Ohio History Journal
CINCINNATI AS A FRONTIER PUBLISHING
AND BOOK TRADE CENTER
1796-1830
by WALTER SUTTON
Department of English, University of
Rochester
Cincinnati was a frontier village with
one newspaper and a
population of 500 when the first book
published in the territory
lying north and west of the Ohio River
came from the press of
William Maxwell in 1796. The log-cabin
settlement on a north
bend of the Ohio River was only six
years old. Six more years
were to pass before it would be
incorporated as a town, and seven
before Ohio would be admitted to the
Union as the seventeenth
state. From the time of its founding
through the first decade of
the nineteenth century, Cincinnati had
neither the facilities nor
the market for any extensive publishing
activities although it was
a fast-growing port on the country's
main channel of westward
and southward migration. The steamboat,
which was to perform
miracles in the rapid settlement of the
new lands, had not yet made
its appearance on the western rivers.
Freight and pioneering set-
tlers were carried down the Ohio and
Mississippi in arks, pirogues,
keelboats, flatboats, and rafts. These
craft, particularly the flat-
boats and keelboats manned by the
half-horse and half-alligator
compeers of Mike Fink, carried an
impressive amount of cargo
down the rivers, even in very early
years. In 1798 the boatmen
of the Ohio River alone shipped nearly a
million dollars' worth
of goods down the Mississippi, and by
1807 almost 2,000 flatboats
and keelboats from the Ohio River were
arriving in New Orleans
annually. In that year they carried
cargoes valued at more than
five million dollars.1
1 C. H. Ambler, History of Transportation in the Ohio Valley (Glendale,
Cali-
fornia, 1932), 72.
117
118
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The beginning of the second decade of
the century saw two
developments of great importance to the
growth of the western
book trade. By 1811, two paper mills were in operation in the
Miami country, and in that year also the
steamboat made its first
appearance on the Ohio and Mississippi
rivers. The two mills.
(the first of which had been built in
the summer of 18102) were
on the Little Miami River not far from
Cincinnati and provided
a greatly-needed local supply of paper
for the printing presses of
the fast-growing town, which by this
time had a population of
about 2,500. Before the Miami mills were
put into operation,
all paper used had to be imported
from the East or from Ken-
tucky, which produced little more than
enough to supply her own
needs.
Of far more significance to the
development of trade in gen-
eral was the debut of the steamboat,
which from 1820 until the
Civil War was the dominant factor in the
industrial life of the
West. Although practical steam
navigation of the rivers was not
assured until after Captain Shreve had
launched the George Wash-
ington in 1816, the influence of steam power upon the develop-
ment of the West was determined when
Nicholas Roosevelt suc-
cessfully brought the New Orleans down
the Ohio and Mississippi
from Pittsburgh to New Orleans at the
end of 1811. The steam-
boat was to settle and supply the new
states and territories of the
Ohio and Mississippi valleys. The great
numbers of new western
Americans were to require among other
goods an ever-increasing
supply of reading material which
Cincinnati, because of her stra-
tegic location, could supply more easily
than the remote East.
Steam power also, utilized in printing
offices and paper mills, was
to make it possible for the new
industrial center of the Ohio Valley
to supply the growing market of the West
with books in un-
dreamed-of quantities. Large-scale
publishing is another story,
2 C. M. Thomas, "Contrasts in
150 Years of Publishing in Ohio," in Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly, LI (1942), 185-186.
I am indebted to Mr. Ernest J. Wessen,
Mansfield, Ohio, for the information
that the first known paper mill in Ohio was erected on
Little Beaver Creek, near what
is now East Liverpool, in
1807-1808. This fact has since been established by Dard
Hunter in
"Ohio's Pioneer Paper Mills," in Antiques, XLIX (January
1946), 36-39, 66,
an article which corrects and
supplements evidence on this subject offered by C. M
Thomas in the article cited above; by Jesse H. Shera, in Ohio State
Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly, XLIV (1935), 103-137; and by W. H. Venable, in Beginnings
of
Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley (Cincinnati, 1891).
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 119
however. These pages are concerned with
the handcraft begin-
nings through the first three decades of
the nineteenth century.
THE READER AND THE BOOKS
Of the hundreds of thousands of pioneer
settlers who floated
down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to
new homes in the wilder-
ness, most were literate and many were
well read. Wherever a
small community developed in a clearing,
a pioneer printer usually
appeared to publish a weekly newspaper,
a vital organ of commu-
nication and commerce in the
sparsely-settled country. In Cin-
cinnati, William Maxwell issued the
first number of the Centinel
of the North-Western Territory ("Open to all parties--but influ-
enced by none") on November 9,
1793, three years after the settle-
ment had been laid out and before there
were any political parties
in the territory for him to be
influenced by. Many of these little
sheets folded in a short time for want
of support, but so great was
the expansionist and speculative impulse
of the pioneering move-
ment that a new printer and a new paper
soon took the place of
the failure. Consequently, even though
most of the projects were
foredoomed, the persistence of the
promoters managed to keep the
new country pretty well supplied with
needed newspapers. And
it was the small presses of these
frontier newspapers that provided
the only printing facilities for
whatever books were published
during the early handcraft days.
It is the widespread influence of the
newspaper press tiat has
helped to make America the most literate
and well informed of
English-speaking countries over almost
its whole history. Al-
though the printing press was introduced
into this country nearly
200 years later than into England, so
rapid was the growth of our
newspaper press in the late eighteenth
and in the nineteenth cen-
tury that many new western American
towns were well supplied
with newspapers before the art of
typography was introduced into
such English cities as Rochester and
Manchester.3
During the very early period, before a
local supply of paper
and sizable printing plants made
extensive publishing possible,
most of the books issued in Cincinnati
were of a practical, educa-
3 Interesting statistics on this
subject appear in the introduction to Trubner's
Bibliographical Guide to American Literature (London, 1855).
120 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
tional, or religious nature and were
made to satisfy a local or at
least regional demand. Such works as
almanacs (which had to be
prepared for the meridian of
Cincinnati), directories, copies of
territorial and state legal codes, and
guides for river men and emi-
grants fall into this
classification. Books of general
interest and
works of literature were for the most
part supplied from Pitts-
-burgh and the East.
The existence of readers of taste who
formed a market for
belletristic works4 is shown by early
advertisements of shipments
of books received and for sale, often by
newspaper offices. The
earliest known public sale of books in
Cincinnati was that an-
nounced by an advertisement in the
columns of the Centinel of the
North-Western Tertitory, June 21, 1794.
Among other goods
listed was the following collection of
books:
Carrs Sermons--2 Vol.
Paradise Lost
Modern Chivalry, by H. H.
Brackenridge--2 Vol.
The Sexator or Parliamentary Chronicle
Senacas Morals
Rollins Belles Letters
Prince of Abyssinia
The Idler, by Dr. Johnston [sic]
Established eighteenth century works
were the largest class
of books advertised through the first
decade of the new century.
