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CHAPTER IX

A GROUP OF SMALL FRY PRIOR TO THE REVOLUTION:
INSLEE & CAR, HODGE & SHOBER, JOHN ANDERSON, AND SAMUEL LOUDON

SAMUEL INSLEE was a journeyman in James Parker’s New York office at the time of the latter’s death, and as Parker’s son was disinclined to give his personal attention to the business, Inslee found a partner in Anthony Car and leased the office. They continued “The New York Gazette” and printed a few pamphlets, only one of which I have seen, namely, “An Enquiry into the Nature, Cause and Cure of the Angina Suffocativa,”

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or diphtheria, by Dr. Samuel Bard, issued in 1771. They met with little success and retired from business about April, 1773. Inslee was afterward employed as a journeyman by Isaac Coffins, in whose office he died suddenly about October, 1778, while at work. Of Car I have been unable to obtain any particulars.

FREDERICK SHOBER, according to Thomas, was a native of Germany, but learned his trade as an apprentice to Anthony Armbruster in Philadelphia. After working two or three years as a journeyman, he began business in partnership with Robert Hodge. They selected Baltimore as their first location, but in less than a year removed to New York. This was toward the end of 1772, but the earliest of their publications I have seen is dated in the following year.

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Their printing-office was first in Queen street and then in Maiden Lane. They printed largely for book-sellers, printing in 1773 Toplady’s “Predestination” and “The Religious Trader or advice for the Trader’s prudent and pious Conduct from his Entrance into Business to His Leaving it off,” for Samuel Loudon, and a number of pamphlets for Ebenezer Hazard and Garret Noel, then the most considerable booksellers in New York who had no presses of their own. They published on their own account a number of pamphlets, among which were Garrick’s “Irish Widow,” Goldsmith’s “She Stoops to Conquer,” and Benjamin Brush’s “Address to the Inhabitants of America upon Slave Keeping.” In 1774 they printed for John McGibbons, a bookseller who had removed from Philadelphia to New York, the second volume of the first American edition of Josephus.

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The first volume had been printed by the Bradfords in Philadelphia; the third and fourth volumes appeared in 1775, the last of them with the imprint of Shober & Loudon. The three volumes average five hundred pages each, and in that respect, as a bookseller’s venture, have no peers among the colonial books of New York.

In the early part of 1775 Shober bought out Hodge’s interest in the business, but at once sold it to Samuel Loudon. This firm was dissolved during the same year, by Loudon’s purchase of his partner’s share in the business. Shober then retired to a farm near Shrewsbury, New Jersey, in the cultivation of which he spent the remainder of his life. He died there about 1806.

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R OBERT HODGE was born in Scotland in 1746, and learned his trade as a printer in Edinburgh. At the expiration of his apprenticeship he went to London, and after working there two years as a journeyman, came, in 1770, to Philadelphia, where he found employment in the printing-office of John Dunlap. Two years later he formed a partnership with Frederick Shober. They established themselves in Baltimore, “where they intended to have published a newspaper,” but not meeting with sufficient encouragement, toward the close of the same year they removed to New York. The partnership was dissolved early in 1775, Hodge selling his interest in the business to Shober, and engaging in bookselling. On the approach of the British, Hodge fled to the country, abandoning a large part of his stock, which was subsequently destroyed by the invaders. After residing

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in New York State for a year or two he went to Boston, “and there, in connection with others, opened a printing-house.” After the war he returned to New York and resumed business as a bookseller. About 1788 he, with Samuel Campbell and Thomas Allen, added a printing-office to the book-store. Each of the members of the firm maintained a separate place of business in his individual name; their publications being advertised as “for sale at their several book-stores.” Among the books issued by them was “The New York Directory for 1789,” the third attempt at such a publication. It was a small duodecimo of one hundred and forty-four pages, a part of which was devoted to statistical matter. Allen withdrew from the firm before 1792, when Hodge & Campbell issued an edition of the Bible. About this time the building used by the firm, which

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was also Hodge’s dwelling, was destroyed by fire, entailing heavy loss. Soon afterward Hodge & Campbell separated. The former continued the business of a bookseller for several years, but about 1800 disposed of his stock and purchased an estate in Brooklyn, where he resided until about 1810, when he returned to New York City, living at No. 3 Beaver street until his death. He died on the 23d of August, 1813, leaving a considerable property to charity, to a sister, and to numerous nephews and nieces.

