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CHAPTER FIVE
John Peter Zenger, Public Printer of Maryland—Michael Piper
and his Abortive Press—The Beginnings of the
"Votes and Proceedings" Series
QUESTION which proposes itself for solution at this
point in the narrative is that of the part played in Mary-
land printing activity by John Peter Zenger, the New
York printer, whose trial for seditious libel in the year
1734 established in the American colonies the principle
of the freedom of the press. It is a matter of record that
for a period of years Zenger lived in Maryland, and it is
no less certain that during this residence, at three successive sessions of the
Assembly he was employed to print the laws of the Province. From the
evidence of circumstance one infers that on two of these occasions, certainly,
he actually printed the session laws, but immediately the question arises
as to where in Maryland was his press and where are concealed specimens
of its production or contemporary references to them other than the orders
to print which appear in the journals of Assembly. Beyond presenting a
statement of the evidence, the following discussion does little for the solu-
tion of the problem.
John Peter Zenger, "borne in the uper Palatinate on the Rhine,"1 was
brought to this country by his mother in the year 1710, among those refu-
gees from the Palatinate whom Queen Anne had removed from a scene of
persecution and transported to her American colonies. About thirteen years
of age at the time of his arrival in New York, Zenger was soon afterwards
apprenticed by his mother to William Bradford, the printer, who in later
years was to become his relentless political adversary. Nothing is recorded
of him during the customary years of apprenticeship, but at their conclu-
sion it seems that he lost little time in seeking a community in which he
might set up for himself as a master printer. Old William Bradford would
have known that in the absence of a resident printer in Maryland, his son
Andrew of Philadelphia had been doing the work of that Province for five
1 Act of Naturalization, Archives of Maryland, 38: 277.
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