COLLEGE and RESEARCH LIBRARIES the First Was Bartholomew Green, a Principal Printing and Bookselling House in Boston Printer
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By MARIE TREMAINE Canadian'American Relations in Colonial Printing 3 7 N CANADIAN-AM ERIC AN RELATIONS, one ber south of the undefended frontier. I fact stands out which helps us to under- Printing offices were established in the stand each other. It is much more signifi- eastern five provinces of Canada in the cant than the notoriously undefended latter half of the eighteenth century: in frontier. It is the number of people living Nova Scotia at Halifax in 1751; in Quebec in Canada with American background, and at Quebec City in 1764 and Montreal in the number in the United States of Ca- 1775; in New Brunswick at Saint John in nadian origin and upbringing. 1783; in Prince Edward Island at Char- This "mingling of the Canadian and lottetown in 1787; and in Ontario at Ne- American peoples," as Marcus L. Hansen wark (near Niagara) in 1793 and at York, and J. Bartlet Brebner so aptly term it,1 now Toronto, 1798. Products of these has been characteristic of this continent early presses passed from Nova Scotians since the eighteenth century. That and Quebecois to relatives, fellow officials, century, the latter half a revolutionary and professional and business associates, epoch in so many ways like our own time, through New England, New York, Penn- was different from the twentieth in that sylvania, etc. In these older settlements the Canadian-American frontier was the the precarious pioneer era passed earlier, scene of sporadifc conflict. Nevertheless, living conditions became stable, society ma- settlers moved across that frontier in both tured and prospered, and cultural institu- directions. About the middle of the century tions developed sooner than in the newer, the Maritime Provinces changed from rather meager, and isolated settlements in nominal to actual British control, and a the Canadian provinces. So a fair propor- decade later French Canada became a tion of early Canadian publications which British colony. Colonials from New Eng- went south survived, while a much greater proportion of the larger number which re- land, and from farther south and west, came* mained in Canada perished in hands more north to trade, sometimes to settle, oc- concerned with the bare necessities for sus- casionally to fight. The northern settlers taining life. found their way down the seaboard, in- land waterways, and trails. This mingling Of approximately a thousand Canadian of Canadian and American peoples resulted imprints recorded for the eighteenth cen- in a mixing of their cultural resources from tury, perhaps a third of the copies extant the earliest days. are in American libraries. Some of these A recent attempt to record early Ca- are relatively recent purchases from Ca- nadian imprints revealed a surprising num- nadian or British dealers. But a large number show evidence of long American 1 Hansen, Marcus L., and Brebner} John B. The Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples (in custody; for example, the only known copy Relations of Canada and the United States series). of one of the earliest Halifax imprints, a New Haven and Toronto, 1940. 1 JANUARY, 1946 Price Current of the firm Nathans and stituted by Governor Haldimand, who Hart, 1752, is in the Massachusetts His- wrote from Quebec, Mar. 2, 1779: "The torical Society. A typical case is that of a ignorance of the natives of this colony hav- more common piece, A Sermon Preached ing been in my apprehension the principal at Halifax July 3d 1770 at the Ordination cause of their misbehaviour, and attach- of the Rev. Bruin Romcas Comingoe . ment to interests evidently injurious to by John Seccombe, Halifax, A Henry, themselves, I have sought to encourage a 1770. Of eleven copies located so far, five subscription for a public Library, which are in Canada and six in the United States more are come into than would have been —the copy in the John Carter Brown Li- first expected. A pretty good sum has al- brary having copious manuscript notes ready been raised and I hope . [the written about 1772. Of six fairly good files library] will tend to promote a more perfect of the New Brunswick sessions laws (be- coalition of interests between the old and ginning 1786) two are in Canada, one in new [i.e., English and French] subjects of England, and three in eastern American the Crown than has hitherto subsisted."2 libraries—and this is typical of Canadian The Quebec library developed and con- government serials of the period. Most tinued to function till the midnineteenth early Canadian newspapers had brief lives, century. Its stock was taken over by, and and runs are scattered (excepting the long- is now housed in, the Literary and His- lived Quebec Gazette with its practically torical Society of Quebec. Two of its complete file from 1764 in the Public early catalogs are described by