Prominent among forty titles of books
offered for sale by a news-
paper office in 1806 were the works of
Addison, Johnson, Collins,
Goldsmith, and Blackstone.5 It
was not long, however, until the
rising favorites of the new age displaced the Augustans. The
physical barriers of the Atlantic Ocean
and the Alleghany Moun-
tains did not prevent the new West from sharing the literary
rages of nineteenth century
England. The widespread American
practice of pirating popular English
works, which until 1891 were
not protected by international
copyright, and of issuing them in
cheap editions permitted the American
reading public to get the
4 The very early establishment of libraries also
testifies to this fact. The Cin-
cinnati Library, with books
purchased at a cost of over $300, was in operation as
early as March 1802. Cooperative investments in reading material were
made in at
least thirty Ohio communities before 1825. See William T. Utter The
Frontier State,
1803-1825, Carl Wittke,, The History
of the State of Ohio (Columbus, 1941-44), TI
(1942), 413-414.
5 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mercury, May 19, 1806.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 121
latest books of English poets and
novelists nearly as soon as Eng-
lish purchasers, and much more cheaply.
As a result, by 1820
Byron was the most popular writer in the
West. Among novelists,
Scott was the rage in the twenties, and
his vogue was followed by
that of Bulwer and, of course, Dickens.
American authors could
not compete with the involuntarily free
labor of English favorites,
and consequently they were seriously
handicapped in their efforts
to publish. At the same time, English
writers were receiving from
their admiring American readers all the
rewards of fame except
cash remuneration.
The readers of the West did not confine
their purchases to
cheap reprints, however. The following
notice printed in a Cin-
cinnati newspaper shows that as early as
1823 a
market existed for
the sale of really expensive books:
"On Wednesday Evening,
June 18, will be sold by Moses &
Jonas, at their Auction and Com-
mission Rooms, 173 Main street, a large
and valuable collection of
BOOKS, among which are some of the most
valuable and scarce
scientific works ever offered in the
western country." Among the
27 items listed were Donovan's Entomology,
sixteen volumes bound
in ten, with 576 elegantly colored
plates, handsomely bound, for
$130, and William Turton's Linne's System of Nature, London
edition, seven volumes, for $60. The
cheapest book listed was
Schoolcraft's Narrative, which
had just been published in 1821,
and which sold for two dollars.6
Although some literary and popular books
were produced
during the early years of publishing in
Cincinnati; educational,
religious, and practical works far
outnumbered them.
The first book published in Cincinnati
and in the whole
Northwest Territory, was Maxwell's Code,
the official edition of
the laws of the territory, which was
issued by subscription, in
March of 1796. The publisher of the work
was William Maxwell,
proprietor and editor of the Centinel
of the North-Western Terri-
tory and printer for the territorial legislature.7 In
the July 25,
6 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati
Gazette, June 6, 1823.
7 For biographical information about
Maxwell see C. B. Galbreath, "The First
Newspaper of the Northwest Territory. The Editor
and His Wife," in Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly, XIII (1904), 332-349, and D. C. McMurtrie,
"Antecedent Experience of William Maxwell, Ohio's First Printer," in
ib.d., XLI (1932),
98-103.
122 OHIO
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
1795, issue of his paper, Maxwell
proposed to extend the official
200-copy edition of the Code to 1,000
copies, the additional 800
books to be sold to advance subscribers
at nineteen cents per fifty
pages and to non-subscribers at thirty
cents per fifty pages. Max-
well stuck to his price exactly. An
announcement of March 12,
1796, invited subscribers to pick up their copies of the
225-page
unbound book, for which they had to pay
86 cents.
Schoolbooks were published in the West
from very early
times although established eastern
publishers held the edge until
the McGuffey readers captured the
western market for Truman
and Smith's Eclectic Series in the
1830's. A Cincinnati newspaper
advertisement dated August 17, 1805,
announced a new western
grammar. Although its publishers
probably did not expect to
offer serious competition to Lindley
Murray's English Grammar,
the reigning favorite, their "Note
Below" indicates that they were
pushing it in hopes of a wide
distribution:8
THIS DAY IS PUBLISHED
And for sale at this office
Price 12 1/2 Cents.
AN
INTRODUCTION
TO
ENGLISH GRAMMAR
Designed for the use of Schools
By Dr. Staughton,
Late Principal of the College in
Borden-Town.
N.B. A handsome allowance will be made,
to
those who purchase by the dozen or
hundred.
By the time of the opening of the West,
almanacs had long
been an established American
institution. As a matter of fact, the
first book printed in the British
colonies was An Almanack for
New England for the Year 1639, which came from the press at
Harvard College. Begun originally as
calendars, almanacs grad-
ually accumulated astronomical and
astrological data, farming and
8 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mercury, December 16, 1805.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 123
domestic hints, chronologies of
important events, proverbs, jests,
and illustrations until they became
practically anthologies of pop-
ular reading. In order to give accurate
information about times
of sunrise and sunset and other
astronomical phenomena, these
works had to be calculated for the
meridians of the localities in
which they were to be used. It is
probably for this reason that
almanacs were published in Cincinnati as
early as 1805. The
Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mercury for January 27, 1806, ad-
vertised as "For Sale at this
Office, Browne's Cincinnati Almanac,
For the Year of Our Lord, 1806,
Calculated for the meridian of
Cincinnati, by William M'Farland."
John W. Browne & Co.
were the publishers of Liberty Hall, and
their almanac was prob-
ably issued, according to the usual
manner, in the fall preceding
the year which it covered. Other
publishers of almanacs in fol-
lowing years included such familiar
early Cincinnati firm names as
Browne & Looker, in 1813; Looker
& Wallace, in 1814; Williams
& Mason, in 1816; Morgan, Lodge
& Co., in 1817; Ferguson &
Sanxay, in 1818; and Oliver Farnsworth
& Co., in 1822.9
The most interesting of the Cincinnati
almanacs is The Free-
man's Almanack . . . Containing a
great variety of useful selec-
tions; with the maxims and advice of
Solomon Thrifty, first issued
by Oliver Farnsworth in 1822 and published
by him and later by
N. & G. Guilford for more than
twenty years.10 In addition to
the sayings of Solomon Thrifty, a
typical number has end-sections
on such topics as education,
agriculture, gardening, and amuse-
ment, and the whole is illustrated with
crude but charming wood
cuts. "Solomon Thrifty" was
Nathan Guilford, son-in-law of
Oliver Farnsworth and partner with his
brother, George Guilford,
in a bookselling and publishing
business. Nathan Guilford was a
leading figure in the struggle for
common school legislation.
Through the fictional Thrifty, he
advanced practical arguments in
favor of universal education, and the
wide circulation of the al-
manac spread his ideas about free
schools through the backwoods
settlements. He was elected to the state
senate, where he spon-
sored the school bill passed in 1825,11
and, after the public school
9 Venable, Beginnings of Literary
Culture in the Ohio Valley, 50.
10 The Ohio State Archaeological
and Historical Society Library has copies of
this almanac for 1823-26, 1828, 1830-31,
1833-34, 1842, and 1844.
