Bradford became involved in a quarrel among the Quakers of Philadelphia and in 1692 was arrested for printing a pamphlet. The sheriff seized a form of type pages to be used as evidence, and it is said that Bradford later secured his release because one of the jurymen in examining the form pushed his cane against it and the types fell to the floor, “pied” as it is technically expressed. The trouble into which Bradford found himself in Philadelphia very likely influenced him in 1693 to leave that city and establish a printing office in New York “at the sign of the Bible” (the site at 81 Pearl Street is now marked by a tablet), his being the first printshop in New York and the only one for thirty years. He was appointed in 1693 official printer to the government. In 1725, when Bradford was sixty-one years old, he began the publication of the first newspaper in New York (the Gazette).
No review of Colonial printing would be complete without an account of Benjamin Franklin, whose birthday (January 17) is each year widely celebrated. Franklin’s father was an Englishman who came to New England about 1685, and Benjamin was born in Boston in 1706, the youngest but two of seventeen children. He came near being a minister, a seaman, a tallow-chandler or a cutler, but love of books caused him finally to be indentured to his brother, James Franklin, who had opened a printing office in Boston. Benjamin was twelve years of age when indentured and was to serve as apprentice until his twenty-first birthday. Making an arrangement with his brother to be allowed to furnish his own board, Franklin provided himself with meals “often no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins, or a tart from the pastry cook’s and a glass of water,” using the money thus saved for the purchase of books. In 1721 James Franklin began to print a newspaper (the New England Courant) and Benjamin tells how some of his brother’s friends tried to dissuade him from the undertaking, “one newspaper being, in their judgment, enough for America.” Some articles in this newspaper giving offense to the Assembly, James Franklin was imprisoned for a month, and on his discharge was forbidden to publish the Courant. To evade this order Benjamin’s name was substituted for that of James Franklin as publisher.
A short time afterward (1723) the brothers disagreed, and Benjamin left Boston, coming by ship to New York. Here Franklin offered his services to William Bradford, then the only printer in the city, but he could give him no work. However, he suggested that Franklin go to Philadelphia where Andrew Bradford, his son, had a shop. Franklin did not succeed in getting work with Andrew Bradford, but was more fortunate with Samuel Keimer. The printing house of Keimer, as described by Franklin, consisted of an old damaged press, a small worn-out font of types, and one pair of cases. Here Franklin worked until he left for England to select an equipment for a new printing office to be established by him in Philadelphia. At that time there was no type foundry or press manufactory in the United States. Franklin had been encouraged by Governor Keith with promises of financial assistance, but the trip to London proved a fool’s errand and Franklin went to work in a printing office there as a journeyman, first at the press, later in the composing-room. (It is told that forty years afterward when Franklin was residing in Great Britain, he went into this printing office and with the men there drank “Success to printing.”) He returned to Philadelphia, worked as a foreman for Keimer, and then with a partner, Hugh Meredith, opened a printing office.
One of the first jobs done by the new firm was forty sheets of the history of the Quakers, set in pica and long primer. Franklin tells how he “composed a sheet a day and Meredith worked it off at press; it was often eleven at night, and sometimes later, before I had finished my distribution for the next day’s work. But so determined I was to continue doing a sheet a day that one night, when, having imposed my forms, I thought my day’s work over, one of them by accident was broken and two pages reduced to pi, I immediately distributed and composed it over again before I went to bed.”
In 1732 (for the year 1733) Franklin first published “Poor Richard’s Almanack.” For this purpose he used the name of Richard Saunders, an English astrologer. This almanac continued to be published by Franklin for twenty-five years, nearly ten thousand copies being sold annually. The two pages here reproduced are full size, and as it is likely that Franklin gave close attention to the typography it will be interesting to study their arrangement. They are good examples of title-page and tabular composition of Colonial days.
Franklin considered this almanac a proper vehicle for spreading instruction among the common people, and filled the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences. These proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, were latter gathered together as a harangue of a wise old man under the title “The Way to Wealth,” and the familiar phrase “As Poor Richard says” is often repeated therein.
In 1748 Franklin took as a partner David Hall, the firm name being Franklin & Hall until 1766, when Hall became sole proprietor.
Quaintness is the chief characteristic of Colonial typography. While the treatment lacks the artistic quality, the refinement, and the dainty finish of the productions of Aldus, Froben and other printers of classics, it has natural simplicity, human interest, and an inexpressible something that makes it attractive to the average printer of today.