[43] According to his obituary in the Montreal newspaper La Presse, December 22, 1925, Arthur DeLisle obtained a degree in medicine but never practiced that profession. "M. DeLisle s'intéressait vivement à toutes les choses de l'histoire et, par des recherches patientes et continues il fit de la bibliothèque du Barreau ce qu'elle est aujourd'hui, l'enrichissant sans cesse de livres et de documents précieux relatifs à l'histoire du droit, ainsi qu'à la biographie des juges et des avocats de Montréal depuis 1828."
[Tennessee]
The printers George Roulstone and Robert Ferguson introduced the first Tennessee printing at Hawkins Court House, now Rogersville, with the November 5, 1791, issue of The Knoxville Gazette. Both men came to the Tennessee country, or Southwest Territory, by way of North Carolina. Their newspaper remained at Hawkins Court House until October 1792, while Knoxville, chosen as the seat of the Territorial government, was being constructed.
The earliest Tennessee imprint in the Library of Congress is probably the eight-page official publication entitled Acts and Ordinances of the Governor and Judges, of the Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio, which according to Douglas C. McMurtrie "was certainly printed by Roulstone at Knoxville in 1793, though it bears no imprint to this effect."[44] Its contents, relating principally to the definition of separate judicial districts within the Territory, are dated from June 11, 1792, to March 21, 1793, and the printing could have been accomplished soon after the latter date.
Patch-repairs help to preserve not only the title page but the first page of the text, which is printed on the verso.
The Library of Congress copy is one of those afterwards prefixed to and issued with a much more extensive work printed by Roulstone in 1794: Acts Passed at the First Session of the General Assembly of the Territory of the United States of America, South of the River Ohio, Began and Held at Knoxville, on Monday the Twenty-Fifth Day of August, M,DCC,XCIV. The Library's volume lost its 1794 title page at an early date, and it is the exposed second leaf, the title page of 1793, that bears the inscription, "Theodorick Bland June 1st 1799." Theodorick Bland (1777-1846) was to be chancellor of Maryland for many years. His correspondence preserved by the Maryland Historical Society reveals that he practiced law in Tennessee from 1798 to 1801. From such evidence as its Library of Congress bookplate, the volume would appear to have entered the Library around the late 1870's.