11 Obituary in Cincinnati Gazette,
December 20, 1854.
124
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
system had been established, he
personally induced many citizens to
send their children to the new
"pauper schools."12
When McFarland's almanac first appeared,
Cincinnati had
less than 1,000 inhabitants, any one of
whom, over ten years of
age, could probably supply a curious
stranger with detailed infor-
mation about any other of the town's
citizens. In 1819, however,
Cincinnati had a population of nearly
10,000 and became a city,
and, appropriately enough, in that year
its first directory appeared.
This was The Cincinnati Directory . .
. by a Citizen, a 155-page
duodecimo published by Oliver Farnsworth
and printed by Mor-
gan, Lodge & Co.13
In any new country or territory one sort
of book which
inevitably appeared was that which
described its geography,
fauna, flora, and social and political
life. Sometimes a book of
this sort was written, like Jefferson's Notes
on the State of Vir-
ginia, to correct misconceptions and to provide foreign
readers
with accurate and complete information
about a part of our coun-
try. Sometimes descriptive books were
written for the express
purpose of attracting settlers to new
regions and providing them
with a guide for their journey. Such works were often entitled
and usually referred to as
"emigrants' guides." They were pro-
vided for every stage of westward
expansion from the opening
of the Northwest Territory through the
Louisiana Purchase and
the settling of Texas, the prairie
states, California, and the Pacific
Northwest. An early guide of this sort
published in Cincinnati
was Edmund Dana's Geographical
Sketches on the Western
Country: Designed for Emigrants and
Settlers . . . , which came
from the press of Looker & Wallace
in 1815.14
12 "Our Early Book Supply,"
in Cincinnati Daily Gazette, June 12, 1880, 6.
13 Copy in Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Society Library.
14 Throughout this period the new settlers were generally referred
to as "emi-
grants" even in the regions that
received them. Dr. Daniel Drake was scored by a
Philadelphia reviewer of his Natural
and Statistical View for his use of "immigrant" and
"immigration." In
criticizing Drake's diction, the reviewer said, "[The book] contains
several words which are not
recognized by the best lexicographers as legitimate portions
of the English language. Of this
number are freightage, immigrant, immigration, to
waggon, and a few others, most of them verbs, which, without
any competent author-
ity, our author has taken the liberty
to form from nouns, by prefixing the particle "to."
However great may be the advantages
which our country derives from the domestic
manufactures of our mechanics and
artists, we are yet to be convinced that our
language is improved by this copious
manufacture of American words. Although
it does not belong to British writers
to teach us how to think respecting our own
affairs, we must admit that they are
our safest guides in the use of language, and
that we ought, as yet, to be
extremely cautious of rebelling against their authority."
Portfolio, I, Series 5 (1816), 25-38.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 125
The most valuable and interesting early
descriptive works on
Cincinnati and the Ohio country were
written by Dr. Daniel Drake,
a pioneer physician, educator, and civic
leader, who founded the
Ohio Medical College in 1819
and who launched and edited the
Western Medical and Physical Journal.
As a tribute to Drake's
unusual talents and versatility, W. H.
Venable, in his literary
history of the Ohio Valley, referred to
him as "the Franklin of
Cincinnati." It would have been
just as fitting if Venable had
compared him to Jefferson, since it is
probable that the Notes on
the State of Virginia inspired Drake to write his Notices Con-
cerning Cincinnati ("Printed for the Author, at the Press of John
W. Browne & Co., 1810") and his
Natural and Statistical View or
Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami
Country ("Printed by Looker
& Wallace, 1815"). These
excellent sources of the natural and
social history of the region were
supplemented by a community
survey made at a slightly later date by
Daniel Drake's brother
Benjamin, in collaboration with Edward
Deering Mansfield. The
result of their efforts was Cincinnati
in 1826, a statistical work of
100 pages printed by Morgan, Lodge &
Fisher and issued in Feb-
ruary 1827. This is the earliest
example, for Cincinnati, of the
sort of municipal reference work
compiled by Charles Cist in his
Cincinnati in 1841 and later
volumes, and, together with the 1810
and 1815 productions of Daniel Drake, it
is an invaluable source
of materials for any study of Cincinnati
and its hinterland during
the first three decades of the
nineteenth century.
Of wider interest were Timothy Flint's
descriptions of the
Ohio and Mississippi valleys during the
second and third decades
of the century. A Massachusetts
missionary and a man of letters,
Flint was one of the multitude who
placed their families in flat-
boats at Pittsburgh and descended the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
His Recollections of the Last Ten
Years . . . (1826) describes his
travels and his preaching pilgrimages in
the Mississippi Valley and
contains vivid descriptions of the
details of frontier life in the
towns, in the backwoods settlements, and
on the rivers. Flint
later made Cincinnati his home for a
number of years, and there
he published The Western Monthly
Review, a nativist literary
magazine, from 1827 to 1830. The life of
this magazine is con-
126
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
temporaneous with the sojourn of the
Trollopes in Cincinnati, and
Timothy Flint would deserve a place in
literary history because
Frances Trollope approved of him, if for
no other reason. In
The Domestic Manners of the
Americans, Flint is praised as a
true gentleman of cultivation and
literary taste. One of his im-
portant works on the West was published
in Cincinnati in 1828.
This was A Condensed Geography and
History of the United
States, or the Mississippi Valley, in two volumes totaling over
1,100 pages. E. H. Flint, whom the
title-page imprint designates
as the publisher, was a Cincinnati
bookseller and a son of the
author.
River guides were even more
indispensable to their users than
were the descriptive works furnished for
new settlers. In the
days when the river was the main highway
of commerce and be-
fore channel markings had been provided,
these handbooks, illus-
trated with maps and charts and
providing up-to-date information
about navigation channels and about
various river ports, were used
by keelboatmen and flatboatmen and later
by steamboat pilots.
One of the earliest and most famous
series of guides (they were
revised almost yearly) was Zadok
Cramer's Navigator, the first
edition of which was published in
Pittsburgh in 1801. It was un-
doubtedly Cramer's guide that was
advertised in a Cincinnati
paper in 1806 as the "Ohio and
Mississippi Navigator, with a
number of plates of the
Mississippi."15
As Cincinnati grew and outstripped
Pittsburgh as a publishing
center and river port, most of the
guides came to be published
there. What was originally Samuel
Cumings' Western Navigator
has the longest history of any of the
Cincinnati publications. It
was issued under that title in
Philadelphia as early as 1822,16 and an
1825 Ohio copyright notice shows that
Cumings had transferred the
publication to Cincinnati, where he
issued the book as The Western
Pilot. In the early thirties, N. & G. Guilford published The
Western Pilot, although the copyright was still registered in
Cumings' name. In the late thirties and
during the forties,
George Conclin held the copyright and
issued the book as The
15 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mercury, May 19,
1806.
16 Copy in Historical and
Philosophical Society, Cincinnati.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 127
Western Pilot and as Conclins' [sic] New River Guide. U. P.
