Talks on Bullet Strikes and Women Printers

Sestercentennial talks are starting to come fast. I’ll have some of mine to announce soon, and here are two happening tonight and tomorrow.

Wednesday, 29 January, 7:00 P.M., at the Acton Town Hall and livestreamed
“‘Dreadful Were the Vestiges of War’: Bullet Strikes from the First Day of the American Revolution”
Joel Bohy

Bohy, historic arms & militaria specialist at Blackstone Valley Auctions and Estates, will discuss the arms and ammunition used by both British and provincial forces on April 19, 1775, as well as the battle damage that remains. Modern shooting-incident reconstruction, archaeology, live fire studies, and new research sheds new light on the heavy fighting along the route of the British retreat back to Boston.

This free event is an Acton 250 program, and a recording will be available through Acton TV.

Thursday, 30 January, 7:00 P.M., at the Westford Museum
“In the Margins: Women Printers in the 18th Century”
Michele Gabrielson

In the 18th century, newspapers and pamphlets were crucial in spreading information and stoking the fires of conflict during the revolutionary period. Although printing was primarily seen as a masculine profession, women—such as widows, wives, and daughters—stepped up to embrace the responsibilities of a free press. These women not only set the type but, in some cases, also owned and managed their own printing businesses. This lecture will lay out the essential contributions of women in the printing industry leading up to the American Revolution.

Gabrielson is an award-winning educator, a historical interpreter, and secretary for the recently formed Mercy Otis Warren Society.

The suggested donation for this event is $10 per person.

(The picture above shows the broadside “A Bloody Butchery, by the British Troops,” issued after the 19th of April by Ezekiel Russell, whose wife Sarah helped run the print shop.)

“A Comedy of Three Acts, Never Before Printed”

When I read the broadside seeking money to print William Clarke’s play The Miser: or, The Soldier’s Humour in 1768, I thought the (very few) published interpretations of this artifact were all wrong.

This wasn’t a sincere solicitation for a new play, I theorized. It didn’t really come from Pvt. William Clarke of the 29th Regiment. Elisha Brown didn’t print it, as many bibliographers had guessed. Instead, it was a satire using the format of a play proposal to comment on the recent Manufactory siege. In early 1770 the Boston Chronicle played the same game, running an advertisement for a tragedy called The Witches to criticize the non-importation protests roiling the town.

In the case of The Miser, I theorized, the broadside preserved some jokes that the people of Boston recognized but which are lost to us today. “The SOLDIER’S HUMOUR, A Comedy of Three Acts, As it is acted by his Majesty’s Servants,” had to refer to the actions of the king’s soldiers in town. Pvt. Clarke, named on the sheet, must have made himself notorious in some way. And the last paragraph’s reference to “ELISHA BROWN, at the Manufactory-House,” drove home the joke. After all, it was silly to think that a private soldier would be publishing a three-act comedy in Boston, selling copies through a cloth weaver whose family had just been fighting off the army.

But on 27 Feb 1769, a notice appeared in both Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette and Green and Russell’s Boston Post-Boy (this version of the text from the latter):

This Day Published,
(Price Eight Pence, covered in blue Paper,)
And sold by Ezekiel Russell, at the New Printing-
Office, a few Doors Northward of Concert-Hall,
Hanover-Street: The
MISER:
Or, The
Soldier’s Humour.
A
COMEDY
Of Three Acts,
Never Before Printed:
By WILLIAM CLARKE, of the 29th Regiment.
Non possum placeto Omnibus.

Ezekiel Russell and his wife Sarah were printers who had no newspaper in pre-Revolutionary Boston but kept busy printing two other things: crowd-pleasing ballads about recent events and whatever authors or sponsors were willing to pay for. Isaiah Thomas, who worked briefly for Ezekiel Russell as a runaway apprentice in 1766, had little praise for the shop’s publications in his history of printing.

But the Russels actually issued a lot of interesting material—they were bold or desperate enough to take chances. Ezekiel Russell was the printer, though not the publisher, of the Censor magazine supporting the royal administration in the early 1770s. The Russells issued Phillis Wheatley’s first proposal for a collection of poems and James Swan’s argument to abolish slavery. They partnered with Joseph Greenleaf when he decided to go into printing. They published the disabled young almanac-maker Daniel George and the female poets Hannah Wheaton and Jenny Fenno.

