Elihu Stout, whose family moved from New Jersey to Kentucky in 1793,
probably learned printing as an apprentice to Kentucky's first
printer, John Bradford. He is known to have been in Bradford's employ
at Lexington in 1798, and later he worked at Nashville. Invited by
Governor William Henry Harrison to do the official printing for the
Indiana Territory, Stout settled at Vincennes and began publishing his
newspaper, the _Indiana Gazette_, on July 31, 1804.[58]
The Library of Congress' Indiana holdings begin with a copy of the
second known imprint excepting newspaper issues, printed by Stout late
in 1804: _Laws for the Government of the District of Louisiana, Passed
by the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory, at Their First
Session, Uegun_ [sic] _and Held at Vincennes, on Monday the First Day
of October, 1804_.[59] In March 1804 Congress had divided the lands of
the Louisiana Purchase into two parts, the southern part becoming the
Territory of Orleans (ultimately the State of Louisiana), the northern
and larger part becoming the District of Louisiana. As explained
in the preamble to the first law in this collection, "the Governor
and Judges of the Indiana Territory [were] authorized by an act of
Congress to make Laws for the District of Louisiana." They possessed
this special authority from March 1804 until March 1805.
Fifteen laws make up the 136-page work. They are written in plain
language, and the 10th, "Entitled a law, respecting Slaves," is a
particularly engrossing social document. To illustrate, its second
provision is
That no slave shall go from the tenements of his master,
or other person with whom he lives without a pass, or
some letter or token, whereby it may appear that he is
proceeding by authority from his master, employer or
overseer, if he does it shall be lawful for any person
to apprehend and carry him before a justice of the peace
to be by his order punished with stripes, or not, in his
discretion.
A subsequent compilation of laws made after the District became the
Territory of Louisiana is described on p. 45, below.
[Illustration: (_Laws for the Government of the District of Louisiana,
Passed by the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory, at Their
First Session, Uegun and Held at Vincennes, on Monday the First Day of
October, 1804_. Printed by Elihu Stout late in 1804.)]
The Library has handsomely rebound its copy in ruby morocco. Formerly
it must have been in a wretched state, evidenced by the extreme
marginal deterioration of its now laminated pages. It contains the
signature of James Mackay (1759-1822), a Scottish fur trader,
surveyor, and explorer who was later remembered at St. Louis as "the
first English speaking white man who ever came west of the Mississippi
river," and who was appointed "Commandant of the territory of Upper
Louisiana" in 1803.[60] When the territory passed from Spanish to
American rule in 1804, he became a judge of the Court of Quarter
Sessions,[61] in which capacity he would have needed the volume of
laws. The Library's copy is one of six unrelated volumes that were
purchased together for $750 from the Statute Law Book Company of
Washington, D.C., in 1905.
[Footnote 58: See V. C. (H.) Knerr, _Elihu Stout, Indiana's First
Printer_ (ACRL microcard series, no. 48; Rochester, N.Y., 1955).]
[Footnote 59: No. 2 in C. K. Byrd and H. H. Peckham, _A Bibliography
of Indiana Imprints 1804-1853_ (Indianapolis, 1955).]
[Footnote 60: W. S. Bryan and Robert Rose, _A History of the Pioneer
Families of Missouri_ (St. Louis, 1876), p. 173-174.]
[Footnote 61: _Missouri Historical Society Collections_, vol. 4, no. 1
(1912), p. 20.]