James acquired the rights by the middle
fifties. He revised the
work, entitled it James' River Guide,
and continued to publish it
until the middle seventies, by which
time the guides' long period
of usefulness was drawing to an end.
Such religious works as sermons;
catechisms, and hymnals
were a common feature of Cincinnati
publishing in its early years.
In addition to these standard types,
there were some works issued
from the press which for their
unusualness are worthy of attention.
The Swedenborgian movement, which had
been introduced into
this country by 1785, had a congregation
in Cincinnati even be-
fore 1811, when the first Swedenborgian
society west of the Alle-
ghany Mountains and the second in the
United States was organ-
ized by Adam Hurdus.17 It was
in Cincinnati that two of Sweden-
borg's works were published in their
third American edition in
1820. One of these was The Heavenly Doctrine of the New
Jeru-
salem . . . from the Latin of Emanuel
Swedenborg, the title page
of which carries the imprint,
"Cincinnati: Printed by Benjamin F.
Powers, 1820."18 The other work of Swedenborg, also issued by
Powers, is The Doctrine of the New
Jerusalem Concerning the
Lord.19
Another religions publication possessing
bibliographical inter-
est is The Methodist Magazine for the
Year of Our Lord 1821,
which carries the imprint of Martin
Ruter, the agent of the newly-
established Western Methodist Book
Concern. This volume is
unusual as an early example of a
publication printed in Cincinnati
and displaying a double imprint on its
title page:
"Published by N. Bangs and T.
Mason, New York.
Cincinnati: Published by Martin Ruter .
. . . 1821."
The Cincinnati production of the
magazine is indicated by the
printer's imprint of Morgan, Lodge &
Co.
John Foxe's Book of Martyrs was a
very popular standard
work that accompanied Protestant
American pioneers in their
17 Ophia D. Smith, "Adam
Hurdus and the Swedenborgians in Early Cincinnati;",
in Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LIII (1944), 113.
18 Copy in Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Society Library.
19 Benjamin Powers was a brother of Hiram Powers, the
sculptor. He was a
lawyer and a journalist; in January 1823 he became
editor of the Liberty Hall and
Cincinnati Gazette. Ophia Smith, op. cit., 128.
128
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
westward march. In the days before
blood-and-thunder romances
were available in cheap paper editions,
this household favorite
supplied sensational reading material
for young and old and no
doubt helped to foster the violent
anti-Catholic feeling which
was common in many parts of the country
during the nineteenth
century. An early foreign language
publication in Cincinnati was
a German edition of the Book of
Martyrs which was issued in 1830,
before the full flood of German
immigration had begun.20 The title
page of this edition supplies
the-following information:
Geschichte der Martyrer, nach dem
Ausfuhrlichen Original des ehrw.
Johann Fox und Anderer. Kurz gefasst
und, besonders fur den gemeinen
Deutschen Mann in den Vereinigten
Staaten von Nordamerica, aus dem
Englischen ubersetzt von I. Daniel
Rupp. . . .
The imprint at the foot of the title
page reads, "Cincinnati: Ge-
druckt und verlegt durch Robinson und
Fairbank, 1830"21 The
fact that the book was copyrighted and
that the copyright was
registered in the name of Robinson &
Fairbank indicates that Rupp,
the translator, was probably living in
or near Cincinnati at the
time, and the English captions on the
cuts suggest that there may
have been a companion edition in English
published in Cincinnati.22
Despite the preponderance of books of a
practical, educational,
and religious nature, the early
Cincinnati press also catered to
literary and popular tastes. Since
western literary efforts at this
time were usually in the form of short
stories, sketches, and poems,
most of these pieces saw print in
periodicals and annuals. Timothy
Flint's Western Monthly Review (1827-30),
which has already
been mentioned, was not the first
Cincinnati literary periodical.
The pioneer in that field had been the Literary
Cadet (1819-20),
which was closely followed by the Olio (1821-22). A little
20 One writer indicates that in 1830 the German
population of Cincinnati was
less than 1,500, or about five per
cent of the total. By 1840, however, the proportion
had increased to 23 per cent. Francis
P. Weisenburger, The Passing
of the Frontier,
1825-1850, Wittke, ed., The History of the State of Ohio, III
(1944), 52. In a city
of over 46,000, this meant a German
element of over 10,500.
21 Copy in Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Society Library.
22 The translator was undoubtedly the
J. Daniel Rupp whom the American Pub-
lishers' Circular later identified as the publisher of a Collection
of 30,000 Names of
German, Swiss, Dutch, French, Portugese, and Other Immigrants
in Pennsylvania
Chronologically Arranged from 1727 to
1776, which was issued in Harrisburg
in 1856.
American Publishers' Circular, II, June 14, 1856, 352.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 129
later came the weekly Cincinnati
Literary Gazette, which was pub-
lished by John P. Foote, the bookseller,
in 1824 and 1825.23
Gift books were popular throughout the
country from about
1825 through the Civil War years. They
were annual miscellanies
of stories, essays, and poems, elegantly
printed and bound, and
garnished with many engravings, or, as
they were called at the
time, "embellishments." Some
of these volumes, such as The
Atlantic Souvenir (1825-32), displayed the best art and literature
of the period before the popular monthly
magazine came into its
own. It is thought that the gift book
represents the evolution of
the almanac into a decorative literary
publication, largely as a re-
sult of the increasing regard for
feminine taste that characterized
the period.24
The first annual published in Cincinnati
and in the whole
West was The Western Souvenir, A Christmas and New Year's
Gift for 1829, edited by James Hall and published by N. & G.
Guilford, probably in the latter part of
1828 because such works
were usually predated and issued before
the Christmas season.
This little volume of 324 pages,
illustrated by engravings and
availablein a satin or tooled leather
binding, compares favorably
with other books in the same class.25
Western American in its
subjects and fresh in its treatment, it
is not so tainted by gentility
as many of the other gift books of the
period. Contributors to the
Western Souvenir included Otway Curry, Timothy Flint, Morgan
Neville, Benjamin Drake, and James Hall,
the editor, Hall, who
later edited the Western Monthly
Magazine, exhibits a style su-
perior to that of most other western
writers of his generation.
The sales value of books that exploit
popular interest in sen-
sational subjects has long been
appreciated by publishers and book-
sellers. (It was, in fact, just this quality that accounted for the
success of such "religious"
works as Foxe's Book of Martyrs.)
23 Information concerning early Ohio
literary periodicals may be found in Lucille
B. Emch, "Ohio in Short
Stories," in Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Quar-
terly, LIII (1944),
209-250.
24 R. Thompson, American
Literary Annuals & Gift Books,
1825-1865 (New
York, 1936), 3.
25 "Well done for the
backwoods!" was the spirit of the
eastern reviewers'
reception of the Western
Souvenir. Thompson describes the writing
in this annual as
"for the most part
alive with the excitement and color of
frontier life." He further
says that "a rival
gift book issued in Detroit two years
later, The Souvenir of the Lakes,
is relatively immature and
unsatisfactory." Ibid., 95.
