  Benjamin Franklin's Rhode-Island Almanack for the Year 1728 (Benjamin Franklin's Rhode-Island Almanack for the Year 1728) After a stay in prison resulting from his publishing activities in Boston, James Franklin, elder brother of Benjamin, chose to settle at Newport, where he established the first Rhode Island press in 1727. When the Library of Congress acquired its unique copy of Franklin's Rhode-Island Almanack for the Year 1728 in 1879, it was thought to be the earliest book printed in Rhode Island. Not until 1953, when copies of two religious tracts by John Hammett came to light, was it relegated to third place. Those two tracts were printed before July 25, 1727, while Franklin's pseudonymous preface to his almanac is dated August 30 of that year. Although it may no longer be regarded as the first Rhode Island book, this small almanac nevertheless is of exceptional interest. Four years before Benjamin Franklin inaugurated Poor Richard's Almanack his elder brother presented himself in this wise: Tho' I have not given you my proper Name, yet I assure you I have had one the greatest part of half an hundred Years; and I know of no Necessity for parting with it at this Time, since I presume my Almanack will answer all the Ends design'd without that Expence. So, wishing you a happy new Year; bid you adieu. James Franklin strove to make his almanac entertaining, and he did not refrain from injecting anticlerical gibes or a bit of ribaldry. He obviously relished such pithy sayings as "More religion than honesty" and "If you cannot bite, never show your Teeth." The Library of Congress purchased its unique copy for $35 at the Brinley sale of 1879. It then had seven leaves and seemed to lack an eighth leaf at the end. Much later, George Winship, librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, reported a curious happening in an article that he contributed to The Providence Sunday Journal, November 19, 1911: A few weeks ago some one noticed that a leaf which was bound at the end of a book in the Boston Public Library had nothing whatever to do with that book. It was apparently a leaf of an old almanac, and after some research Alfred B. Page of the Massachusetts Historical Society Library was successful in identifying it, not only as the last leaf of the almanac for 1728, which was printed in Newport toward the end of the preceding year, but as the identical leaf which originally formed a part of the copy now belonging to the Library of Congress. The officials in Washington sent their book to Boston to make certain of the identification, and in return they have been presented with the missing member, so long separated from its proper body. On its way back to Washington, this precious little waif is making a visit to the State of its origin, and will be for a few days on exhibition at the John Carter Brown Library, in company with various of its contemporary rivals, predecessors and followers. A reprint of the almanac with an introduction by Mr. Winship, signing himself as Philohistoricus, was published at this time. And while at Boston the copy was encased in a variegated morocco binding by the Hathaway Book Binding Company on Beacon Street. |
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