And the Russells evidently published Pvt. William Clarke’s comedy, The Miser, exactly as proposed in December 1768. Clarke must have raised enough money through Elisha Brown and other people passing out his broadside proposal (no doubt printed at the Russell shop, not in the Manufactory). Maybe the customers were British military gentlemen—that seems more likely than Bostonians investing in an unproduced play by a soldier.

It’s still a mystery how Elisha Brown came to be soliciting advance orders for Clarke. I suspect an important factor is that, just as Clarke was an unusual redcoat with literary ambitions, Brown wasn’t a typical Boston craftsman. I believe the Browns were English by birth, bringing their weaving skills to Massachusetts. Elisha Brown might therefore have been more open to working with a soldier and peddling a play than the sons of Puritans.

Unfortunately, no copies of The Miser are known to have survived. That comedy wasn’t the end of Pvt. William Clarke’s literary ambitions, however, or of his adventures in Boston. It looks like he’ll play a notable role in Serena Zabin’s upcoming book Occupying Boston: An Intimate History of the Boston Massacre.

A Clue to the Poet in Ezekiel Russell’s Print Shop?

The September 2014 issue of the American Antiquarian Society’s Almanac magazine reports on the recent acquisition of a 1787 broadside headlined “A Poem, Descriptive of the Terrible Fire, which Made such Shocking Devastation in Boston.” (The picture here is the Rev. Jeremy Belknap’s diagram of the area of that fire in the South End.)

Ezekiel Russell printed three versions of this broadside, all featuring the same woodcut of a fire but with different type layouts below that. The magazine says:

Two versions (one owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the other by the John Carter Brown Library) were documented in early bibliographies. The third version was unrecorded before it was acquired by AAS this April.

The authorship of the poem is credited on all three broadsides to “H.W.” The AAS printing significantly reveals that the author was an unmarried woman by crediting the text to a ”Miss H.--- W.---.” Consequently, all three sheets can be added to the just over 200 texts written by women in the United States before 1788.

When looking into that further, I came across WorldCat’s description of the broadside, which includes the line:

Responsibility: Composed by H----h W----n.

I can’t reconcile those final Ns with the magazine’s commentary, though.

Putting that mystery aside, longtime Boston 1775 readers might recall how Isaiah Thomas, printer and founder of the A.A.S., wrote about a woman writing memorial verses for Russell to publish. In the first edition of his History of Printing in America, Thomas credited those verses to Russell’s wife, who I found was named Sarah. In notes incorporated in that book’s posthumous second edition, Thomas changed that reference to “a young woman who lived in Russell’s family.” Was Thomas referring to “H.W.”?

Personally I suspect that Sarah Russell also wrote verses for her husband. She certainly helped keep the shop running from the early 1770s, and it was issuing those sorts of poetic broadsides back then.

“Warren step’s beyond their path”

When Ezekiel and Sarah Russell put together their “ELEGIAC POEM” about Bunker Hill, they didn’t stint. Their customers didn’t get just sixty woodcut coffins and four columns of poetry.

The Russells also provided “An ACROSTIC on the late Major-General WARREN Who was slain fighting for the LIBERTIES of AMERICA”:

J ust as JOSEPH took his flight
O nward to the realm of light,
S atan hurl’d his hellish darts,
E vil angels played their parts;
P iercy, Burgoyne, Howe, and Gage,
H over about infernal rage:

W ARREN step’d beyond their path,
A w’d by none, nor fear’d their wrath;
R an his race to joy and rest,
R ose amongst the loyal blest;
E nter’d in the rolls of fame,
N orth and Devil mist their aim.

To squeeze full value from that poem, it was also reprinted in an almanac for the following year.

The image above shows John Norman’s frontispiece for Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s play about Bunker Hill published in Philadelphia in 1776, another early portrayal of Dr. Warren as a martyr.

The Russells’ Poetic Broadside on Bunker Hill

After the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Ezekiel Russell print shop in Salem issued “AN ELEGIAC POEM” on the battle. That broadside probably appeared toward the end of 1775 since a note on its bottom said Russell’s almanacs for the following year were “now in the press.”

