In 1796 John McCall, the earliest printer active in Michigan, issued at Detroit a 16-page Act of Congress relating to Indian affairs. Apart from blank forms printed on the same press before its removal to Canada in 1800, no other specimens of Michigan printing survive antedating the press that Father Gabriel Richard, the influential Sulpician priest, established at Detroit in 1809.

Entry number 2 in the Preliminary Check List of Michigan Imprints 1796-1850 (Detroit, 1942)[51] describes a 12-page publication said to exist in a unique copy at the Library of Congress: To the Honourable the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States. Memorial of the citizens of the United States, situated north of an east and west line, extending thro' the southward bend of Lake Michigan, and by the Act of Congress of 30th April 1802 attached to, and made part of the Indiana Territory ... ([Detroit? 1802?]). This entry is, in bibliographical parlance, a ghost. Actually, the Library of Congress possesses the work only as a negative photostat of a manuscript document which is preserved at the National Archives.[52]

The earliest bona fide Michigan imprint in the Library of Congress is L'Ame penitente ou Le nouveau pensez-y-bien; consideration sur les ve'rite's eternelles, avec des histoires & des exemples ... printed at Detroit in 1809. The printer, James M. Miller, of Utica, N. Y., was the first of three operators of Father Richard's press. This particular imprint is the fourth item in a standard bibliography of the press, which calls it "the first book of more than 24 pages printed in Detroit or Michigan."[53] As a matter of fact, it is a very substantial work of 220 pages, albeit in a small duodecimo format. It is a reprint of a devotional book first published in France in the 18th century and attributed to a prolific Jesuit author, BarthÉlemy Baudrand (1701-87). As head of the Catholic Church in the area, Father Richard wanted to make such religious literature available to the largely French-speaking inhabitants.

The Library of Congress copy of L'Ame penitente, in a speckled calf binding of uncertain date, was obtained through a 1954 exchange with Edward Eberstadt & Sons. It had been offered in one of the bookselling firm's catalogs earlier that year for $500.[54]