William Maxwell of New York, after failing to establish himself at
Lexington, Ky., moved on to Cincinnati in the Northwest Territory and
thereby became the first Ohio printer. His work at Cincinnati began
with the November 9, 1793, issue of his newspaper, _The Centinel of
the North-Western Territory_.[48]
The earliest known Ohio book, also printed by Maxwell, is the earliest
example of Ohio printing to be found at the Library of Congress: _Laws
of the Territory of the United States North-West of the Ohio: Adopted
and Made by the Governour and Judges, in Their Legislative Capacity,
at a Session Begun on Friday, the XXIX Day of May, One Thousand, Seven
Hundred and Ninety-Five, and Ending on Tuesday the Twenty-Fifth Day of
August Following_.... Dated 1796, "Maxwell's Code," as this book is
sometimes called, was not the first publication of Northwest Territory
laws, others having been printed at Philadelphia in 1792 and 1794.
The printer set forth a "Proposal" concerning the forthcoming work in
the _Centinel_ of July 25, 1795:
W. Maxwell being appointed by the legislature to print
for them 200 copies of their laws, he thinks it would
be greatly conducive towards the instruction and common
benefit of all the citizens to extend the impression to
1000 copies.... The price, in boards, to subscribers, will
be at the rate of nineteen cents for every 50 pages, and to
non-subscribers, thirty cents.[49]
[Illustration: _Pages from the first book printed in Ohio._]
He completed the volume in 225 pages, with numerous printed sidenotes
that make it easy to consult. An incidental reference to printing
occurs in a law for land partition (p. 185-197) which states that land
proprietors "may subscribe a writing, and publish the same in one or
more of the public News-papers printed in the Territory, in the State
of Kentucky, and at the seat of government of the United States,
for twelve successive weeks" in order to announce the appointment
of commissioners to divide their property into lots. Subsequently,
advertisements were to be placed in the newspapers for six weeks to
announce a balloting or drawing for the subdivided lots.
[Illustration: (Northwest Territory Laws)]
The Library of Congress owns two copies of this Cincinnati imprint.
One, lacking the title page and final leaf, is bound in a volume of
unknown provenance, possibly obtained about 1912, containing four
early editions of Northwest Territory laws. The other is a separate
copy, lacking the last three leaves. This more interesting copy has
two inscriptions on its title page, the words written uppermost
posing some difficulty: "Ex Biblioth[eca] Sem[inari]i [----] S[anc]ti
Sulp[icii] Baltimoriensis"; but they make clear that this copy once
belonged to the Sulpician seminary founded at Baltimore in 1791 and
now named St. Mary's Seminary. A number of similarly inscribed books
still retained by the seminary were once part of a special faculty
library that merged with the regular seminary library about 1880. Many
books from the faculty library bear signatures of individual priests
who were their original owners. Thus the second inscription "Dilhet"
refers to Jean Dilhet (1753-1811), a Sulpician who spent nine years in
this country and was assigned to the pastorate of Raisin River (then
in the Northwest Territory, in what is now Monroe County, Mich.) from
1798 to 1804. During 1804 and 1805 he worked in Detroit with Father
Richard, who later established a press there (see next section).[50]
Its absence from the Library's early catalogs implies that the present
copy was acquired sometime after 1875. Two date stamps indicate that
the Library had it rebound twice, in 1904 and 1947.
[Footnote 48: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, _Pioneer Printing in Ohio_
(Cincinnati, 1943).]
[Footnote 49: Quoted from Historical Records Survey, American
Imprints Inventory, no. 17, _A Check List of Ohio Imprints 1796-1820_
(Columbus, 1941), p. 21.]
[Footnote 50: See the short biography of Dilhet in the preface to his
_Etat de l'église catholique ou Diocèse des Etats-Unis de l'Amérique
septentrionale.... Translated and annotated by Rev. P. W. Browne_
(Washington, D.C., 1922).]