[Illustration: (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.[20]
* * * * *
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.
_Poor_ ROBIN
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.
[Footnote 20: See _Rhode Island History_, vol. 12 (1953), p. 33-43,
105-109.]