Colonial Printers


Printers were important in colonial America, and you'd likely find one in most large towns and cities. They became crucial for getting out notices, bulletins, and the news. Printers became especially important leading up to, during, and after the Revolutionary War. Using a hand-pulled press of that time, Clementina Rind's press printed the first publication of Thomas Jefferson's ideas on freedom in the face of Britain's harsh policies.

One of the most famous colonial printers was Benjamin Franklin. He learned the trade from his older brother in Boston, but at seventeen years of age, he ran away to Philadelphia where he eventually started his own print shop. In addition, he wrote some of the things he printed, like Poor Richard's Almanack. In fact, I often  used short quotes from here to begin the chapters in my colonial novel set in Pennsylvania, When Winter Is Past.

Printers usually employed both a compositor and a pressman. The compositor arranged the letters for the print job by ordering them on a composing stick and then placing these in wooden boxes called galleys to form what would print onto a sheet of paper. Any illustrations where done as woodcuts and placed in with the sentences. The pressman worked the press to do the actual printing. The two jobs were very different and had little to do with each other.

The galleys were locked into an iron frame and secured to the stone bed of the printing press. A man known as a beater spread a mixture of varnish and lampblack evenly over the type. Damp sheets of paper were put in a frame and the pressman pulled a lever to apply about 200 pound of pressure and set the sheet aside to dry. The whole process was labor intensive, but citizens appreciated the finished product.

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