The Russell broadside is a useful snapshot of how New Englanders wanted to remember the battle in 1775:

THE NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN
TERRIBLE AND BLOODY BATTLE
FOUGHT AT AN INTRENCHMENT ON
BUNKER-HILL,

Now justly called (by the Regulars) BLOODY-HILL, situated two miles from the head-quarters of the Regulars at BOSTON, and one mile northward from the centre of the town of CHARLESTOWN, in NEW-ENGLAND, in AMERICA, which was wantonly and inhumanly set on fire and consumed, previous to the engagement: This town contained one large meeting-house, about three hundred dwelling-houses, a great number of which were large and elegant, besides one hundred and fifty or two hundred other buildings, whereby about six or seven hundred of its distressed inhabitants are now forced from their dwellings, and obliged to seek new habitations for themselves, many of whom having left, on this calamitous occasion, their houses, cloaths, furniture, and in short every thing that was valuable, depend at this time entirely on the benevolent charity of their kind and simpathizing brethren and friends in the country; who have the unfeigned and hearty thanks of all such as have been relieved: May whole kindness, shewn to the distressed people who have been obliged to take refuge from that or any other town, be rewarded an hundred fold in this world, and in the world to come may they receive life everlasting, is the sincere and fervent wish of every true Friend to the RIGHTS and LIBERTIES of the AMERICAN COLONIES!—

We are sure an attempt to delineate the horrible and shocking situation the distressed souls were in, that still remained in that unfortunate town, at the time the cannonading began, would melt the stoutest heart, and give a shock to the human imagination, which would very far surpass the compass of this sheet; but the relation of this wicked and cruel affair may perhaps hereafter afford matter of speculation to the Historian, and serve to fill many pages in the history of AMERICA.—

What soul but must be filled with horror at viewing the aged and decrepit ones begging for the assistance of the youth, who were now flying through the red-hot cannon balls and smoke occasioned by the flames of their dwellings? What heart but must melt at beholding the Women with their helpless little ones around them, in the greatest confusion seeking a refuge from the devouring jaws [of] destruction, and from the violent fury of their cruel and barbarous enemies? It is said this diabolical transaction was executed by orders from that arch-traitor and worst of villains T[homas] G[age], whom posterity will forever curse, so long as his name shall be remembered.—

This bloody battle was fought about four o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday the seventeenth of JUNE, one thousand seven hundred and seventy five, between an advanced party of seven hundred Provincials, and fourteen regiments and a train of artillery, of the Ministerial forces, the former of whom after bearing about two hours, with the utmost fortitude and bravery, as severe a fire as perhaps ever was known, and many having fired away all their ammunition, they were over-powered by numbers, and obliged to leave the intrenchments, with three pieces of cannon, and retreat about sun-set to a small distance over Charlestown-neck.—

By the returns made in the Provincial and Ministerial Armies it appears, that there were of the Provincials one major-general, one colonel, one lieutenant-colonel, two captains, three lieutenants, and ninety privates, killed, among which number, to the inexpressible grief of our whole army, is that honorable, renowned, and magnanimous Hero, MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH WARREN, Esquire, who commanded on this occasion, as also the brave and intrepid Colonels [Thomas] GARDNER and [Moses] PARKER; there were one lieutenant and two hundred and fifty privates wounded: Total killed and wounded three hundred and twenty four.—

On the side of the Regulars there were one lieutenant-colonel, four majors, eleven captains, thirteen lieutenants, one ensign, one hundred and two serjeants, one hundred corporals, seven hundred and fifty-three rank and file, killed; one quarter-master, three majors, fifteen captains, nineteen lieutenants, six ensigns, and five hundred and four wounded; Total of killed and wounded, fourteen hundred and fifty.—

The above account, which contains in substance as accurate a detail as can be collected from the different advices received from Boston and elsewhere, of the transactions of both armies on that ever-memorable seventeenth of June, is here annexed to the proceeding Poem, and printed in this form at the request of a great number of Friends to the AMERICAN CAUSE, to whom (but more especially those belonging to the Continental Army, who may have this sheet very cheap) it is recommended to preserve, not only as a token of gratitude to their deceased Friends, we mean those immortal and heroic WORTHIES, who lately so nobly bled in defence of the RIGHTS, LIBERTIES, and PRIVILEGES of NORTH-AMERICA: This sheet may be thought necessary to keep in eternal remembrance the heroic BATTLE of CHARLESTOWN, where a few hundreds of Americans several times repulsed eight times their number of Ministerial Troops of Great-Britain.