Aegidius Archives, Ottawa). If we tried to micro- Fauteux in "Les Bibliotheques Canadiennes film the succession of Gazettes produced in et Leur Histoire II" in Revue Canadienne Halifax from 1752, we should have to mix 1916, v. 17, p. 199, et seq. runs and issues from the Massachusetts His- A significant factor in the dissemination torical Society, Nova Scotia Legislative of early Canadian publications was the Library, New York Public Library, Ameri- antecedents of their printers. Many of can Antiquarian Society, Nova Scotia these were of American origin or training. Archives, and Dalhousie University. The Of the fourteen printing offices opened in Catalogue of English and French Books in Canadian settlements in the eighteenth the Quebec Library, Quebec, 1792, printed century, eight were established by printers in an edition of one hundred, survives in from the American colonies. Besides these two known copies, of which one is in the pioneers who founded and maintained the Bibliotheque Saint Sulpice, Montreal, the offices, came other printers and journeymen other in the Baker Memorial Library, in search of work or adventure, while others Dartmouth College—a clean copy, stitched arrived as refugees from the American in original marble-paper cover, has its fly- Revolution. A few came earlier, and many leaf inscribed: "Presented to Dartmouth later, in the waves of migrants seeking new College Library by John Cozens Ogden, a opportunity or escaping economic pressure Presbyter of the Episcopal Church, D. in older settlements. Some of these moved College Library, 1792." back to American towns; others stayed. In The catalogs of the Quebec library, and either case family and business connections indeed the collection itself, are excellent re- were maintained both ways across the search material for one investigating con- border. temporary opinion. This library, the first 2 Canada Public Archives, Haldimand papers, B66: in Canada, was a subscription library in- 107. 28 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES The first was Bartholomew Green, a principal printing and bookselling house in Boston printer. He was grandson of the the colony. Born in Scotland, he had come Samuel Green who was Stephen Daye's to Virginia about 1752 at the age of fifteen. apprentice and successor in the first Ameri- He studied briefly at William and Mar> can press at Cambridge, Mass. When the College, worked for a banker in Williams- British government began a systematic burg, then became an apprentice to William settlement in Nova Scotia as a base against Dunlap. Brown maintained his connec- the French, Green arrived in Halifax in the tions with Philadelphia for a time, paying fall of 1751 in the van of a long procession off the loan from Dunlap, and importing of migrants who made Nova Scotia for a from him Father Abraham's Almanack, time "New England's Outpost."3 When Dilworth's Spelling Book, New England Green died soon after his arrival, his Primer, Young Mens Companion, etc., former Boston partner, John Bushell, came which were the stock in trade of a colonial and actually started the printing office. He bookshop. For his unusual French-English printed the Halifax Gazette (v. I, no. I, public, however, Brown soon began print- Mar. 25, 1752), proclamations, laws, etc., ing simpler and bilingual substitutes for for the government. Of his nine years' these almanacs, schoolbooks, etc. His in- work (he died in January 1761) but twenty- genious substitute for the almanac, that two publications are known today. Bushell's indispensable adjunct of the colonial house- son and daughter both learned printing. hold, was his L'Almanac de Cabinet or Characteristic of families at that time, the Calendrier—his "sheet almanac" as he latter remained in Halifax, while the son termed it in English. It was a broadside served apprenticeship with Daniel Fowle showing the year's calendar, zodiac, moon's at Portsmouth and then moved to Philadel- phases, religious feast days, and other phia. miscellaneous almanac information. It sold After the British conquest of French usually at sixpence the copy because, as it Canada, another stream of settlers from the was one of the few publications he did not older English colonies began to trickle have to set entirely in French and English, north. Fewer in number than the earlier its production was relatively cheap. Brown eastern migrants, they were, in the main, printed three hundred copies in 1765 and merchants and fur traders. Among them complained bitterly at the number left on were William Brown4 and Thomas Gil- his hands by unappreciative Quebecois. So more, printers from Philadelphia. Fi- he issued none in 1766, and from 1767 nanced by William Dunlap, in whose shop his market was assured. Of the hundreds Brown had learned the trade, they set up of copies published each year through the the second printing office in Canada, pro- eighteenth century, about two dozen sun- ducing the Quebec Gazette from v.