The most important pamphlet printed in Williamsburg was A Summary View of the Rights of British America, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson. Lying ill up-country in August of 1774, when Virginia’s legislators were convened in Williamsburg to send off delegates for the First Continental Congress, Jefferson wrote his tract to suggest instructions that might guide these delegates at Philadelphia.
The Summary View was read aloud by Peyton Randolph in his home on Market Square to a room filled with Virginia patriots. It was too radical for some, but moving to all. It was at once set in type by Clementina Rind, Williamsburg’s only woman printer. Among the first to purchase a copy was George Washington, who noted in his diary that it cost him three shillings ninepence. The pamphlet was reprinted in Philadelphia and London and has been described as second only to the Declaration of Independence in charting the American course toward independence. John Adams of Massachusetts testified that the Summary View gave Jefferson “the reputation of a masterly pen” among Congress delegates in 1776 and won for the Virginian his assignment to draft the Declaration.
To the Williamsburg printer we owe a word of thanks for the important part that he has played in the affairs of this early Virginia capital—affairs that had notable influence on the course of American history. Since civilization began, the communication of ideas has largely depended upon the written word. The eighteenth-century printers of Williamsburg—and all America—served that need at a time of great moment, when the destiny of the emerging ideals of political democracy, free speech, a free press, and freedom of conscience was uncertain. They had the privilege of enlisting their craftsmanship in the service of freedom, peace, and plenty, goals that continue to beckon mankind.
To the printer’s art, then, we wholeheartedly render the tribute which J. Markland pronounced in Typographia, in 1730, as he saluted Governor Gooch and Printer Parks for giving Virginia its first press:
“Happy the Art, by which we learn
Gloss of Errors to detect,
The Vice of Habits to correct,
And sacred Truths, from Falsehood to discern!
By which we take a far-stretch’d View,
And learn our Fathers Vertues to pursue,