfaction by running away from his master, who advertised in the “New York Gazette” a small reward for his capture.
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How Parker found his way back is not known, but he certainly served out his time, and in 1742 started business for himself, having secured the position of Printer to the Province of New York in succession to Bradford. This office he retained until 1761. His first production was the votes of the Assembly for the latter part of 1742. His next publication, so far as it is known, was the third newspaper published in New York, which was at first called “The New-York Weekly Post-Boy.” Number 5, the first I have seen, is dated February 1,1742-43, from which I infer that the paper was begun on the January 4th preceding. It was a small quarto at first, a larger one in 1744; in 1753 it appeared as a small folio, and in 1756 it attained the usual size of the newspaper of the day. Well printed and edited, it soon became a popular and successful newspaper. In 1745, on the death of Bradford’s
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“New York Gazette,” Parker changed the name of his paper to “The New York Gazette revived in the Weekly Post-Boy.” In 1753 this title was slightly modified, and from that date until 1759 bore the imprint of Parker & Weyman. From 1757 to 1760 every paper bore an impression in red, the stamp prescribed under the provincial act of 1756—the first American stamp act, complied with without demur and forgotten in consequence. The number for February 5, 1759, bears the imprint of James Parker; while that of February 12 has the name of his nephew Samuel Parker as publisher, to whom the elder Parker had turned over his business in New York. Samuel Parker continued to publish the paper, frequently without his name, till August 31, 1760, when it appeared continuously until May 6, 1762, with the name of James Parker & Co., John Holt being
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the unmentioned partner of the firm. From the last-mentioned date until October 9, 1766, Holt appears to have had the entire management of “The Gazette.” On October 23, 1766, Parker resumed control and carried on the paper until July 2, 1770. Then for a month the paper appeared without a publisher’s name, but from August 17, 1770, to February 1, 1773, or later, the names of Samuel Inslee and Anthony Car appeared as printers. The paper seems to have been suspended before June 27, 1773, when Samuel F. Parker and John Anderson announced their intention of publishing it in August next. Thomas says they did so for a brief period, but I have not been able to substantiate this statement.
Parker’s first work was “Enchiridium Polychrestum,” privately printed for the author, who, according to his book-plate, was “ Robert Elliston Gent Comptrolr of his Majesties [sic] Customs
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of New York in America.” The title-page is dated 1740, the dedication Vigil. Arun. Sanct. [November 1] 1741, but the typography is neither Bradford’s nor Zenger’s, and is Parker’s; besides which the printer’s “flowers” used throughout it all appear in works from no other American printing-office than the latter’s. The work is highly mystical, and the author probably insisted on preserving in print the dates he had affixed to his manuscript, though the book was not printed until 1742. In 1743 Parker published, besides almanacs, public documents, and his newspapers, only a couple of sermons and an edition of Shepherd’s “Sincere Convert”; but in the following year he printed an account of a memorable and bloody event in New York history in a handsome quarto volume, clumsily entitled “A Journal of the Proceedings in The Detection of the Conspiracy,”—and so on for nearly a solid page,
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which has come to be known as Horsmanden’s Negro Plot. The Rice copy of this important book was bought by George Brinley for $140; at the Brinley sale it was sold to Brayton Ives for $330; and at the sale of Ives’s books it brought $280. The Barlow copy, with a half-title usually wanting, sold for $310. In the same year Parker paid the first tribute in New York to literary culture by reprinting Richardson’s “Pamela,” and he followed this in 1745 with New York’s first contribution to Science in Colden’s “Explication of the First Causes of Action in Matter,” for a copy of which as long ago as the second Brinley sale somebody paid $112.50. One of the public documents printed by him in 1746 was a folio pamphlet, “A Treaty with the Six Nations held at Albany in August and September 1746,” of which but one perfect copy is known. In 1747 he printed, with numerous other books