This broadside greatly overstated the number of British involved in the battle and the number of those troops killed, apparently by double-counting the wounded. It also understated the number of Americans engaged, their casualties, and the number of cannon they left on the field (five).

Evidently in 1775 the people of Massachusetts recalled Dr. Warren as leading the American forces, but in later years authors repeated Col. William Prescott’s story that the doctor had refused a command position. The broadside’s description of the British attack as lasting “two hours” is an interesting contrast to Samuel Paine’s account of an assault taking about an hour.

After that far-from-brief introduction came an all-too-long set of verses. Just a taste:

ADIEU to wanton songs and foolish joys,
  To idle tales that fill the ear,
A mournful theme my heart employs,
  And hope the living will it hear.
A horrid fight there hap’d of late,
  ’Twas on June seventeen,
When a great number met their fate
  In fighting on the green.
Yes, hundreds of poor souls are dead,
  In battle they were slain,
Both sides met with a heavy stroke,
  T’ rehearse it gives me pain.

You can read the whole poem, and view the broadside, at the Massachusetts Historical Society’s website.

As I noted back here, Isaiah Thomas reported that the Russell shop printed a lot of ballads decorated with coffins like this one. Thomas first stated that Russell’s wife Sarah composed the elegiac verses, but later penciled in a note that “a young woman” working in the shop did so. (I still think it was Sarah.)

TOMORROW: But wait, there’s more!

The Mysteries of Ezekiel Russell’s Wife

I’ve been writing about printer Ezekiel Russell’s wife, who, according to Isaiah Thomas’s History of Printing, was a great help to him in his business. Indeed, as I quoted yesterday, the first edition of that book said she learned the printing business and wrote memorial verses for broadsides.

Since 2009 I’ve been calling that woman Penelope Russell because that’s what later printing historian Josiah Snow called her in 1847. But over the past few days I’ve realized that her name was Sarah Russell.

That’s clear from a series of documents:

• The record of the marriage of Ezekiel Russell and Sarah Hood in Hampton, New Hampshire, on 7 Oct 1773.
  
• Biographies of their oldest (surviving) child, Nathaniel Pope Russell, born in Danvers in 1779.
• The births of two younger children in Boston in 1785 and 1787.
  
• The baptisms of four younger children at Ezekiel Russell’s house by the minister of the Hollis Street Meetinghouse, all on one day in May 1787.
  
• Real estate records from Boston in the 1780s and 1790s.
  
• Ezekiel’s death notice in the 12 Sept 1796 Federal Orrery, and Sarah’s notice for administering his estate in the 7 Oct 1796 Massachusetts Mercury.
  
• Sarah’s unusual listing as a printer in the 1798 Directory of Boston.
  
• Sarah’s death notices in the 16 Oct 1806 Boston Gazette and 24 Oct 1806 Farmer’s Museum.
  

And then there’s this letter that a descendant has shared online, sent by Sarah’s mother from besieged Boston in January 1776 when the Russells were living in Salem.

So where did the name Penelope Russell come from? Was she just an error by Snow, repeated by later authors through to me? Or, since Waters linked her to the Censor, published in 1771-72, perhaps she was Russell’s first wife (though I haven’t found any other trace of her). If the latter, that could mean both of Russell’s wives were active in the printing house.

Another question: Bostonians didn’t go up to Hampton, New Hampshire, to be married by a Presbyterian minister unless they were eloping. What was the story behind the Russells’ marriage in 1773? Did they have any children in the mid-1770s? Why did they have four children baptized by a Congregationalist minister at their home in 1787, but not the oldest, Nathaniel Pope Russell? (If there was illness in the family, the baby survived, but I don’t know about the middle children.)

What Isaiah Thomas Wrote about Ezekiel Russell’s Wife

Back in 2009, I quoted the passsage above from Isaiah Thomas’s History of Printing in America (1874 edition) about Ezekiel Russell and his wife. I then added:

Josiah Snow’s [1847] account (quoted yesterday) credited those ballads to Penelope Russell herself, even saying she could compose them while she set the type. Perhaps Thomas’s phrase “A young woman who lived in Russell’s family” was a coy way of alluding to Penelope without pointing the finger directly. Or perhaps Ezekiel Russell’s struggling shop was kept afloat by the work of two young women instead of just one.

