“The First BIBLE ever printed in America”?

As I quoted yesterday, Isaiah Thomas grew up as an apprentice printer hearing stories about how his master, Zechariah Fowle, had helped to secretly print a New Testament in the late 1740s.

Thomas also heard about a complete Bible completed by another Boston printing partnership, also surreptitiously, by 1752.

However, it’s worth noting that in his History of Printing in America (1810), Thomas admitted about the New Testament publication, “I have heard that the fact has been disputed.” While he claimed John Hancock had owned a copy of the full Bible, he couldn’t point to any extant examples or describe how they might be recognized.

Indeed, in 1770 another Boston printer publicly denied the existence of any previous American-made Bible. The 3 Dec 1770 Boston Evening-Post included a large advertisement that began:

The First BIBLE ever printed in America.

PROPOSALS
For printing by Subscription, in a most beautiful and elegant Manner, in two large Volumes Folio.
The HOLY BIBLE,
Containing the OLD and NEW TESTAMENTS,
Or a FAMILY BIBLE,
With Annotations and Parallel Scriptures.
By the late Rev. SAMUEL CLARK, A.M.

The following paragraphs promised large and elegant type and paper manufactured in America—or “superfine Imperial Paper” for those few ready to pay double for extra quality. The book was to be delivered in seventy installments of five pages each, starting two weeks after three hundred people had subscribed.

The printer making this offer was John Fleeming, late of the Boston Chronicle, now working out of “his PRINTING OFFICE, in Newbury-street, nearly opposite the WHITE-HORSE Tavern, Boston.” He had married Alice Church in August and was probably looking for a way to support a family.

The annotator Samuel Clarke (1626-1701) had been a Nonconformist minister in Britain who first published his edition of the Bible in 1690. That book was reprinted in Glasgow in 1765, which is probably how Fleeming, a Scotsman, got the text. The Rev. George Whitefield praised Clarke’s work, and of course Americans widely admired Whitefield. Indeed, almost half of Fleeming’s advertisement was a quotation from Whitefield.

Within the next two months, the same ad appeared in many other New England newspapers and in New York. However, Fleeming must not have collected the subscriptions he hoped for. In modern terms, his Kickstarter campaign failed. That edition was never published.

In 1782 the Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken likewise announced that he would print the first English Bible in America. And he actually completed the job that September. The Continental Congress and George Washington both praised the enterprise. Many copies survive.

Obviously Fleeming and Aitken didn’t acknowledge the editions that Isaiah Thomas had heard about. Thomas would have said that was because the Kneeland and Green Bible, and the Rogers and Fowle New Testament that preceded it, had been disguised as London publications in order to get around a special grant to certain British printers.

In different writings Thomas specified that the Boston Bible appeared in 1749 and carried the imprint “London: Printed by Mark Baskett, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty”—but that man didn’t start publishing Bibles until the 1760s. Was this a mistake for Thomas Baskett, who did issue Bibles in the 1740s? Or is its main significance as evidence that Thomas hadn’t actually seen the Bible he believed did exist?

Many book collectors have searched for the fake Baskett Bible that was actually printed in Boston. Presumably this means finding a Bible with a London Baskett imprint but with typography that didn’t match copies known in Britain.

However, only one candidate for such a book has been found, surfacing in 1895, according to an article in the Boston Globe. Three decades later, Dr. Charles L. Nichols’s close examination showed that was actually a genuine Baskett Bible from 1763 that someone had altered by removing one volume’s title page and clumsily changing the date on the other to 1752. See his findings delivered to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

Nonetheless, as Nichols stated in a follow-up paper for the American Antiquarian Society (P.D.F. download), he remained convinced that there was a Bible published surreptitiously in Boston, even if Thomas didn’t have all the details right.

Subsequent scholars, including Randolph C. Adams in The Colophon in 1935 and Harry Miller Lydenberg in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America in 1954, were more skeptical. They concluded that Thomas’s report was simply wrong.

Perhaps the digitization of books will produce the anomalous copy of a Baskett Bible that collectors have sought. More likely, however, Zechariah Fowle just lied to little Isaiah about how he’d labored long and hard over a secret publication of the Bible.

“Major Scarborough Gridley guilty of a breach of orders”

On 24 Sept 1775, Maj. Scarborough Gridley’s career in the Continental Army came to an end.

Gridley was the fourth-ranking officer in the artillery regiment. More important, he was the son of the regimental commander, Col. Richard Gridley.

When the Massachusetts Provincial Congress summoned Richard Gridley in April 1775 and asked him to come out of retirement to lead its artillery and engineering force, one of his conditions was a high rank for his youngest son.

On 17 June, Maj. Gridley was ordered to take his artillery company onto the Charlestown peninsula and help defend the provincials’ new redoubt on Breed’s Hill. He found something else to do.

Three months later, that led to a court-martial. And on 24 September Gen. George Washington’s orders stated:

Major Scarborough Gridley, try’d at a late Genl Court Martial, whereof Brigd. Genl [Nathanael] Green was president, for “being deficient in his duty upon the 17th June last, the day of the Action upon Bunkers-hill”—

The Court find Major Scarborough Gridley guilty of a breach of orders; They do therefore dismiss him from the Massachusetts service; But on Account of his inexperience and Youth, and the great confusion which attended that days transaction in general, they do not consider him incapable of a Continental Commission, should the General Officers recommend him to his Excellency—

The General confirms the dismission of Major Scarborough Gridley, and orders it to take place accordingly.

Scar Gridley was born on 9 Oct 1739, so “inexperience and Youth” referred to his age of…thirty-five. Clearly that line was a sop to his father, as was the idea that he might become an officer in the army Washington was organizing for the new year. The commander pointedly took no notice of anything but this “young” man being dismissed.

Other Americans noticed the dismissal as well. The artist Bernard Romans produced a print titled “An Exact View of the late Battle at Charlestown, June 17, 1775.” The Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken copied that to make “A Correct View of The Late Battle at Charlestown: June 17th, 1775.”

Romans’s image included a detail, shown above, of Maj. Scar Gridley staying in the foreground, out of the battle, trading cannon shot with a Royal Navy ship in the Charles River. He helpfully labeled that figure “Broken Officer.” (Aitken appears to have left out Romans’s labels, which would have been of most interest to New Englanders.)

Thus, Maj. Gridley’s contemporaries viewed his deficiency as crucial to the American defeat at Bunker Hill and were willing to pay to see why he was thrown out of the army. His five months of military service were not a success.

TOMORROW: Whatever happened to Maj. Gridley?