JOHN ANDERSON, a native of Scotland, came to New York about 1770 and found employment in James Parker’s office. In August, 1772, he married, in New York, Sarah, daughter of Joseph Lockwood, of Fairfield, Connecticut. In June, 1773, he formed a partnership with Samuel F. Parker,

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and they attempted, unsuccessfully, to revive “The New York Gazette.” In 1775 he established an office of his own near Beekman’s Slip, where he printed a few pamphlets, among which was Freneau’s Hudibrastic “Voyage to Boston,” and also reprinted an English periodical, then very popular in America, called “The Crisis,” the forerunner of Tom Paine’s spasmodic but effective publication of nearly the same name. He also began in August, 1775, a newspaper called “The Constitutional Gazette,” of which it was said that the line at the top giving the name of the printer and the price of the paper were the only words of truth in it. Anderson had warmly espoused the side of the Whigs in the controversy with the parent country, and on the approach of the British in the autumn of 1776 packed up his effects and started to leave New York. On reaching the American lines, however, his

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wagons were seized for military purposes, his press and furniture ruthlessly thrown out in the road, and his books and papers used for making cartridges. He finally reached Greenwich, in Connecticut, where his wife had relatives who sheltered the ruined printer. He found employment during the war as “captain of a sort of scouts on the Neutral Ground,” and when peace was declared returned to New York City. Here he was at first a printer, and latterly an auctioneer, but never a successful man. He died during an epidemic of yellow fever in September, 1798. One of his sons, Alexander Anderson, was the founder in America of that art in which we have no rival—engraving on wood.

SAMUEL LOUDON was born in Scotland in 1727. He established himself in New York as a ship-chandler

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about 1760, but about 1772 became a bookseller. In 1775 he bought the interest in the business of Hodge & Shober which the latter had then just purchased from his partner, and the firm of Shober & Loudon had a brief existence. Before the end of the same year Loudon bought out Shober and became sole proprietor of the establishment. In January, 1776, he began “The New York Packet,” which he conducted on Whig principles. London, though a zealous Presbyterian and warm republican, undertook to print a pamphlet in answer to “Common Sense,” and accordingly advertised its speedy appearance in all the papers. The Whigs became alarmed and “a meeting was summoned, the parties met, and after swallowing [at the house of Jasper Drake, a tavern-keeper upon the dock, and father-in-law to Isaac Sears before mentioned] a sufficient quantity of Rambo, about

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twelve at night they sallied forth, headed by Alexander McDougal, John Morin Scott, Isaac Sears, John Lamb, Peter R. Livingston, the brother-in-law, and John Smith and Joshua Hett Smith, full brothers, of William Smith, and a few other warm, inveterate republicans, attacked the house of the printer, broke open the doors, pulled him out of his bed, and forcibly seized upon and destroyed the whole impression with the original manuscript.”

On the approach of the British in the fall of 1776, he removed to Fish-kill and continued the publication of his newspaper there until the close of the war enabled him to return safely to New York City. “The Packet” was published until 1792 or later. In February, 1792, he began “The Diary or Loudon’s Register,” a daily paper which had not a very long existence.

In 1776 Loudon printed in folio an edition of “The Charter of the City of

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New York,” and in the following year became for a short time State printer, and during this period printed the first edition of “The Constitution of the State of New-York,” Fishkill, 1777. In 1783 he printed the notorious Newburg Letters in a pamphlet called “A Collection of Papers relating to Half Pay to the Officers of the Army,” which were several times reprinted. In 1784 he published Alexander Hamilton’s “Letters from Phocion,” and a report of the famous case of “Rutgers vs. Waddington.” Among his later publications were the “Laws of the City of New York,” and another edition of the “City Charter” granted by Governor Montgomerie, both of which appeared in 1786. In 1787 he took his son John. Loudon into partnership, and about 1792 retired from business. He died at Middletown Point, New Jersey, February 24, 1813. He was an active member of the St. Andrew

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Society from 1785, when he joined it, and also for many years an elder of the Scotch Presbyterian Church in Cedar street.