He then invented a method of polishing crystals and precious stones. The amount of this valuable material in the hands of the good people of Connecticut was apparently not sufficient to afford him a livelihood, and we find him next engaged as an undertaker and a singing master. In this latter connection he was summoned before the authorities by certain good people who were greatly scandalized because while in charge of a church choir he had introduced the use of a bass viol into the services. This was deemed little short of blasphemy, but apparently no technical charge could be sustained against the culprit.
Buel early interested himself in the cause of the freedom of the colonies. Meantime he had evidently been experimenting in type founding, for the petition of 1769 sets forth that the petitioner has discovered the art of casting type, but that he lacks the capital and is, therefore, unable to go into business commercially. He accordingly petitions the Legislature to advance to him the necessary funds. The Legislature voted him a loan of £100 for seven years and promised him £100 more after he had been carrying on the business successfully for one year. As we shall see in a moment, before the year was out Buel’s interest transferred itself elsewhere and we hear no more of his type casting. When the seven years were up Mrs. Buel paid back the £100. Where and how she raised it is something of a mystery, as she asserted when she made the payment that she did not know where her husband was. He was not permanently lost, however.
Buel, as we have seen, had interested himself in the cause of American independence, and in 1770 he was arrested for participating in the tearing down of a lead statue of George III which had stood in New York. With true Yankee thrift Buel tried to combine his patriotism and his type founding, for a considerable portion of George III was found in Buel’s house in the process of being cast into type. Things were not lively enough in Connecticut to suit our friend. He went to Boston, where we find him participating in the Boston Tea Party, serving a cannon in the Concord fight, and wounded at Bunker Hill. Later he fell into the hands of the British and was confined in one of the prison ships of unhallowed memory which were moored in Wallabout Bay, Brooklyn. Very likely he was in one of those floating wooden tombs when his wife declared that she did not know where he was. How long he remained as a prisoner of war and what his later military experiences were we do not know.
We hear of him next, after the war was over, being appointed to make a map of the coast from Maine to Florida and then appointed master of the mint for Connecticut, where he devised and erected the machinery for striking the copper cents then coined. One wonders if the master of the mint often thought of his youthful conviction for counterfeiting the money of the same community.
Later, when the world was becoming interested in cotton spinning under the stimulus of Arkwright’s invention, Buel went to England to learn how to spin cotton. He came back, bought some machinery, and set up in New Haven the second cotton mill in America, the first being Samuel Slater’s mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. This seems to have been the last shift in Buel’s varied life. He died in 1825 at the age of about seventy-five. He was an interesting product of his time and its conditions and as such his story deserves record, for it must be remembered that he was not a “sport,” but a “type.”
In 1774 Jacob Bay attempted type founding in Philadelphia, but he also was apparently only an experimenter.
In 1775 an experiment was made which, from the conditions and from the character of the maker, we should expect to find successful, but which failed nevertheless. At this time Benjamin Franklin brought out from France a full set of tools and punches and undertook, with his son-in-law, Bache, to establish a type foundry, there being then no type founding done in this country if we may except what was being done in Sauer’s establishment. The Franklin-Bache foundry was well equipped with roman, italic, Greek, and Hebrew matrices. Bache had received some instruction from Fournier, the great French type founder, from whom Franklin had purchased the tools. They had for their workman a man named Frederick Geiger. Geiger was what is known as a “redemptioner,” or a man who in return for his passage money to America, his board, and a small amount of money wages agreed to be the bond servant of his creditor for a certain period. These arrangements were very common at this time and reflected no discredit upon the young men who made them. Geiger was a mathematical instrument maker by profession, but became with study and practice a very expert matrix cutter and founder. Franklin had brought him out and he served his time with Franklin, but appears to have left him as soon as his time was out and to have gone to the Philadelphia mint. Like many another skilled mechanic, however, he became interested in the search for a perpetual motion machine and finally died an insane pauper.
For some reason, the Franklin foundry was not successful. It has been conjectured that one reason may have been that Franklin was very much influenced by French models in his designs, and that the printers and the reading public were so accustomed to English type faces that they did not take kindly to the new forms. Curiously enough American printers have never taken kindly to French type faces although many of them, from Garamond down, are very beautiful. Some of the French types designed, not far from 1875, seem to have become Americanized and are among the most legible and beautiful in use, but the American printers have never been very willing to use them. Whatever the reason, the Franklin foundry was added to the list of unsuccessful attempts at type founding.
One more attempt was to be made before type founding was permanently established in America. This time the attempt was successful, but not permanent. In 1783 John Bain (or Baine) sent his grandson to Philadelphia with an outfit of type founder’s tools. Bain had been associated with one of the famous type founders of the time, Alexander Wilson, of Glasgow. Wilson not only had a market in Scotland and England, but also in Ireland and in North America. Bain had been chosen by lot to start a foundry in Dublin, but after remaining there a time he went to Edinburgh, whence he turned his attention to the other side of the Atlantic. Encouraged by the reports from his grandson, Mr. Bain soon went, himself, to Philadelphia. He was further encouraged by the firm of Young & McCullough, then a leading house of Philadelphia printers. In 1785 he opened business under the quaint title of John Bain & Grandson in Company. Their work was good and the firm was immediately successful, theirs being the first commercially successful attempt to cast type in America. Bain, however, died in 1790, and the business was soon given up by his family.
About the same time that Bain began business Adam Gerard Mappa made an unsuccessful attempt to start a foundry in New York. Mappa was born in Belgium in 1750. He spent his early life in the army, from which he retired after twelve years of service with the rank of lieutenant. He then purchased a part interest in the old firm of Voskens & Clerk. This firm was established some time before 1677, and had long been one of the principal sources of supply of type for England. As pointed out elsewhere in this series (No. 52, A Short History of Printing in England) many of the types used in England for a long period came from continental foundries, particularly Dutch. Shortly after the purchase the Government underwent important changes, in consequence of which Mappa left the country. He landed in New York somewhere about 1787, bringing with him his complete outfit of tools and matrices. He had a number of very handsome Dutch and German faces, some ordinary roman type, and seven varieties of Orientals. For these last Voskens & Clerk undoubtedly had found considerable use, but America was as yet far from needing any considerable supply of Oriental types. Mappa’s capital had apparently been absorbed in his purchase and lost in emigration. In 1798 he was very ready to take himself and his equipment into the service of Binney & Ronaldson. Probably Mappa had no practical knowledge of type founding and very little interest in it, for he left the service of Binney & Ronaldson in 1800 to go into that of the great Holland Land Company. He seems there to have found his place and served in important positions until the end of his life.