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. 1, no. 1, tanned and flyblown examples survive. June 21, 1764. Gilmore had little influ- In the long years of the American Revo- ence in Canadian printing and died in 1773, lution Brown's American past receded, for but Brown's shop in Quebec became the he was King's Printer under the watchful eye of government and the Lieutenant * Brebner, John Bartlet. New England's Outpost; Acadia before the Conquest of Canada. New York City, Governor reported: "Our Printer has some Columbia University Press, 1927. 4 Parts of Brown's story are told in Canada's First penchant for the popular [i.e., American] Printer, by Hubert Neilson, a grandnephew, in the Dominion Illustrated, Aug. 18, 1888, and in William cause and when he gets a cup too much, Brown (1737-1789) Premier Imprimeur, Journaliste, et Libraire, de Quebec, by F. J. Audet, in Royal Society which is not seldom, his zeal increases. I of Canada, Memoires, 1932, ser. 3, v. 26, sec. 2, p. 97- 112. have cautioned him two or three times . . . 3 7 JANUARY, 1946 and desire him to lay before me whatever vinced that the "habitants opprimes" would he intends to publish." not join the revolution; but Mesplet, in The American Revolution retarded the some financial straits, remained. He began customary travel and trade between the printing devotional books, schoolbooks, a "New and Old Colonies," as they were still French almanac, and a newspaper, Gazette called by British officials. But one of the du Commerce et Litter aire pour la Ville et notable American excursions to the north District de Montreal, v. I, no. 1, June 3, brought another printer to Canada. He 1778- He had a troubled career beset by was Fleury Mesplet, a protege of Benjamin suspicious authority and pressing creditors.5 Franklin. Franklin was one of the three It is interesting to note that after the revo- commissioners who were to follow the revo- lution Mesplet petitioned Congress6 in lutionary army to Montreal in the fall of 1783 and again in 1784, begging relief for 1775. They were to organize among the losses suffered by his move to Montreal. French Canadians what we now call a fifth Another copy of the 1784 petition was pre- column. Mesplet, born in France, had sented Mar. 11, 1785, with Mesplet's claim gone to London and thence to Philadelphia for $9189. This was $330 for "extra ex- in search of work. There, Congress, urg- penses" and $8859 for other ". . . damage ing the "New" colony to join the "Old" in sustained in the sale of books and for debts their stand for liberty, had Mesplet print its contracted in the maintenance of himself, Lettre Addressee aux Habitants de la workmen, and family, whilst the said Province de Quebec Cidevant le Canada, Mesplet was on account of his attachment de la Part du Congres General de l'Ameri- to the cause of America confined in Jail." que Septentrionale Tenu a Philadelphie It was recommended that he be paid . . . Fleury Mesplet MDCCLXXIV. The $426.45 for transportation expenses to following year he printed Congress' further Montreal and that his other claims be sub- appeal: Lettre Addressee aux Habitants mitted to the "wisdom and benevolence of Opprimes de la Province de Quebec de la Congress." Part du Congres General de VAmerique Except for this contact with Congress Septentrionale Tenu a Philadelphie [Fleury Mesplet seems to have had little connection Mesplet, 1775]. with Americans after he settled in Mesplet apparently made a trip to Montreal. He served an almost exclu- Montreal in 1775. The town had never sively French and Catholic community. had a printing press. Its Catholic institu- The books advertised for sale in his shop tions, cut off from France, were ill-supplied were limited to his own publications. Even with devotional and schoolbooks, and its well after the revolution, when he could French-speaking society very remote from publish freely and was in fact producing William Brown's press a couple of days the bilingual Montreal Gazette, there is no down the river in Quebec. It seemed a evidence of his friendly exchange with good prospect for a French printer and printers across the border. Few of his especially for a French printer with Ameri- French publications are located today in can backing. Congress granted him two 6 See McLachlan, R. W., "Fleury Mesplet, the First hundred dollars for expenses and in the Printer at Montreal," in Royal Society of Canada, Transactions, 1906, ser. 2, v. 12, p. i97-3°9> an(i spring of 1776 Mesplet moved his printing Fauteux Aegidius, in "Fleury Mesplet, une Etude sur les Commencements de I'lmprimerie dans la Ville de office to Montreal, then occupied by the Montreal" in Bibliographical Society of America, Papers, 1934, v. 28, pt. 2, p. 163-93. Americans. The latter, however, withdrew 6 His petition was reproduced by Douglas C. Mc- Murtrie in A Memorial Printed by Fleury Mesplet. very soon, even the commissioners being con- Chicago, Ludlow, 1929.