After I mentioned the Russells in my lecture on Friday, I checked out Thomas’s history again—but this time the original, 1810 edition. And here’s what Thomas first published.

So no wonder Josiah Snow thought Ezekiel Russell’s wife wrote those ballads—that’s exactly what Thomas’s book said. The “young woman” didn’t appear in print until decades later.

Thomas left a copy of his book with handwritten corrections at his American Antiquarian Society, which undertook to update and republish it. If that copy still exists, it could confirm if Thomas himself entered the revised information about the Russell printing house.

Given that Thomas and the Russells were both printing in Boston in the early 1770s, and that Thomas kept track of Ezekiel Russell in his movements to Salem, Danvers, and back to Boston, it seems odd for him not to know who wrote those tragical ballads. The passages also shift away from saying that Russell’s wife “made herself acquainted with the printing business,” leaving her just assisting.

That again raises the possibility that the mention of a “young woman” was a ruse designed to fit Mrs. Russell into a more traditional “help meet” model rather than a business partner writing for publication. The couple’s son, Nathaniel Pope Russell (1779-1848), became an important insurance broker in ante-bellum Boston. (In fact, his business records are at the American Antiquarian Society.) So the family may have wished for a more genteel portrait of their ancestress.

TOMORROW: More revisions about Ezekiel Russell’s wife.

“A sad tale to relate”

Yesterday I noted a mistake I made in Reporting the Revolutionary War, saying that John Derby took the 28 Apr 1775 issue of the Salem Gazette to London to convince folks there that a war had broken out in New England.

Derby left Salem on 28 April, so he could have carried a copy of that day’s Salem Gazette—if there were one. But no copy of that issue exists.

It looks like printer Ezekiel Russell closed his newspaper only one issue into the war. He might have worried about economic disruptions and lack of supplies. He might have lost patronage; in Boston, friends of the royal government had paid him to put out the Censor, so folks in Salem could have seen him as a “Tory.”

But Russell was really an opportunist. He reissued his report on the first day of fighting as a broadside titled “A Bloody Butchery by the British Troops.” At the bottom was “A Funeral Elegy to the Imortal Memory” of the fallen militiamen, beginning:

Aid me ye nine! my muse assist,
A sad tale to relate,
When such a number of brave men
Met their unhappy fate.
At Lexington they met their foe
Completely all equip’d,
Their guns and swords made glit’ring show,
But their base scheme was nipp’d.

(Complete transcription of a later, inexact reprint here.)

TOMORROW: Who wrote that elegy?

“A happy Year may all enjoy”

As in previous New Year’s seasons, Boston 1775 offers a “carriers’ verse,” one of the poems or lyrics that newspaper delivery boys printed at the end of the year as part of their request for tips from customers.

This one with best wishes for 1772 is unique in that it comes from the boys of the Censor. Friends of the royal government paid Ezekiel Russell to launch that magazine in November 1771 as a home for their arguments. This carriers’ verse was thus directed to readers on that side of the political debate, and reflected their views of who was responsible for the turmoil and what was at stake.

The Carrier of the
CENSOR,
Wishes all Happiness to his generous
Customers.

What means this Clamour? why this strife?
To poison all the Joys of Life;
Ah why will Friend ’gainst Friend engage?
And brethren meet with hostile rage?

Say Candidus, rude Mucious say,
“It is such Slavery to obey?”
“Are Rulers Tyrants?—to be free,
“Must we destroy Society?”

Ye Friends to order! ’tis my pride,
To combat on the honest side:
Let Faction rave, or Villains brawle,
The CENSOR nobly scorns them all

May Government her Laws defend,
And foul Misrule to Hell descend;
A happy Year may all enjoy,
And may your FAVOURS bless your Boy.

“Candidus” was one of Samuel Adams’s pseudonyms for newspaper essays. “Mucius Scaevola” was the pen name Joseph Greenleaf had used for his attack on Gov. Thomas Hutchinson in the Massachusetts Spy a few months before; the Censor’s first issue responded to that essay.

