The Nuthead Press William and Dinah Nuthead

There are several items in the Nuthead inventory which are of interest
in this narrative. If the "printed papers" which were discovered among his
effects had been listed in good bibliographical form, the activities of the
first Maryland printer doubtless would have been clearly outlined for us,
but having little idea that Nuthead's work in St. Mary's would ever be of
interest to posterity, the appraisers contented themselves with only the
briefest description of his office file. They were equally terse in recording
that they found "In the Printeing house a printing press, Letters & a par-
cell of old Lumber," and as cautious as they were terse when they set upon
this item the modest valuation of five pounds. An entry of somewhat pathet-
ic interest in this short and simple catalogue of a poor man's goods was
"one old sorrell horse hardly able to stand valued at... 5 shillings." It is
not improbable that the beast had been brought to this pass through long
journeys undertaken by his owner in the hope of collecting those outstand-
ing debts.

The fact is significant that Nuthead had on his books at the time of his
death sixty or more accounts with individuals of his own county, and of
Kent, Cecil and Talbot, for there is no reason to believe that he was at any
time engaged in a trade other than that of printing for which these accounts
might have been opened; he had no tools, no merchandise, no farm stock;
the printing press was the only implement listed among his effects by means
of which he might have gained a livelihood, and the general employment
of his press in that pioneer country, as indicated by the number and geo-
graphical distribution of its patrons, is cause for astonishment. It may be
that an explanation of its apparent popularity is to be found in a petition
which Thomas Reading, the third Maryland printer, presented to the As-
sembly in the year 1706, in the course of which the petitioner prayed that

"..... whereas there hath been a former Ordinance of this House to Mr. W. Bladen and
others that had printing Presses in the Province obliging all Clerks, Commissarys, Sheriffs,
and other officers to make use of printed Blanks [that ordinance] may be renewed and set-
tled on your Petitioner."¹

It is likely that Nuthead, in no less degree than his successors in Mary-
land, carried on a lively business in printing the legal and mercantile forms
in daily use in the Province. In this day he would be considered the veriest
"job printer," but such as he was, he deserves commemoration as having
been the pioneer of printing in Virginia and Maryland, the first individual
to practise the art of typography in any colony south of Massachusetts.

¹L. H. J., April 8, 1706, Archives of Maryland, 26: 577. As Bladen and Reading began printing in Annapolis in
the year 1700, the phrase "others that had printing Presses in the Province" must refer either to William and

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