The printers George Roulstone and Robert Ferguson introduced the
first Tennessee printing at Hawkins Court House, now Rogersville,
with the November 5, 1791, issue of _The Knoxville Gazette_. Both
men came to the Tennessee country, or Southwest Territory, by way of
North Carolina. Their newspaper remained at Hawkins Court House until
October 1792, while Knoxville, chosen as the seat of the Territorial
government, was being constructed.
The earliest Tennessee imprint in the Library of Congress is probably
the eight-page official publication entitled _Acts and Ordinances
of the Governor and Judges, of the Territory of the United States
of America South of the River Ohio_, which according to Douglas C.
McMurtrie "was certainly printed by Roulstone at Knoxville in 1793,
though it bears no imprint to this effect."[44] Its contents, relating
principally to the definition of separate judicial districts within
the Territory, are dated from June 11, 1792, to March 21, 1793, and
the printing could have been accomplished soon after the latter date.
[Illustration: _Patch-repairs help to preserve not only the title page
but the first page of the text, which is printed on the verso._]
The Library of Congress copy is one of those afterwards prefixed to
and issued with a much more extensive work printed by Roulstone in
1794: _Acts Passed at the First Session of the General Assembly of
the Territory of the United States of America, South of the River
Ohio, Began and Held at Knoxville, on Monday the Twenty-Fifth Day of
August, M,DCC,XCIV_. The Library's volume lost its 1794 title page at
an early date, and it is the exposed second leaf, the title page of
1793, that bears the inscription, "Theodorick Bland June 1st 1799."
Theodorick Bland (1777-1846) was to be chancellor of Maryland for many
years. His correspondence preserved by the Maryland Historical Society
reveals that he practiced law in Tennessee from 1798 to 1801. From
such evidence as its Library of Congress bookplate, the volume would
appear to have entered the Library around the late 1870's.
The earliest dated example of Tennessee printing in the Library is the
_Knoxville Gazette_ for June 1, 1793, issued a month after Ferguson
retired from the paper. The issue begins with a lengthy selection by
Benjamin Franklin, which is prefaced in this way:
Messrs. _Printers_,
I beg you to publish in your next number of the Knoxville
Gazette, the following extracts, from a narrative of the
massacres in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania; of a number
of friendly Indians, by persons unknown; written by the
late Dr. _Benjamin Franklin_, whose many benevolent acts,
will immortalize his memory, and published in a British
Magazine,[45] in April 1764.
I am your obedient servant,
W.B.
The subscriber was undoubtedly William Blount, the Territorial
Governor appointed by President Washington in 1790, who perhaps hoped
that the sympathy towards Indians expressed by Franklin might temper
public reaction against Indian raids figuring so large in the local
news. Readers of the same June 1 issue learned of such crimes as the
scalping of a child near Nashville, and they may have been moved by
the following paragraph which the editor interjected in the news
reports:
The Creek nation must be destroyed, or the south western
frontiers, from the mouth of St. Mary's to the western
extremities of Kentucky and Virginia, will be incessantly
harassed by them; and now is the time. [_Delenda est
Carthago._][46]
Both this issue and the June 15 issue, the sole Library of Congress
holdings of the _Gazette_ for the year 1793, are inscribed "Claiborne
Watkins, esq^r." They probably belonged to the person of that name
residing in Washington County, Va., who served as a presidential
elector in 1792.[47]
[Footnote 44: _Early Printing in Tennessee_ (Chicago, 1933), p. 21.]
[Footnote 45: _The Gentleman's Magazine._ Franklin's _A Narrative of
the Late Massacres_ was published separately at Philadelphia in the
same year.]
[Footnote 46: Brackets in text. Several issues carried this paragraph.
See William Rule, ed. _Standard History of Knoxville, Tennessee_
(Chicago, 1900), p. 74.]
[Footnote 47: See _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, vol. 6 (1886),
p. 140.]