Because the Censor stopped publishing a few months into 1772, this is the only New Year’s verse its carriers ever got to distribute. Fellow printers recalled that a woman in Russell’s print shop—possibly his future wife Sarah—composed occasional verses for his newspapers, so this might be one of her compositions.

Mrs. Russell: paper customer

[This posting was updated to reflect newer research on Ezekiel Russell and his wife.]

Last week I posted a couple of entries about Sarah Russell, wife of Boston printer Ezekiel Russell. Boston 1775 reader Peter Hopkins, unofficial chronicler of the Crane Paper Company, sent me additional information:

The Crane & Co. founder’s father—Stephen Crane—was a partner in The Liberty Paper Mill in Milton with Daniel Vose and (we believe) John Lewis. The Liberty Paper Mill operated from 1770 to 1793, and the Crane Museum of Papermaking holds the mill’s ledger book. . . .

In addition to Paul Revere, Isaiah Thomas, Henry Knox, etc., there is an entry on April 26, 1771, that shows that Mrs. Russell purchased 2 double reams of crown printing paper for 15 pounds.

On another page is the account for Ezekiel Russell, who bought paper from time to time from that date to March 3, 1779.

The “Mrs. Russell” noted in April 1771 was probably not Ezekiel Russell’s wife and successor Sarah since they didn’t marry until 1773. But it could have been the wife of his older brother John, who had trained Ezekiel in printing. Such a large purchase of paper strongly suggests that this Mrs. Russell was conducting business, not just buying a personal supply.

Hopkins offers a look at the signatures of Revere, Thomas, and Knox from that ledger. Each of those men needed paper for a different reason. Knox was a young bookseller, Thomas a young printer, and Revere printer of engraved banknotes for Massachusetts.

When Vose, Crane, and Lewis named their business the Liberty Paper Mill, they were acknowledging their product’s political side. Manufacturing paper within the colony meant people could import less, and the Whigs were trying to get people to boycott goods from Britain until Parliament repealed the Townshend duties.

The Liberty Mill’s senior partner, Daniel Vose, hosted the final session of the Suffolk County Convention on 9 Sept 1774, at which town delegates adopted the Suffolk Resolves. He was also a captain in the Milton militia on 19 Apr 1775, though as best I can tell his company was too far south to see any fighting. Instead, their big accomplishment was to deliver bread and chocolate (milled in a subleased part of the paper manufactory) to the troops who camped around Boston.

Sarah Russell: “a very industrious, active woman”

[This posting has been updated to reflect newer research on Ezekiel Russell’s wife.]

Yesterday I discussed how, contrary to later reports, Penelope Russell didn’t succeed her husband Ezekiel as publisher of The Censor since he outlived that magazine by almost a quarter-century. But Ezekiel’s wife, who was really named Sarah, definitely helped him to print that magazine, as recalled by a fellow Boston printer, Isaiah Thomas.

In his History of Printing in America, Thomas wrote:

Ezekiel Russell was born in Boston, and served an apprenticeship with his brother, Joseph Russell, the partner of John Green [in printing the Boston Post-Boy]. In 1765, he began printing with Thomas Furber, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, under the firm of Furber & Russell. Not succeeding in business, they dissolved their partnership, and Russell returned to Boston.

He worked with various printers until 1769, when he procured a press and a few types. With these he printed on his own account, in a house near Concert Hall. He afterward removed to Union street, where to the business of printing he added that of an auctioneer, which he soon quitted, and adhered to printing. Excepting an edition of Watts’s Psalms, he published nothing of more consequence than pamphlets, most of which were small.

In November, 1771, he began a political publication entitled The Censor. This paper was supported, during the short period of its existence, by those who were in the interest of the British government.

Friends of the royal government sponsored the Censor in an attempt to counteract all the Whig essays appearing in Boston’s biggest newspapers. In other words, it was the voice of Loyalism. This fact never seems to arise in items describing Sarah Russell as an early American female printer.

That said, the Russells don’t seem to have been committed Loyalists. They apparently took the Censor job because they needed the money. Ezekiel’s brother Joseph went to Canada with the British military in 1776, but Ezekiel and Sarah stayed in Massachusetts. Thomas tried to trace all the places that the Russells set up shop, but I’m not sure he timed their moves exactly:

Russell afterward removed to Salem, and attempted the publication of a newspaper, but did not succeed. He again removed, and went to Danvers, and printed in a house known by the name of the Bell tavern. In a few years he returned once more to Boston; and, finally, took his stand in Essex street, near the spot on which grew the great elms, one of which was then standing, and was called Liberty tree. Here he printed and sold ballads, and published whole and half sheet pamphlets for peddlers. In these small articles his trade principally consisted, and afforded him a very decent support.

