Two Library of Congress copies of this imposing folio—one of them seriously defective—are housed in the Law Library; while yet another copy, which is especially prized, is kept with the Jefferson Collection in the Rare Book Division since it belonged to the library which Thomas Jefferson sold to the Congress in 1815.[3] The 1815 bookplate of the Library of Congress is preserved in this rebound copy, and Jefferson's secret mark of ownership can be seen—his addition of his other initial to printed signatures I and T. A previous owner wrote "Robert [?] Lewis law Book" on a flyleaf at the end, following later acts bound into the volume and extending through the year 1742. He may well have been the same Robert Lewis (1702-65) who served in the House of Burgesses from 1744 to 1746.[4]
The Library possesses the only known copy of another early Virginia imprint bearing the same date: Charles Leslie's A Short and Easy Method with the Deists. The Fifth Edition.... Printed and sold by William Parks, at his Printing-Offices, in Williamsburg and Annapolis, 1733. Inasmuch as an advertisement for this publication in the Maryland Gazette for May 17-24, 1734, is headed "Lately Publish'd," it was most likely printed early in 1734 but dated old style, and so it probably followed the publication of the Acts of Assembly. The Library purchased the unique copy for $8 at the second Brinley sale, held in March 1880.
[2] William Parks, Printer and Journalist of England and Colonial America (Richmond, 1926), p. 15.
[3] No. 1833 in U.S. Library of Congress, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Compiled with Annotations by E. Millicent Sowerby (Washington, 1952-59).
[4] See Sarah Travers Lewis (Scott) Anderson's Lewises, Meriwethers and Their Kin (Richmond, 1938), p. 61-62.
[Maryland]
After departing from Virginia, William Nuthead set up the first Maryland press at St. Mary's City sometime before August 31, 1685. This press continued in operation until a few years after Nuthead's widow removed it to Annapolis about 1695; yet nothing more survives from it than a single broadside and some printed blank forms.
In 1700 Thomas Reading began to operate a second press at Annapolis, and his output in that year included a collection of laws which is the earliest Maryland imprint now represented in the Library of Congress. Since the Library's is the only extant copy, it is particularly regrettable that its title page and considerable portions of the text are lacking. Catalogers have supplied it with the title: A Complete Body of the Laws of Maryland.[5]