Pioneer Imprints from Fifty States

New Jersey

Anno Regni Georgii Regis MagnÆ BritanniÆ, FranciÆ & HiberniÆ decimo, ...

Anno Regni Georgii Regis MagnÆ BritanniÆ, FranciÆ & HiberniÆ decimo, at a Session of the General Assembly of the Colony of New Jersey, begun the twenty fourth Day of September, Anno Domini 1723. and continued by Adjournments to the 30th Day of November following, at which time the following Acts were Published. Printed by William Bradford in the City of Perth-Amboy, 1723.

In 1723 William Bradford is thought by some to have transported a press from New York to Perth Amboy, then the capital of New Jersey, to print paper currency for the Colony.[17] If this is true he was the first New Jersey printer, although printing was not established there on a permanent basis until three decades later. In any event, in 1723 Bradford produced the first book with a New Jersey imprint: Anno Regni Georgii Regis Magnae Britanniae, Franciae & Hiberniae decimo, at a Session of the General Assembly of the Colony of New Jersey, begun the twenty fourth Day of September, Anno Domini 1723. and continued by Adjournments to the 30th Day of November following....

Douglas C. McMurtrie distinguishes three variant issues of the edition in A Further Note on the New Jersey Acts of 1723 (Somerville, N.J., 1935); but the Library of Congress copy, containing 30 numbered and four unnumbered pages, represents a fourth variant. It is one of two issues (the other bearing a New York imprint) in which the type for the later pages was reset.

In the section on paper money, which has a prominent place in the New Jersey laws, is an interesting sidelight on printing history: the text of an oath to be administered to the printer upon his delivery of the bills to those authorized to sign them, requiring him to declare

That from the time the Letters were set, and fit to be put in the Press for Printing the Bills of Credit now by me delivered to you, until the same Bills were printed, and the Letters unset and put in the Boxes again, I went at no time out of the Room in which the said Letters were, without Locking them up, so as they could not be come at, without Violence, a false Key, or other Art then unknown to me; and therefore to the best of my Knowledge no Copies were printed off but in my Presence; and that all the Blotters and other Papers whatever, Printed by the said Letters, which set for printing the said Bills, to the best of my Knowledge are here Delivered to you together with the Stamps for the Indents, and Arms.

The Library of Congress copy is bound in the midst of a folio volume of early New Jersey laws and ordinances that C. S. Hook of Atlantic City, a dealer in old law books, sold to the Library in 1925 for $2,337.50. Though dilapidated, the volume retains its original calf binding, and the names of two early owners are inscribed on its front flyleaf: "M^r Bard" and "John Wright Esq:^r" The former may well be the same Peter Bard, a Huguenot immigrant, who served as member of the Council from 1720 to 1734 and who was one of those authorized to sign the above-mentioned bills.

Some authorities doubt that Bradford would have moved a press to New Jersey for only a short time and think it more likely that he actually printed the acts of 1723 in New York.[18] In that case the earliest New Jersey imprint in the Library of Congress would be an 18-page pamphlet containing an act passed on June 3, 1757, which James Parker printed at Woodbridge on the first permanent press in the Colony: ... A Supplementary Act to the Act, Entitled, An Act for Better Settling and Regulating the Militia of this Colony of New-Jersey; for the Repelling Invasions, and Suppressing Insurrections and Rebellions; As [sic] also, for Continuing Such Parts and Clauses of the Said Laws, as are not Altered or Amended by This Act. The Library's copy, inscribed "Capt. Monrow" on its title page, probably belonged originally to John Monrow, a resident of Burlington County.[19] The Central Book Company of New York sold it to the Library for $150 in 1939.

[17] See Lawrence C. Wroth, The Colonial Printer (Portland, Maine, 1938), p. 34-36.

[18] See Streeter, Americana—Beginnings, no. 21, where this view is attributed to R. W. G. Vail.

[19] See Archives of the State of New Jersey, 1st series, vol. 10 (1886), p. 15 and 17; H. Stanley Craig, Burlington County, New Jersey, Marriages, Merchantville, N.J. (1937), p. 159.

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