Among the items Russell issued was Phillis Wheatley’s elegy on the Rev. George Whitefield. In 1773 he printed four enslaved men’s petition for an end to slavery, again probably for the money rather than a sign of his political commitment. Late that year he printed a pamphlet against the tea protests, which was condemned by a Boston town meeting and may well have led to his decision to relocate to Salem in early 1774. In the summer of 1776 Russell was still in Salem, and got the contract to print copies of the Declaration of Independence for every town in the new state.

Russell probably moved back to Boston and settled on Essex Street only after Liberty Tree was cut down. He didn’t advertise or label any publications as being printed near the tree when it was famous, but in the 1790s used such identifications as “Printed by E. Russell, next Liberty-Stump.”

And as for Sarah, here’s what Isaiah Thomas wrote in 1810:

The wife of Russell was indeed an “help meet for him.” She was a very industrious, active woman; she made herself acquainted with the printing business; and, not only assisted her husband in the printing house, but she sometimes invoked her muse, and wrote ballads on recent tragical events, which being immediately printed, and set off with wooden cuts of coffins, &c., had frequently “a considerable run.”

The 1874 edition of Thomas’s book is different. That edition credited the ballads to “A young woman who lived in Russell’s family.”

The broadside I discussed back here and show above was one of that shop’s coffin-decorated poetic creations. It was “Printed and Sold next to the Writing-School, on Queen Street,” the same address Russell used in newspaper ads in late 1769 and 1770.

Ezekiel Russell died in September 1796 “after a lingering illness” at the age of fifty-three. Thomas reported that Penelope Russell “continued the business.” But he didn’t give her a separate biographical entry in his book, and he didn’t record when she died.

ADDENDUM: New documentation on Penelope Russell’s business transactions.

Penelope Russell and The Censor

Penelope Russell of Boston is listed in many books and websites as one of the first female printers in the U.S. of A. All these citations seem to funnel back to the first volume of The History of Woman Suffrage (1881), which included this statement:

Penelope Russell printed The Censor in Boston, Mass., in 1771. She set her own type, and was such a ready compositor as to set up her editorials without written copy, while working at her case. The most tragical and interesting events were thus recorded by her.

Matilda Joslyn Gage (shown here, courtesy of the National Park Service) wrote that volume’s chapter on female printers, though she later complained that her coauthors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, rewrote all her material and pushed her out of the creation of the following volumes.

Gage went on to publish her more radical feminist ideas in Woman, Church, and State (1893), but her biggest contribution to American letters was encouraging her son-in-law L. Frank Baum to write down those fairy stories he was telling the children.

Gage’s remark about Penelope Russell has no citation, but with Google’s help I traced it back through early feminist pamphlets and general-interest magazines to what may be the ur-source: an article by Josiah Snow of Rochester titled “Early Printers, Male and Female”, dated 11 Jan 1847 and published in a History of the Press of Western New-York:

Penelope Russell succeeded her husband in printing the “Censor,” at Boston, in 1771. She was a very industrious and active woman. She not only set type, but while at her case, invoked her muse and put up type on tragical events, in an interesting manner, without any written copy.

Obviously Snow was passing on professional lore; he wouldn’t have seen Russell at work seventy-five years earlier. And some details got mangled along the way.

[ADDENDUM: Perhaps the most important detail is that the wife of Ezekiel Russell, who helped him in his print shop and kept it running after his death, was actually named Sarah Russell.]

The Censor was indeed printed in Boston from 23 Nov 1771 to 2 May 1772. However, at the time Penelope Sarah Russell’s husband Ezekiel was very much alive, and listed on the magazine’s masthead as its publisher. He was, indeed, still in his late twenties. Only after Ezekiel died in September 1796 did Penelope Sarah Russell succeed him as head of the print shop.

TOMORROW: Isaiah Thomas on Ezekiel and Sarah Russell—and he actually knew them.