[Illustration: _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.
[Footnote 17: See Lawrence C. Wroth, _The Colonial Printer_ (Portland,
Maine, 1938), p. 34-36.]
[Footnote 18: See Streeter, _Americana--Beginnings_, no. 21, where
this view is attributed to R. W. G. Vail.]
[Footnote 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.]