30 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES American collections, but the situation is while it was occupied by the British. There different with respect to his productions not in 1778 they resumed publication of their in French. The only known copies of his almanac, the British-American Register two memorials to Congress are in the Li- . . . with British Army Lists and an Alma- brary of Congress. He published two nack. This had been sold in Halifax for Mohawk primers, of which four of the five some years by a protege of the governor. known copies are in American libraries. At the end of the revolution Mills and But unlike that of most early Canadian Hicks were back in Halifax. Nathaniel printers, Mesplet's work survives mostly Mills remained there, but John Hicks re- in long-established institutions in his own turned to settle in Massachusetts. province. His publications, almanacs, de- Mills and Hicks typified the experience votional works, and even the political of many American printers set adrift by the pieces, were produced for the local French revolution. James and Alexander Robert- market. And the French of Canada tradi- son went to Shelburne, N. S., Canada, with tionally had a different cultural and social the crowd of loyalists who tried to make a background and limited intercourse with city on the ocean-swept coast of the pen- American settlers. insula. They opened a printing office, re- The great shifting of population occa- sumed publication of their newspaper, the sioned by the American Revolution brought Royal American Gazette, and then as the a number of pro-British printers to Canada. new settlement petered out James moved on The first of these were Mills and Hicks, to Charlottetown. There he opened the who had been publishing the Massachusetts first printing office in Prince Edward Gazette in Boston. When the city was Island, printed a few more numbers of his evacuated in March 1776 they came to newspaper and some laws, but in 1789 left Halifax with the British Army. We know the island for parts unknown. His press of only one Halifax production by them, was continued with a meager output by and it was a curious contretemps. It con- young William A. Rind, till Rind returned tained the text of the Declaration of Inde- to Virginia in 1798 with a wife from a pendence, apparently, and an Act of Rhode Loyalist family on the island. James Island renouncing allegiance to the king. Humphreys, who had printed the Philadel- It was published on July 11, 1776, with the phia Ledger, also settled for a time in title Extracts from the Boston and New Shelburne. He issued the Nova-Scotia Hampshire Newspapers. The printer, Packet for a couple of years, sat in the summoned before the lieutenant-governor- provincial assembly, then moved back to in-council, explained that the notes showing Philadelphia in 1797. Humphreys kept the heinous nature of this document had in touch with Loyalist colleagues in Nova been omitted by mistake. All copies were Scotia, advertised in their newspapers, and ordered to be collected and destroyed, and received their publications. this was done so effectively that by July 13 Thomas and James Swords were associ- a military officer in Halifax was unable to ated with Humphreys for a time in Shel- get one to send to London, "altho' [he burne. They received land grants as wrote] I have offered to give a Dollar Loyalist settlers, but by 1790 they were apiece." This was the only contemporary back in New York in the printing business. edition of the Declaration of Independence Lewis and Ryan (William Lewis of New printed in Canada. Mills and Hicks moved York and John Ryan of Newport, R.I.) on to England, then back to New York were part of the great Loyalist migration 3 7 JANUARY, 1946 which pioneered the province of New While there are thus many early Ca- Brunswick. Arriving at the mouth of the nadian imprints in American custody, it is St. John River in 1783, they set up a press doubtful if there is a corresponding number and issued the first number of the Royal of American productions of that period in St. Johns Gazette, Dec. 18, 1783, before Canadian hands. A systematic search of the townsite on the edge of the wilderness Canadian libraries might unearth interest- was surveyed. Young Ryan, who had ing items, like a broadside in Acadia Uni- turned twenty-two years in October 1783, versity Library at Wolfville, N.S. This carried on the printing office when, in the was evidently issued in Boston 175?, as spring of 1786, Lewis left the settlement witness: "Advertisement: All Gentlemen after a couple years' struggle and a stiff Voluntiers that have a mind to serve His fine for libel. Ryan developed a respecta- Majesty King George the Second in an ble business and trained his sons to be independent Company of rangers for the printers. Then he moved on, in 1807, to Service and Defence of Nova Scotia, under open the first printing office in Newfound- command of Benoni Danks Esq. may repair land. to the sign of the St. George on Boston Ryan's father-in-law, the printer John Neck." Circumstances, however, which Mott, and his family, also came to the St. mitigated against the preservation of native John River settlement with the Loyalist mi- works in the pioneer period, were probably gration. But, Mrs. Mott declaring she effective also with