130 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
As early as 1798 a Cincinnati newspaper
carried an advertisement
which was obviously designed to play up
the lurid features of a
book announced as "Just Published
and for Sale." This work,
which in all probability was not a
Cincinnati publication, was intro-
duced as "the CANNIBALS' PROGRESS;
or, The Dreadful
Horrors of FRENCH INVASION, As displayed by the French
Republican Officers and Soldiers, in
their Perfidy, Rapacity, Fero-
ciousness, and Brutality, exercised toward the innocent inhabitants
of Germany."26
One of the earliest books printed in
Cincinnati was a descrip-
tion of a famous local criminal trial to
which was added a bio-
graphical sketch of the culprit. The
book bore the title, The Trial
of Charles Vattier, Convicted of the
Crimes of Burglary and Lar-
ceny, for Stealing from the Office of
the Receiver of Public
Monies for the District of
Cincinnati, large sums in Specie and
Banknotes . .
. , and was issued from the press
of David Carney
of The Western Spy. It was
published by subscription in July
1807.27
DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLISHING FACILITIES
For almost twenty years after the issue
of the first book in
Cincinnati, very little publishing was
carried on, both because
facilities were lacking and because the
market had not yet devel-
oped. When Maxwell's Code was
issued in 1796, there was only
one printing press in Cincinnati, that
of the Centinel of the North-
Western Territory. By 1815 there were two newspapers, Liberty
Hall and The Western Spy, and each of these had an
extra press
for book printing.28 The printing plant
of the Liberty Hall at this
time is described by W. T. Coggeshall,
who wrote 35 years later
when the shop of the same newspaper had
five steam presses and
26 Freeman's Journal, October
27, 1798.
27 The proposal for publishing the
book, which appeared in the Liberty
Hall and
Cincinnati Mercury, May 18, 1807, indicated that the price in stitched sheets
would
be 50 cents, in boards, 75 cents.
Much latex than The Trial of Charles
Vattier, but also appealing to popular
interest in crime, was a 128-page
volume, Murder Will Out . .
. The Horrors of the
Queen City, by an "Old Citizen," William L. DeBeck, which was published in Cin-
cinnati in 1867. This work is interesting in that it
presents a chronology of the most
sensational events in the city's
criminal history from early times and thereby provides
a source of information about one phase
of the young river port's culture that is usually
neglected in conventional studies.
Cincinnati did not receive its most distinguished
treatment of local crime, however, until
the early seventies, when Lafcadio Hearn, a
young reporter on one of its daily
papers, wrote up a brutal tanyard murder so effectively
as to exhaust several editions of
the Enquirer within a few hours.
28 Daniel Drake, Natural and Statistical View, 153.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 131
four hand job presses. In 1815, however,
the work was all done
by hand. The press was crude and
operated on the principle of
screw pressure, much like a hand cider
press. The pressman
turned a screw to bring the platen down
on the form, which was
inked not by composition rollers but by
a boy who beat it with
inked buckskin balls before the taking
of each impression. A
stalwart pressman, with the aid of an
active boy, could turn out
250 impressions an hour. The Liberty
Hall office housed two
presses of this kind, which, with the
necessary type and other
equipment, represented a
capital investment of about
1,000
dollars.29
George Williamson, who opened his shop
in 1806, was appar-
ently the first bookbinder in
Cincinnati. His first advertisement
suggests a certain diffidence in his
attitude towards his business,
which he subordinates to his concern
over a missing horse:
"Strayed or Stolen . . . A Black
Mare . . . ," for the return of
which a five-dollar reward is offered by
"George Williamson,
Who is now prepared to carry on the
BOOKBINDING BUSI-
NESS . . . in Main street."30 One
of Williamson's earliest jobs
of any consequence was probably the
binding of The Trial of
Charles Vattier.
In the early years, before two mills
were set up on the Little
Miami in 1810 and 1811, one of the chief
hindrances to extensive
publishing was the absence of a local
supply of paper. Although
there had been a mill in Georgetown,
Kentucky, since 1791, its
output was limited, and difficulties of
transportation further in-
creased the problems of supplying the
Cincinnati press. As a
result, frontier newspapers were
frequently required to suspend
publication or to curtail their size.
The 1807 file of the Liberty
Hall and Cincinnati Mercury contains a miniature edition, that for
January 6, printed on writing paper. It
carries the following an-
nouncement:
It is with extreme regret that the
editor is obliged to issue the present
number on a writing-sheet, occasioned by
a disappointment in the receipt
of paper. He hopes it will be the only
instance which will occur, as his
29 W. T. Coggeshall, "A
Printing Office in 1815 and 1850," in History of the
Cincinnati Press and Its Conductors,
1793-1850, scrapbook in Historical and
Philo-
sophical Society, Cincinnati.
30 Liberty Hall and
Cincinnati Mercury, January 27, 1806.
132 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
son is now in Kentucky for the express
purpose of purchasing a supply of
that necessary article.
When the pioneer editor's paper
problem was complicated by
money troubles, his plight was sorry
indeed, but not at all unusual.
In the July 30, 1808, number of the same
paper, which is also
printed on a small sheet, the editor
voices the hope that some of
his subscribers who have money will
"furnish the Editor with a
little, to send to the Paper-mill; otherwise
he is apprehensive that
Liberty Hall will sink for want of a few dollars to prop it. 'Tis
hard to print and get nothing, and find
paper in the bargain."
It is natural that publishers of
newspapers would not be in-
clined to use their presses for book
work to any great extent when
they had such great difficulty in
getting the paper necessary to
maintain a newspaper. Therefore it is
not surprising to discover
that the building of paper mills near
Cincinnati gave a noticeable
impetus to local book publishing. This
fact was commented upon
by Dr. Drake, who, writing in 1815,
referred to the year 1811 as
a turning point:
Ten years ago, there had not been
printed in this place a single volume;
but since the year 1811, twelve
different books, besides many pamphlets,
have been executed. These works, it is
true, were of moderate size; but
they were bound, and
averaged more than 200 pages each. The paper used
in these offices [Liberty Hall and
Western Spy] was formerly brought from
Pennsylvania, afterwards from Kentucky,
but at present from the new and
valuable mills on the Little Miami.31
While the first part of Drake's
statement is not strictly accurate
(Maxwell's Code had been issued
nineteen years earlier), it is
true if applied to bound books. And
although the progress
acclaimed by Drake seems insignificant
in comparison with Cin-
cinnati's output even ten years later,
he had considerable justifica-
tion for his expansiveness. He was
writing before the day of the
steamboat and at a time when
Cincinnati had only 5,000
inhabitants.
The mills on the Little Miami were
within thirty' miles of
Cincinnati, but it was not long before
the city had an even-closer
supply. Drake and Mansfield's Cincinnati
in 1826 indicates that
31 Daniel Drake, op. cit., 153.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 133
by that time the city had two paper
mills in operation and another
one under construction. One was Duval's
Paper Mill, located at
Mill Grove but owned by Cincinnati
citizens and furnishing the
Cincinnati market.32 The
other two mills were both powered by
steam. With this innovation it required
only the introduction of
stereotyping about the turn of the
decade and of power presses
early in the thirties for Cincinnati to
be ready to begin the mass
production of books for the new western
market.
