An act for the provision of printing, passed by the Georgia Legislature on March 4, 1762, stated that "James Johnston, lately arrived in this province from Great-Britain, recommended as a person regularly bred to and well skilled in the art and mystery of printing, hath offered to set up a printing press in the town of Savannah." Employed to print the Colony's statutes, Johnston had readied the first Georgia press by April 7, 1763, when he began to publish his newspaper, The Georgia Gazette.

From the year 1763 the Library of Congress owns several official imprints bound up in a volume of Georgia laws enacted from 1755 to 1770 and one unofficial imprint, The South-Carolina and Georgia Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord, 1764 ... By John Tobler, Esq. This almanac, which the distinguished collector Wymberley Jones De Renne gave the Library in 1907, was published by December 8, 1763, and probably printed very shortly before. The earliest of Johnston's many official imprints, predating all his other work except The Georgia Gazette, are thought to be two acts advertised in that paper on June 2, 1763. They are entitled An Act to Prevent Stealing of Horses and Neat Cattle; and for the More Effectual Discovery and Punishment of Such Persons as Shall Unlawfully Brand, Mark, or Kill the Same and An Act for Ascertaining the Qualifications of Jurors, and for Establishing the Method of Balloting and Summoning of Jurors in the Province of Georgia. They had been passed on March 27, 1759, and April 24, 1760, and were printed in folio in four and six pages, respectively. Both acts are represented in the Library of Congress bound volume of early Georgia laws. Only two other copies of each are known to be extant.

Various owners inscribed their name in this book. Joseph Stiles, who operated the Vale Royal Plantation near Savannah from 1806 until his death in 1838, owned at least the latter part of it, where his signature and that of his son, the evangelist Joseph C. Stiles, may be seen. Another owner of the same part was John C. Nicholl (1793-1863), a prominent lawyer and jurist who served as mayor of Savannah in 1836 and 1837. A later owner of the entire volume was a certain S. H. McIntire, not known to have any Savannah connections, who inscribed it in June 1878. The Library of Congress purchased it in June 1909 from the Statute Law Book Company of Washington, D.C. for $2,500.