  Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, Passed at the Second Regular Session, Begun and Held at Olympia, December 4, 1854, in the Seventy-Ninth Year of American Independence (Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, Passed at the Second Regular Session, Begun and Held at Olympia, December 4, 1854, in the Seventy-Ninth Year of American Independence) Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, ... continued (Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, ... continued) The earliest recorded example of Washington printing is the first number of The Columbian, published at Olympia on September 11, 1852. The founders of this newspaper were James W. Wiley and Thornton F. McElroy, who purchased a press on which the Portland Oregonian had for a short time been printed and which before that saw service in California. In 1853 the Territory of Washington was created from the northern part of the Territory of Oregon, and on April 17, 1854, the new Territorial legislature elected James W. Wiley to be Washington's first official printer. The earliest specimen of Washington printing held by the Library of Congress appears to be the following example of his work, printed at Olympia in 1855: Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, Passed at the Second Regular Session, Begun and Held at Olympia, December 4, 1854, in the Seventy-Ninth Year of American Independence. It includes an act passed at the second session, on February 1, 1855, specifying the size and distribution of the original edition: Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, That the Public Printer be, and is hereby required to print in pamphlet form, six hundred copies of the laws of the present session, and a like number of the laws of the last session of the Legislative Assembly.... Sec. 2. It shall be the duty of the Secretary of the territory to forward to each county auditor in the territory fifteen copies of the laws of each session for the use of the county officers, and two copies for each member of the Legislative Assembly, and to each officer of the Legislative Assembly, one copy of said laws. The Library owns three copies of this 75-page official document, all acquired probably during the last quarter of the 19th century. They are in old Library bindings and bear no marks of prior ownership. Among the Library's collections are five other Olympia imprints of the same year but from the press of the second official printer, George B. Goudy, who was elected on January 27, 1855. One of these, a work of more than 500 pages, the Library also holds in three copies: Statutes of the Territory of Washington: Being the Code Passed by the Legislative Assembly, At Their First Session Begun and Held at Olympia, February 27th, 1854. Also, Containing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Organic Act of Washington Territory, the Donation Laws, &C., &C. The others are Journal of Most official printing in the Territories was paid for by the Federal Government, and copies of many publications were sent to Washington, D.C., to meet certain administrative requirements. In some copies now at the Library of Congress visible evidence to this effect remains, as in the above-mentioned Council and House journals for the second legislative session, both inscribed to "Library State Dept." Although the Department of State continued to exercise broad supervision over the Territories at this period, supervision of their official printing was assigned, as it had been since 1842, to the Treasury Department. The cover or halftitle now bound in at the end of the above-mentioned House journal for the first legislative session bears notations made in the office of the Treasury Department's first comptroller, who exercised this particular responsibility. |
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