Zenger's Maryland Venture The Earliest Assembly Proceedings

ship. It is not certain that he made his home in Kent County on his first
coming into the Province, although he was, it seems, a resident of that county
a very few months later. If at this time he had possessed no press of his
own, and this would not have been strange in the case of so young a printer,
it would have been the natural thing for him to have made his headquar-
ters at Annapolis, where originated the important printing business of the
Province, and where as well there was to be found until the year 1723 a
printing press andits necessary equipment, doubtless the same outfit which
two years before his coming had been listed in the inventory of property
held in Anne Arundel County by William Bladen. One would have said
that here was a hand-made opportunity for a young journeyman beginning
business on his own account, but the supposition that he took advantage
of the opportunity is rendered doubtful by his description as "of Kent
County" and by the wording of the Assembly order of August 1721, in
which it was directed that after transcription the laws were promptly "to
be ... Sent to the said printer." Would the word "sent" have been used
when the transaction involved was simply the turning over of a manuscript
to a fellow villager whom the copyist must have seen every day? It is true
that in the October session of 1720, under like circumstances, the word
"delivered" had been employed in the order, but wherever his shop may
have been, it is probable that in this month Zenger was in Annapolis in
person, attending to the passage through the Assembly of his act of natu-
ralization.

It is upon such evidence as has been adduced that the question of the
location of Zenger's press must be argued, and admittedly it is so intangible
in character that no decision may be based upon it. The question probably
will never be settled until someone discovers a Maryland imprint bearing
the name of John Peter Zenger, and it is to be hoped that the discovery will
be made by a person in need of the money which a specimen of Zenger's
Maryland press would bring at auction.

MR. MICHAEL PIPER, SCHOOLMASTER, AND HIS PRINTING PROPOSALS

With Zenger removed from Maryland, and with Evan Jones four months
dead, the Province found itself in difficulties in regard to its printing at the
session of Assembly of October 1722. There was not lacking, it is true, an
aspirant for the vacant office, but with the best intentions he succeeded but
poorly in carrying out his proposals to continue the publication of the laws.
This individual was no other than Mr. Michael Piper, master of the Free
School of Annapolis, that establishment founded by Governor Nicholson in

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