The first of the steam-powered mills
mentioned by Drake and
Mansfield was the Cincinnati Steam Paper
Mill, which was owned
by Phillips and Spear. It was located on
the bank of the river in
the western part of the city and was
housed in a building 140 by
130 feet. Drake and Mansfield stated
that the "establishment em-
ploys about forty hands, and produces
annually a large quantity
of excellent paper."33 The other
Cincinnati plant, the Phoenix
Paper Mill, received the following
notice:
During the past summer, a fine
establishment for the manufacture
of paper was erected under the
superintendence of the Messrs. Grahams, on
the river bank, in the western part of
the city. When about to go into
operation, in the month of December, it
was entirely consumed by fire. The
owners of it are now erecting upon its
ruins another, to be called the
Phoenix Paper Mill, which is 132 by 36
feet, exclusive of the wings. Its
machinery will be worked by a substantial
steam engine, and probably go
into operation by the first of June.34
During the second decade of the century,
Cincinnati more
than quadrupled in population, so that
in 1820 it was a city of
10,000. Its printing facilities
increased too, both by the establish-
ment of new presses and by the
manufacturing of type and
printers' supplies. The first Cincinnati
directory indicated that in
1819 there were three newspapers, each
of which had book and
job offices, and two other independent
book and job. offices as
well.35
Type was first cast in Cincinnati about
1820, when the Cin-
cinnati Type Foundry was established by
Oliver Wells and John
32 Benjamin Drake and E. D.
Mansfield, Cincinnati in 1826 (Cincinnati, 1827),
33 Ibid., 62.
34 Ibid.
35 Cincinnati Directory for 1819 (Cincinnati, 1819), 152.
134 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
P. Foote, the bookseller,36 and the
manufacture of printing presses
and equipment was soon an important
branch of the same business.
By 1823 a newspaper article.plumping for
western self-sufficiency
in book-publishing stated that
"type of great variety and of excel-
lent quality--printing presses of new
and improved structure, and
all the necessary apparatus for neat and
expeditious printing, are
already manufactured in this city."
The writer said that for too
long the West had been paying tribute to
the East in the same way
that all the states formerly had to the
mother country. Now it
was time for the West to supply her own
needs: "We wish all
our printing to be done in the Western
Country."37 For the book
trade this was an early expression of
the theme of self-sufficiency
that obsessed westerners throughout the
nineteenth century period
of industrial expansion. There was in
fact considerable justifica-
tion for this attitude because, with the
scarcity of money in fron-
tier communities and the high discount
rates on western money in
the East, any money sent to purchase
goods in the East involved a
personal loss to the buyer and also
handicapped Western business
by removing a portion of its
badly-needed medium of exchange.
A description of the Wells Type Foundry
by Drake and
Mansfield indicates its products and
also makes a point of the fact
that printing materials no longer had to
be imported:
THE MESSRS. WELLS' TYPE FOUNDRY AND
PRINTERS'
WAREHOUSE, is situated on Walnut street,
between Third and Fourth,
where they manufacture, in a superior
manner, all kinds of type, presses,
chases, composing sticks, proof gallies,
brass rule, &c., &c., at the eastern
prices. They employ about 23 hands. This
valuable establishment has
entirely superseded the importation of
type and other printing materials
from the eastern states.38
"With the exception of ink,"
the authors might have added. De-
spite the hopeful strivings of many
manufacturers, a number of
years were to pass before an entirely
satisfactory printing ink was
manufactured in Cincinnati. A
contemporary review of Drake
and Mansfield's book adds the
information that many of the Wells
printing presses were actually shipped
"to the East and South:
36 "Our Early Book Supply,"
loc. cit., 6.
37 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, June 6, 1823.
38 Drake and Mansfield, op. cit., 63.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 135
where the demand, as well as in the
West, is constantly in-
creasing."39
By the end of 1826 Cincinnati had a
population of over 16,000,
its first daily newspaper had been
established, the steamboat pro-
vided quick transportation to any part
of the Mississippi and Ohio
valleys, and the printing presses of the
city were already beginning
to turn out books in impressive numbers.
During the year 1826
the city's nine printing establishments
produced the following
books, in addition to more than 7,000
newspapers a week;
61,000 Almanacs
55,000 Spelling Books
30,000 Primers
3,000 Bible News
3,000 American Preceptors
3,000 American Readers
3,000 Introduction to the English Reader
500 Hammond's Ohio Reports
500 Symmes' Theory
3,000 Kirkham's Grammar
1,000 Vine-Dresser's Guide
14,000 Pamphlets
5,000 Table Arithmetics
2,000 Murray's Grammar
1,500 Family Physician
14,200 Testaments, Hymn, and Music
Books40
This list accounts for more than 85,000
copies exclusive of the
pamphlets and provides quite a contrast
with the situation ten
years earlier when Dr. Drake was elated
over twelve books pro-
duced in a four-year period. Of the
books produced during 1826
about a third were the popular and
useful almanacs; nearly a tenth
were religious works, and over half were
schoolbooks. The great
and sudden increase in the output of
schoolbooks can be explained
largely by the fact that the first state
public school system had just
40 Drake and Mansfield, op. cit., 64.
One of the works mentioned in this list,
Symmes's Theory, is a curious volume which elaborates the theory
propounded by a
somewhat eccentric philosopher, Captain J. C. Symmes, a
nephew of the John Cleves
Symmes who was the Cincinnati founder.
The full title of this book is Symmes's The-
ory of Concentric Spheres;
Demonstrating that the Earth is Hollow, Habitable Within,
and Widely Open About the Poles.
By a Citizen of the United
States [James McBride].
A possibly tongue-in-cheek
advertisement by the publishers, Morgan, Lodge & Fisher,
explains that "Some errors of the press will
doubtless be discovered; as (in the absence
of both Compiler and Theorist), there
was no proof-reader at hand, sufficiently versed
in the New Theory, at all times, to
detect them."
39 Western Monthly Review, I (1827), 61.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 137
been established in 1825 with the
passage of the legislation fostered
by Nathan Guilford.
A clearer idea of the printing activity
in Cincinnati at this
time may be gained by considering the
output of a single shop. At
the establishment of Oliver and William
Farnsworth, printers of
the Western Monthly Review, three
presses were constantly em-
ployed, and there issued from them,
within the space of six or
seven months, "at least 9,000
spelling books--7,000 Murray's
introduction and English reader--6,000
English grammars--2,000
arithmeticks--15,000 primers and chap
books for children--and
60,000 almanacks; all of which have a
ready and rapid sale."41
In the closing years of the third decade
of the century, Cin-
cinnati, with a population of between
25,000 and 30,000, was the
largest city in the West. Her printers
and bookmen were sup-
plied with a rapidly growing market, and
it needed only the intro-
duction of stereotyping and power
presses to enable them to de-
velop the industry which during the
1830's made Cincinnati the
acknowledged publishing center for the
whole West.