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and pamphlets, “A Bill in the Chancery of New-Jersey, at the suit of John Earl of Stair, and others,” against the clinker-lot-right-men of Elizabeth Town; a smart satire on the Vestry of New York, called a “Guide to Vestrymen,” which well deserves reprinting; and William Livingston’s (lawyer, demagogue, and governor of New Jersey) first publication in the shape of a poetical effusion on “Philosophic ,Solitude.” In 1745, 1749, and 1750, besides his government and newspaper work, nothing appeared of note (he, of course, printed a lot of sermons and chap-books) except Watts’s “Horæ, Lyricæ.” This appeared in the last-named year and is interesting from the American flavor lent it by the verses prefixed by the Rev. Mather Byles, and the ode addressed to Jonathan Belcher, governor of New Jersey and Massachusetts. In 1751 Parker issued “The Importance of the Friendship
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of the Indians,” and an entirely unneeded “Sure Guide to Hell.” 1752 saw from Parker’s press, in addition to the handsome volume containing the first scientific collection of the Province Laws now known as Livingston and Smith’s edition, a weekly paper called “The Independent Reflector,” a democratic Presbyterian affair which was continued until, as its title says, it was “tyrannically suppressed in 1753.” During the latter part of 1753 he also issued another weekly, called “The Occasional Reverberator,” of which I have seen but four numbers; and in the early part of 1755 he and Weyman began a third short-lived weekly called “The Instructor.” Thomas mentions still another weekly published in 1755 by Parker & Weyman, called “John Englishman, In Defence of the English Constitution,” and says it was continued for upwards of three months.
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In 1751 Parker had established the first printing office of any permanency in New Jersey. In 1723 William Bradford moved one of his presses to Perth Amboy, and in 1728 Samuel Keimer, of Philadelphia, sent one of his to Burlington; but these offices existed but a short time. Parker, like Bradford, now became printer to the Province of New Jersey as well as New York, and retained the former position until his death. He made over his Woodbridge office to his son Samuel F. Parker in 1765, and started another printing-house at Burlington, from which came Smith’s History of New Jersey. In 1754 he obtained the office of postmaster of New Haven, and established a printing-office there, leaving it and the post-office to the care of John Holt, of whom more hereafter. Towards the end of 1753 Parker entered into a partnership with William Weyman, to whom he confided the New
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York business, giving his personal attention to the Woodbridge office.
The principal publications of Parker & Weyman are Eliot’s “Essay on Husbandry as ordered in New England,” 1753-54; the first publication of the Rev. William Smith, afterwards provost of the University of Pennsylvania, “An Ode on the New Year 1753,” and the same author’s “General Idea of the College of Mirania,” also 1753; “The Charter of the College of New York,” afterwards King’s, now Columbia, 1754 Nakskow’s “Articles of Faith, of The Holy Evangelical [Lutheran] Church,” 1754, a quarto of nearly 450 pages; “ Proposals to prevent Scalping,” 1755, not favorably received by the Indians; “Considerations towards a General Plan of Measures for the English Provinces,” 1756; a translation of the French “Mémoire contenant les Précis des Faits,” which contained a French rendering of the journal of Washington,
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captured at Fort Necessity, and extracts from the ill-fated Braddock’s papers; and two treaties with the Indians, one held at Fort Johnson and the other at Albany in 1757. The partnership was dissolved in 1759, and Parker ceased to be printer to New York. He turned over his New York office and newspaper to his nephew Samuel Parker, but in August, 1760, he recalled Holt from New Haven and placed him in charge in New York. The newspaper and the few inconsiderable publications issued from Parker’s New York office bore the name of James Parker & Co. until 1762, when Holt’s name alone was substituted. In 1766 Parker resumed control of the office, and continued it under his own name till his death. Francis Hopkinson’s musical arrangement of the English translation of the Psalms for the Dutch Church, issued in 1767, and the first book of music printed from
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type in America, is about the only volume of interest bearing Parker’s name during these years. Parker’s work was marked by neatness and accuracy, and was a great improvement over Bradford’s and Zenger’s. His business about 1757 or 1758 was probably the most extensive of its kind in America.