imported publications. would "never live in such a God-forsaken Undoubtedly American publications, place," they returned to New York. After pamphlets, and newspapers came into Ca- the yellow fever epidemic of 1798, however, nadian towns in the portmanteaux and the Motts moved back to St. John. By this saddlebags of travelers. We hear of them time the son, Jacob, was trained as a printer. only incidentally, as in the case of the The Ryans and the Motts printed in half Boston and New Hampshire News Papers, a dozen places on both sides of the boundary brought into Halifax by Judge Hutchinson for many years, visiting back and forth and of Massachusetts in July 1776, from which working in each others' shops. Mills and Hicks printed the Declaration of The Sowers were another example of the Independence as noted above. Many such same process. Christopher Sower III, of publications probably circulated quietly, the third generation of a family of able wore out, and helped light a fire or stuff a printers of Germantown, Pa., settled in St. drafty crack. Canadian printers were de- John, N.B., Canada, after the revolution. pendent upon American sources of news for He w^s King's Printer in the province a large part of the year. Not only Ameri- 1785-99, and his official publications as a can but European news came through whole are the finest productions in early Boston to Halifax and St. John, and Canadian printing. Christopher's son, through New York to Quebec, Montreal, Brook Watson, was sent back to Philadel- and Upper Canada. News of Nelson's phia to train in his uncle Samuel Sower's victory at the Battle of the Nile on Aug. 1, shop. And Christopher was in Baltimore 1798, was published in York (now arranging to set up a type foundry with his Toronto) on Jan. 12, 1799, in an Upper brother, when he died in 1799. Practically Canada Gazette Extraordinary. The Ga- all of Sower's publications were official and zette's issue was made up from the columns are located today in public collections, of the New York Mercantile Advertiser of American and Canadian almost equally. Nov. 30, 1798, which reprinted dispatches

32 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES from the London Gazette of Oct. 5-6, 1798. Canada. A Particular Account of Mr. Canadian printers occasionally advertised Thomas Say of Philadelphia While in a and distributed publications of their Trance for Eight Hours, Giving a Strange American confreres. John Dickinson's Revelation of What He Both Saw and Letters from an American Farmer was sold Heard ... To which is Added: A Re- in Halifax in 1768 and probably also in markable Vision by the Rev'd. Isaac Watt, Quebec. Lewis and Ryan of St. John sold went through several American editions the Hartford 1783 edition of the Narrative from 1774 onwards. About the time of of the Life of William Beadle of Wethers- Say's death it was advertised continuously field, Connecticutt, containing Particulars of in St. John, 1796-97, by John Ryan, who the Horrid Massacre of Himself and His may even have issued his own edition. Family. The Boston 1772 edition of William Cobbett's works had considera- Wellins Calcott's Candid Disquisition of ble sale in Canada in the 1790's. In fact the Principles and Practice of . . . Free his sympathizers there are said to have com- and Accepted Masons was being read in pensated him for losses from the libel suit Halifax the same year. The same work was of Dr. Benjamin Rush. His Democratic advertised by Lewis and Ryan, almost as Principles . . . Sixteenth Edition, was issued soon as they opened their shop in St. John. in Quebec in 1799. Masonic publications were sold by William The Canadian printing trade was Brown of Quebec, himself a good Mason. sufficiently precarious in those early days. But, except in the 1760's, these were prob- And we may be sure that a Canadian edi- ably imported from England. tion of an American work is evidence of a Religious pamphlets deriving from a local market which knew the book by repu- popular preacher or sect with adherents on tation at least. both sides of the frontier circulated on both These random notes on early American sides. Henry Alline, a native of Rhode publications in Canada, gathered inci- Island and a fiery New Light evangelist, dentally in connection with another project, published his sermons in Nova Scotia, while suggest an interesting field for research. his Life and Journal and his Hymns and The latter part of the eighteenth century Spiritual Songs, were published in New saw the beginning of a unique relationship England after his death. Thomas Wood's between the peoples of these two countries Sermon Occasioned by the Death of Mrs. and also between their printing establish- Abigail Belcher, Consort of Jonathan ments as these developed—a relationship so Belcher, Chief Justice of Nova-Scotia, was close that very many families and many printed in Halifax, 1771, and in Boston, publishing houses have branches and connec- 1772. Jonathan was the son of Governor tions on both sides of the line. And many Belcher of Massachusetts. books like The Mingling of the Canadian Loyalist writers brought their American and American Peoples by M. L. Hansen works, and Loyalist readers brought their and J. B. Brebner are issued with Ameri- American reading interests with them to can-Canadian imprints.

3 7 JANUARY, 1946