EARLY BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS
Henry Howe spoke truly when he said that
the regular book
merchant, the trader in ideas, was the
very last business man to
be established in a young community.42
In Cincinnati, a successful
and well-established bookstore did not
exist for more than twenty
years after the publication of Maxwell's
Code. The reason is
that during the early years a market did
not exist which would
support and profit a man who dealt in
books exclusively. To gain
41 Western Monthly Review
I (1827), 62.
42 Preface to Travels and Adventures
(Cincinnati, 1853).
THE MAXWELL CODE. The first book
published in the Northwest
Territory was a volume of the Laws of
the Territory passed in 1795,
printed in Cincinnati by William Maxwell
in 1796. The photograph is of a
copy in the Rutherford B. Hayes Library
at the Hayes Memorial, Fremont.
This book was a subscription copy,
purchased by Daniel Symmes at
Maxwell's print shop. Unfortunately it
was placed in a fancy binding many
years later, and the binder trimmed part
of the title page.
138
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
recognition for useful service in a
pioneer community, a man
might better be a specialist in milling,
harness-making, or tanning.
Books were of course sold during the
early period, but the
transactions were usually conducted by
auction or as a side line
to general storekeeping or newspaper
publishing. By 1810 books
were regularly offered for sale by
Carpenter and Findley, pub-
lishers of the Western Spy, and
by J. W. Browne & Co., publishers
of the Liberty Hall, who
established a bookstore next door to. their
printing office. At about the same time
the drugstore of D. Drake
& Co. carried a line of books at its
stand in Main Street, opposite
Lower Market.43
Until recently, much confusion existed
about the identity of
the first bookstore in Cincinnati to
rely entirely on the sale of
books and stationery for its existence.
W. T. Coggeshall, who
in the mid-nineteenth century explored
the history of the Ohio
press, said that the first store
"which did a regular book business
and met with liberal encouragement was
established by Phillips and
Coleman in 1815."44 W. H. Venable
made two choices. In a
newspaper article published in 1886, 'he
said, "The first bookstore
in the city was opened in 1819, by
Phillips and Spear."45 By
1891,
when Beginnings of Literary Culture
in the Ohio Valley appeared,
Venable had apparently changed his mind,
for in that work he
said, "So far as I have been able
to ascertain, John P. Foote was
the proprietor of the first regular
bookstore in Cincinnati";46
Foote's store was established about
1820.
Although Venable's second choice is
probably the more ac-
curate if the question is limited to
permanent establishments, the
whole matter has since been cleared up,
so far as it can be, by
Edward A. Henry, who closely combed all
the early Cincinnati
newspapers for that purpose.47 His
findings establish the fact
that the words book-store and bookseller
were first used in Cincin-
43 "Our Early Book Supply,"
loc. cit.
44 Coggeshall, "The Origin and
Progress of Printing," loc. cit.
45 Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, December 11, 1886.
46 Pages 53-54.
47 E. A. Henry, "Cincinnati as a
Literary and Publishing Center, 1793-1880," a
paper presented at the 1937 meeting
of the American Library Association. References
made here are to the 15-page
typewritten manuscript in the Historical and Philosophical
Society, Cincinnati, although the
paper has been printed in Publishers' Weekly,
CXXXII (July 3-10, 1937), 22-24,
110-112.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 139
nati advertising in the columns of Liberty.
Hall in April 1812, in
reference to the bookstore which its
publishers, J. W. Browne
& Co. maintained next door to the
printing office. The first book-
seller to stake his success on the sales
of books and paper alone,
however, was John Corson, whose June 6,
1812, advertisement
in the Western Spy was headed
"JOHN CORSON'S, BOOKS &
STATIONERY ONLY." The only referred
to the fact that
J. W. Browne's bookstore also handled
drugs and patent medi-
cines. But Corson evidently was not able
to get along by book-
selling alone because during the next
year he added other lines
until his Main Street establishment
became a general store. His
chief interest seems to have been in his
original specialty, however,
because he opened a circulating library
in his store in August
1813, and over two-thirds of his
advertising continued to be de-
voted to books.48
John P. Foote was probably the earliest
successful bookseller
who remained in business for any length
of time. In about 1820
he opened a store at No. 14 Lower Market
Street which he main-
tained until 1828, when he sold out to
N. & G. Guilford. Foote,
an organizer of the Cincinnati Type
Foundry and publisher and
editor of the Cincinnati Literary
Gazette, was a man of unusual
talents. He was a member of the
Semi-colon Club, the exclusive
little literary group to which Harriet
Beecher later belonged; and
Morgan Neville, E. D. Mansfield, Nathan
Guilford, and Benjamin
Drake were among the book-minded men who
made his store a
gathering place. In a book which he
later wrote, Foote mentioned
the fact that he was older than the city
of Cincinnati. Although
he retired from the book business in
1828, when he was 45 years
old, he lived until 1865 and during his
later years wrote two books,
The Schools of Cincinnati and
Vicinity and A Memoir of Samuel
E. Foote, a biography of his brother.49
Other booksellers of the twenties
included Drake & Conclin,
Foote's chief competitors, who kept shop
at 43 Main Street until
48 Ibid., 11.
49 "Our Early Book Supply," loc. cit.
140 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
1829;50 George Charters, who as early as
1819 had a small book-
store on East Fifth Street in connection
with a circulating library
and a piano business;51 Thomas
Reddish, a native of England, who
also maintained the Sun Circulating
Library and a loan office at
53 Broadway;52 William Hill
Woodward, who sold coffee as well
as books in his store at the corner of
Fifth and Main streets;53
and E. H. Flint, the son of Timothy
Flint, who opened a book-
store at the corner of Fifth and Walnut
streets in 1827. Ac-
cording to his statement in an
advertisement he kept standing in
the Western Monthly Review in 1827, Flint had ambitious plans
for expanding his market: "Having
recently commenced the busi-
ness of sending books to all the chief
towns and villages in the
valley of the Mississippi, he will be
able to make up packages with
neatness, and transmit them with safety
and dispatch to any town
in the Western and Southwestern country.
Being determined to
devote himself to that business, and to
make annual visits to those
towns and villages, he solicits orders
of this kind, for which he
will charge very moderate
commissions."
In a young community like Cincinnati,
where professional
booksellers were relatively slow in
establishing themselves, one
would hardly expect to find men who made
the publishing of books
their entire business. In fact, during
the greater part of the nine-
teenth century, most houses maintained a
retail bookselling depart-
ment and did not depend entirely upon
their publishing activities
for their existence. In Cincinnati, most of the early publishing
was done by booksellers and printers. It
will be recalled that
E. H. Flint, the bookseller, published
his father's Geography and
History of the Western States, while Oliver Farnsworth, a printer,
published the Freeman's Almanack and
the first Cincinnati direc-
tory.
50 These were John T. Drake of
Massachusetts and William Conclin of New York.
In 1829 John Drake formed a business
connection with Phillips & Spear, paper makers.
