Scholarly investigation has revealed that a supposed early instance of Nebraska printing—the Mormon General Epistle "written at Winter Quarters, Omaha Nation, west bank of Missouri River, near Council Bluffs, North America, and signed December 23d, 1847"—actually issued from a St. Louis press.[119] The Library of Congress copy of this imprint is consequently disqualified for discussion here, as are also the Library's three issues of the Omaha Arrow, beginning with the initial number dated July 28, 1854, since these issues were printed in Iowa, at Council Bluffs, before Omaha acquired its own press.

Nebraska printing begins in fact with the 16th number of the Nebraska Palladium, issued at Bellevue on November 15, 1854. Previously issued at St. Mary's, Iowa, the paper takes pride in introducing printing to the newly formed Territory of Nebraska and identifies the men responsible:

The first Nebraska books were printed at Omaha by the Territorial printers Sherman & Strickland in 1855, and they are represented in the Library of Congress collections: Laws, Resolutions and Memorials, Passed at the Regular Session of the First General Assembly of the Territory of Nebraska, Convened at Omaha City, on the 16th Day of January, Anno Domini, 1855. Together with the Constitution of the United States, the Organic Law, and the Proclamations Issued in the Organization of the Territorial Government; Journal of the Council at the First Regular Session of the General Assembly, of the Territory of Nebraska, Begun and Held at Omaha City, Commencing on Tuesday the Sixteenth Day January, A. D. 1855, and Ending on the Sixteenth Day of March, A. D. 1855; and Journal of the House of Representatives, of the First Regular Session of the General Assembly of the Territory of Nebraska .... These three official publications record quite fully the work of the first Nebraska Legislature, which consisted of a council of 13 and a house of 26 members. From later in the same year the Library owns still another Sherman & Strickland imprint: Annual Message of Mark W. Izard, Governor of the Territory of Nebraska, Addressed to the Legislative Assembly, December 18, 1855. The Governor delivered this address at the convening of the second legislature.

The press on which these four books were printed had been transported to Omaha from Ohio, and it was used to produce the initial number of the Omaha Nebraskan, January 17, 1855.[121] On March 13, with the approval of a joint resolution which may be read in the Laws, Resolutions and Memorials, John H. Sherman and Joseph B. Strickland became the official printers of the Territory; and "An Act to provide for Printing and Distributing the Laws of Nebraska Territory," also approved on March 13, stipulated that a thousand copies of the laws and resolutions of the first legislature be printed. Two of the thousand copies are listed as a "present" in Additions Made to the Library of Congress, Since the First Day of November, 1855. November 1, 1856 (Washington, 1856).[122] They are still on the Library shelves, along with a third copy received by transfer from another Government agency in 1911. The Library received its copy of the Journal of the Council in 1867 and its copy of the Journal of the House of Representatives probably not much later in the 19th century.[123] The Statute Law Book Company sold the Library Governor Izard's Annual Message for $22 in October 1935.