CHAPTER IV

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November 12, 1734. On the 24th of the following month he married Susannah, daughter of Benjamin Bill and widow of William Golding. He remained with Bradford for some years after the expiration of his time, and about 1742 became a partner in the “New York Gazette.” Towards the end of 1744 he acquired Bradford’s interest in this paper, and on October 26 of that year changed its name and time of issue to the “ New York Evening Post,” the first afternoon paper published in America. The paper was unusually well printed and fairly edited, but was not a success. It was, however, continued to 1752 or later, the last number I have met with being March 30, 1752. The earliest pamphlet I have seen printed by De Foreest is a bitter attack upon the Moravians by Gerardus Duyckinek, issued in 1743. Besides his newspaper, the almanacs customarily published by every printer of

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the time, and a number of pamphlets, I know of nothing of much consequence printed by De Foreest until 1749, when he issued Sherman’s “Almanack for the Year of our Lord Christ, 1750,” the first publication of that cobbler statesman of Connecticut whose fate it was to be the only man who signed all four of the great documents on which our government is based. How long De Foreest continued to print I do not know; he published a sermon in Dutch in July, 1754, and was dead before August, 1766, when his widow sold some of his real estate. One of his daughters married Samuel Brown, whom I shall next mention.

SAMUEL BROWN was a bookseller in New York about 1755. He had perhaps succeeded to the business of Henry De Foreest, whose daughter he

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had married. In 1761 he formed a partnership with James Rivington as Rivington & Brown, the former managing the bookselling business in Philadelphia. A branch house was established in Boston in 1762, but the firm was dissolved in 1765, and Brown opened a printing-office of his own. I have seen only two small volumes bearing his imprint, both of which appeared in 1766. In February, 1769, the widow De Foreest advertised the sale of the “Printing Press, Types and other Material formerly belonging to Henry De Foreest, deceased, and lately occupied by Samuel Brown.”

WILLIAM WEYMAN was a son of the Rev. Robert Weyman, who about 1720 was sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to take charge of “Episcopal” churches at Oxford and Radnor in Pennsylvania,

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whence he removed in 1731 to the care of St. Mary’s church, Burlington, New Jersey, where he died in 1737, leaving a wife and six children “in low circumstances.” William Weyman, says Thomas, was born in Philadelphia, and served his apprenticeship there under William Bradford, the grandson of New York’s first printer. In 1748 he is said to have printed the second edition of Theodorus Frilinghuysen’s “Jeugd-oeffening of Verhandeling van de Godlyke waarheden, der Christelyk religie, by wyze van vragen en antwoorden, tot onderwijs der ionkeyd.”

In 1753 he became a partner of James Parker, whose New York office and newspaper he managed until the dissolution of the firm in 1759. In 1756 both partners were arrested for an article published in their paper which gave offence to the Assembly; both were finally discharged upon apologizing and giving up the author’s name.

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After separating from Parker, Weyman opened a printing-office of his own; in February, 1759, he began a new “New York Gazette,” and later in the year supplanted Parker as printer to the Province. In the latter capacity he printed the second volume of Livingston and Smith’s revision of the provincial laws, the acts and votes of the Assembly until 1767, and in 1765 “The Charter of the city of New York.” Besides these public documents and his newspaper Weyman issued few important publications—“The Bill of Complaint in the Chancery of New Jersey, brought by Thomas Clarke and others against the Proprietors of East-New-Jersey,” printed in 1760, and the “Evening Service of Roshashanah, and Kippur,” the first volumes of Jewish prayers printed in America, and perhaps the first printed in the English language, issued in 1761, being the only important exceptions.

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In 1764 he undertook the printing of a new edition of the “Mohawk Prayer Book,” but left it unfinished at his death. His newspaper was never very successful, and was finally suspended in December, 1767—not, however, before the careless printing of the Assembly’s address to the Governor had occasioned his appearance at the bar of the House to beg pardon of its offended majesty. He died in New York City, after a lingering illness, on July 27, 1768.