In 1830 he died, and his brother
Josiah succeeded him in the firm. In 1831 Josiah es-
tablished a bookstore at 14 Main
Street, where he prospered greatly, employing about
twenty clerks and salesmen and
grossing about $80,000 a year; he retired from business
in 1839. William Conclin continued the bookstore at 43 Main Street
for thirteen years
after the partnership with John T.
Drake was dissolved. He was succeeded at the same
address by his brother George Conclin,
bookseller and publisher; upon his death Apple-
gate and Co. took the location, and
they were succeeded by A. P. Pounsford & Co. Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid. Reddish was a Swedenborgian and
published The Dagon of Calvinism
in 1822. Ophia Smith, op. cit.,
130.
53 W. H. Venable, in Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, December
11, 1886.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 141
The most important and active publishers
of the early period
were N. & G. Guilford and Ephraim
Morgan. Morgan began his
long career as early as 1805 as a
printer's devil in the Western Spy
office, where he probably belabored many
forms with inky buck-
skin balls with no way of imagining a
future in which his printing
plant, the largest in the Queen City,
would be filled with the roar
of automatically inked power presses.
Nathan Guilford was born in Spencer,
Massachusetts, in
1876. After his graduation from Yale in 1812, he read law and
shortly moved west to Kentucky, where he
settled for a few years.
In 1816 he moved to Ohio, took the state
bar examination, and
began the practice of law in Cincinnati.
He soon espoused the
cause of free schools and as
"Solomon Thrifty" and a state senator
supported.common school legislation.54
In 1828 he and his brother
George purchased the business of John P.
Foote at No. 14 Lower
Market Street and began an active career
of publishing and book-
selling.55 It is quite possible that
George was most concerned with
the mechanical details of the business
because little information
about him is available, aside from the
fact that he advertised in
Cist's Cincinnati in 1841 a
printing ink of his own manufacture.
By 1830 this enterprising new firm,
which had been in business a
scant two years, had already published
the Freeman's Almanack,
James Hall's Western Souvenir, and
schoolbooks including Lind-
ley Murray's English Reader.
The Guilfords continued active into the
thirties. One of their
western schoolbooks was The Juvenile
Arithmetick and Scholar's
Guide (1831), by Martin Ruter, then president of Augusta Col-
lege and before that the first agent of
the Western Methodist Book
Concern. They also published a
stereotype edition of J. E. Wor-
cester's Comprehensive Pronouncing
and Explanatory Dictionary
of the English Language (1834), which was for many years the
chief competitor of Webster's
dictionary. Their edition of Tim-
othy Flint's Life and Adventures of
Col. Daniel Boone (1833)
proved popular. The same biography was
later successfully issued
by George Conclin, by Applegate &
Co., and by U. P. James, who
54 Obituary of Nathan Guilford, in Cincinnati
Gazette, December 20, 1854.
55 "Our Early Book
Supply," loc. cit.
142
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
brought out an edition as late as 1868.
Another long-lived work
published by the Guilfords in the early
thirties was Samuel Cum-
ings' river guide, The Western Pilot.
Both Nathan Guilford and Ephraim Morgan
were typical
Cincinnatians of the first generation in
that they were natives of
eastern states. Morgan was born in
Brimfield, Massachusetts, in
1790. While he was still a small boy,
his family joined in the
westering movement, and settled in Ohio.
At the age of fourteen,
Ephraim Morgan was an apprentice in the Western
Spy office.
He became a Quaker convert and in 1814
married Charlotte An-
thony, a Quakeress of Virginia stock.
Morgan rose in his trade
and in 1826 was the senior partner in
the firm of Morgan, Lodge
& Fisher when that company
established the Cincinnati Daily
Gazette with Charles Hammond as editor.56 In 1828 Morgan
withdrew from this company because of
his opposition to the
paper's policy of running advertisements
for the return of fugitive
slaves, and set up in the book printing
and publishing business at
131 Main Street.57 For
several years John Sanxay was his asso-
ciate in publishing here, and the house
of Morgan & Sanxay pub-
lished many books, the majority of which
were standard religious
and educational works. Morgan also
sponsored local belletristic ef-
orts, however, as when he published
Benjamin Drake's Tales and
Sketches from the Queen City (1838).
While continuing his
publishing activities, he also built up
in partnership with his sons
the largest printing office in the West,
with stereotyping and bind-
ing as important departments. Morgan's
power presses accounted
for a good share of Cincinnati's
importance as a publishing
center.58
Ephraim Morgan continued. publishing, in
partnership with.
his sons, into the middle years of the
century. In 1851, Charles
Cist described E. Morgan and Co. as
"one of our oldest as well as
most extensive houses in the publishing
line" and added,
56 Biographical Cyclopaedia . . . of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1895), VI,
1427-1428.
57 "Our Early Book Supply," loc. cit.
58 W. H. Venable stated that in the year
1830, Morgan had "five power presses,
propelled by water, each of which could throw off 5,000
impressions daily." Beginnings
of Literary Culture in the Ohio
Valley, 51-52. Venable's date is
ten years too early.
The figures which he gives here
correspond exactly with the statistics on Morgan in
Charles Cist's Cincinnati in 1841 (Cincinnati, 1841). The
first power press was not
brought to Cincinnati until 1834.
CINCINNATI PUBLISHING 143
Within the last twelve months they have
issued from the press 20,000
Family Bibles; 15,000 Josephus's Works;
5,000 each, Pilgrim's Progress
and Hervey's Meditations; 10,000 Life of
Tecumseh; 10,000 Psalms of
David; 10,000 Talbott's Arithmetic;
10,000 Walker's School Dictionary;
1,000 Macaulay's History of England, and
100,000 Webster's Spelling
Books, with various other publications
in smaller editions. Total value,
$54,000.59
The Life of Tecumseh mentioned here
was one of the pro-
ductions of Benjamin Drake, the brother
of Dr. Daniel Drake.
The book was first published in 1841,
and a run of 10,000 ten years
later indicates a substantial success
for a publication written, pro-
duced, and circulated "at the
West." Morgan seems to have done
his share in supporting western literary
ventures. As late as
1854 his imprint as publisher appeared
on the title page of the
Poems, third edition, of Mrs. Helen Truesdell, an Ohio
poetess.60
Between 1796 and 1830 the population of
Cincinnati increased
fifty-fold. The log cabin village grew
to a city of nearly 30,000,
the largest in the West, and its growth
and development were
representative of the change that was
taking place throughout the
regions drained by the great rivers. And
still the country was
just on the threshold of its period of
greatest expansion. For
the western book trade, the vast numbers
of literate Americans
peopling the new states and territories
comprised a market which
challenged Cincinnati paper makers,
publishers, pressmen, stereo-
typers, binders, booksellers, and book
agents to provide needed
volumes in such quantities as to leave
no doubt of the city's right
to its title as the "Literary
Emporium of the West" during the
expansive decades before the Civil War.
59 Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1851 (Cincinnati,
1851), 233-234.
60 During the nineteenth century the
word "edition" was used loosely by Amer-
ican publishers. In this case the
term "third edition" may refer simply to the third lot
received from the binder.