In 1756 he was arrested by order of the New York Assembly for publishing in his “Gazette” some “Observations on the Circumstances and Conduct of the People in the Counties of Ulster and Orange,” but was discharged a week later upon apologizing to the Assembly, giving the name of the author, and paying costs. He had a similar experience in December, 1769, on account of a Son of Liberty’s address “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of New York.” The fact of its having been printed in Parker’s New York office was disclosed to the authorities by one of the journeymen employed there,
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and he was arrested at his residence in Woodbridge and brought to New York on the charge of printing a seditious libel. But as before he secured his release by giving up the name of the author. He became secretary and comptroller of the general post-office for the Northern District, and a man of consequence in his native place, where, at the time of his death, he was captain of the local troop of horse. He died while visiting a friend in Burlington, on June 24, 1770, and was buried the next day at Woodbridge. The obituary which appeared in the New York paper of the time concludes, not very gracefully, he “has left a fair character, on which we have neither time nor room to enlarge.”
The preamble to his will is sufficiently curious to be worthy of being reproduced here. The New York Board of Health may find in it a new and convenient explanation of many
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mysterious cases, as Job’s has been rather antiquated for some time past. “In the name of God amen, I James Parker of the City of New York, Printer, reflecting on the uncertainty of this life and being in sound mind and memory blessed be God do make this my last will and testament as follows: Imprimis, My soul an immortal part not so properly my own as anothers believing it to be purchased by the Lord Jesus Christ at the inestimable price of His own Blood, I bequeath to Him, relying firmly that for His own name and word’s sake He will fulfil His Promise and Right against all the Malice of the evil one who by his continual attacks on my poor intellectuals has caused me to be defiled from the Crown of my Head to the Soles of my Feet so that I am unable to help myself.”
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SAMUEL PARKER, according to Thomas, was an apprentice as well as a nephew of James Parker, whom I have already mentioned. He managed the Woodbridge office for a while, and in February, 1759, was placed in charge of the one owned by his uncle in New York. Here his management of the business was not satisfactory, and the elder Parker resumed control in July, 1760. The only thing I have seen bearing his imprint besides the “New York Gazette” is a very rare pamphlet printed in 1759, “A Pocket Commentary Of the first Settling of New-Jersey, by the Europeans.” Thomas says he removed to Wilmington, North Carolina, and died there prior to the Revolution.
SAMUEL FRANKLIN PARKER was the son of James Parker. In 1765 his father established an office at Burlington, New Jersey, and made
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over the Woodbridge plant to his son; but when the elder Parker resumed control of his New York office in 1766 the son was given an interest and placed in charge of the business there. Soon after his father’s death, his own health being feeble, he leased the office to Inslee & Car. On their failure to succeed he attempted to revive the “New York Gazette,” taking John Anderson as a partner. This effort, probably owing to the turbulence of the times, was unsuccessful, and he retired from business.
He died at Woodbridge, December 6, 1779, aged thirty-three years. I have met with nothing bearing his imprint except the “New York Gazette” and “The Claim of the Inhabitants of the Town of Newark, in virtue of the Indian Purchase made by the first Settlers of Newark in 1667,” printed by him at Woodbridge in 1766, of which but a single copy is known.
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This pamphlet has a curious history. Some twenty-five years ago, Joseph Sabin, the projector of that unfinished monument of bibliographical work, “A Dictionary of Books relating to America,” found the first twelve pages of it and sold them to Dr. George H. Moore. Nearly twenty years later another New York bookseller purchased a tract printed by Franklin & Hall which seemed to be complete, but, upon examination, proved to end with a leaf belonging to some other pamphlet. He showed it to Mr.Wilberforce Eames of the Lenox Library (of which Dr. Moore was then superintendent), by whom it was recognized as the missing leaf of Dr. Moore’s pamphlet. Dr. Moore, on hearing of the discovery, purchased the leaf for twenty dollars, and completed his copy.