SAMUEL FARLEY was the son of Felix Farley, a Quaker printer of Bristol, England. He settled in New York in 1760, and in the following year began the publication of a weekly newspaper called “The American Chronicle.” In 1762 his printing-office was destroyed by fire, and he returned to Bristol, and there published

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some tracts by Samuel Fothergill. He afterward emigrated to Georgia, where he practised law at Savannah. In 1774 he was chosen one of the committee to receive subscriptions for the poor inhabitants of Boston, and in May, 1780, was elected a member of the Georgia Assembly from Savannah. As Thomas says, “When he died I can-not say.” I have found no trace of him as a New York printer outside of Thomas’s “History of Printing.”

BENJAMIN MECOM was born in Boston about 1728. He was the son of Edward Mecom by his marriage with Jane, youngest sister of Benjamin Franklin. He learned his trade in Philadelphia, at the office of his celebrated uncle, and about 1750 established himself in business at St. John in the island of Antigua. Soon after his arrival there he began “The

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Antigua Gazette,” which he conducted for several years. In 1756 he returned to Boston and opened a printing-office there, printing as his first work in his new location an edition of thirty thousand copies of “The Psalter” for the booksellers, at a rate which yielded him less than a journeyman’s wages. In 1758 he began “The New England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure,” but issued only three or four numbers. One of its departments he called “Queer Notions,” which, owing to his own eccentricities, became a nickname of the printer. In 1760 he published a separate edition of the “Wisdom of Poor Richard” as collected by Franklin in the almanac for 1758, under the title of “Father Abraham’s Speech,” the first of some four hundred similar publications which, as “The Way to Wealth,” “La Science de Bonhomme Richard,” etc., have been issued down to the present time. In 1763 he moved

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to New York and began the publication of “The New-York Pacquet” in July of that year, at “The Modern Printing Office, in Rotten-Row”; but, having been appointed postmaster of New Haven in 1764, he bought out Parker & Co’s establishment there, and removed to that place. He revived their “Connecticut Gazette,” and continued it until 1767, when he sold out to Samuel Green and went to Philadelphia, where, in January, 1769, he started a very small and short-lived weekly newspaper called “The Penny Post.” This proved a failure, and in September, 1770, he issued a printed letter to the “Mayor, Recorder and Aldermen of Philadelphia,” from which the following is an extract:

Sir, Be pleased to permit me to inform you, that I have been in this City a few months more than two Years, during which time I have endeavored to get constant employment at my own business, but being disappointed, My Wife (the

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Bearer hereof) has been frequently advised to apply to your Worships for a recommendation to his Honour the Governor, to grant us a License to sell spiritous Liquors by small Measure, at a House where we have now lived almost a Quarter, where such Sale has been continued. We are not fond of the Prospect it affords farther than as it may contribute to support a number of young growing Children whose Welfare we would earnestly and honestly endeavor to secure.

At all the places where he had a printing-office he published a few pamphlets, none of which are of particular importance. Mecom finally found a place with William Goddard, the publisher of “The Pennsylvania Chronicle,” and after that paper ceased to exist in 1774, was employed by Isaac Collins at Burlington. Thomas says “he lived for some time in Salem county; and finished his earthly pilgrimage soon after the beginning of the revolutionary war.” The same writer relates from personal observation

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some of Mecom’s eccentricities. The latter came frequently to the office where Thomas was serving his apprenticeship, handsomely dressed, and wearing a “powdered bob wig, ruffles and gloves, gentlemanlike appendages which printers of that day did not assume, and thus apparelled would often assist for an hour.” He would “indeed put on an apron to save his clothes from blacking, and guarded his ruffles, but he wore his coat, his wig, his hat, and his gloves, whilst working at the press, and at case laid aside his apron.” Mecom was well educated, of good address, and an ingenious as well as a good workman, but was more inclined to experiment than to give strict attention to his business. “He was,” says Thomas, “the first person, so far as I know, who attempted stereotype printing. He actually cast plates for several pages of the New Testament, and made considerable progress towards

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the completion of them, but he never effected it.”

SAMUEL CAMPBELL was the name of the printer of a translation of Gessner’s “Death of Abel,” which appeared in New York in 1764. I have been unable to ascertain anything concerning him, or that he printed anything else.