Rivals, Partners, and Heirs
The Network of the Press, 1742–1771
NO press stood alone. Franklin's shop had rivals it displaced, partners it financed, and heirs it trained, and the collection follows the printing outward through them. Andrew Bradford had given Franklin work when he first arrived in 1723, lost the Assembly's printing to him, and went on selling bonds and powers of attorney at the Bible in Front Street until his death. James Parker, Franklin's partner in New York and his most capable protégé, printed the first history of New Jersey on a press that had come from Franklin by way of Antigua. And Benjamin Mecom, the son of Franklin's beloved sister Jane, failed on four presses his uncle set up for him, leaving a trail of scarce imprints from the Caribbean to Connecticut.
Power of Attorney, Printed by Andrew Bradford and Executed by the Mariner Robert Georges
A printed legal form from the shop of Franklin's first Philadelphia rival, filled in and signed in June 1742, the year Bradford died. His blanks and Franklin's sat in the same lawyers' drawers; the two presses competed for the same customers for fourteen years.
[Franklin Printing] Antigua
A printing from the press Franklin sent to Antigua — first under Thomas Smith, then, from 1752, under his nephew Benjamin Mecom, who failed there as he failed everywhere. The press itself would come home: Parker used it at Burlington in 1765 to print the history of New Jersey below. A rare survival of Franklin's Caribbean venture.
The History of the Colony of Nova-Caesaria, or New-Jersey
The first general history of New Jersey, printed by the colony's first printer on a press that belonged to Benjamin Franklin and had formerly served Mecom in Antigua. Parker moved from Woodbridge to Burlington to keep a long-standing promise to Smith; the press was shipped from New York in April 1765. Sold in Philadelphia by Hall. The Franklin network, complete in one imprint.
A Letter to an Honourable Gentleman of the Council-Board for the Colony of Connecticut, Shewing that Yale-College Is a Very Great Emolument
An argument for public support of Yale from the New Haven press of Franklin's nephew — the last of the shops his uncle set up for him after Antigua, Boston, and New York. Mecom had apprenticed with Parker; he had Franklin's blood and none of his luck.
The Faithful Serving of God and Our Generation, the Only Way to a Peaceful and Happy Death
A funeral sermon from Mecom's New Haven press, sewn as issued and without the appended memoir of Mrs. Mary Clap. Daggett was president of Yale; Mecom was the son of Jane Franklin Mecom, the sister to whom Franklin wrote more letters than to anyone else alive.
An Astronomical Diary; or Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord Christ 1771
The first printing of Franklin's epitaph — 'The Body of B. Franklin, Printer, Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out' — on page four of a Boston almanac, forty-two years after he wrote it. The printer's epitaph, printed at last in the town where he learned the trade.
He had Franklin's blood and none of his luck.