Jonas Green, his Family and his Associates

good comrade, there seems to have been no local activity of any impor-
tance in which the "printer to the Province" was not concerned.

It is in the minutes of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis¹ that Green as a
social being may be seen at his best. Comprising in its membership some
of the principal gentlemen and leading professional men of the Province,
this typical eighteenth-century Club for many years held fortnightly meet-
ings whereof its secretary, in spite of the prevailing high conviviality, suc-
ceeded in recording minutes as careful as those of a legislative assembly.
In gaining other things, our more sophisticated age has lost something of
the faculty for spontaneous enjoyment possessed by these breeched and
powdered Annapolitans. Echoed through the pages of their treasured record
are the guffaws and chuckles of honest gentlemen at their ease. In their
company one breathes an atmosphere spiced, but not overladen, with the
aroma of hot Jamaica rum and "Lisbon lemons," and peering through the
soft tobacco haze one recognizes the mirthful faces of men seen before only
in some starched and formal part in the Provincial drama. Jonas Green was
a leading spirit in its "sederunts" or meetings. Mock trials, mock orations,
fantastic ceremonies, serio-comic political and literary discussions—these
and the punch formed the material of the fortnightly entertainment. Each
member was known by a grandiloquent title, the significance of which in
many cases does not appear, but "Poet Laureate" and "Master of Cere-
monies" applied to our printer are terms that need no explanation. If the
key were not supplied by the record, however, one might puzzle indefinitely
over the meaning of that subsidiary title, which was represented by a string
of five capital "P's" after his name, but there one discovers that in addi-
tion to the functions named above, Green exercised also in the club those
of "Poet, Printer, Punster, Purveyor and Punchmaker general." Of his skill
as punchmaker and purveyor we know nothing; of his poetry not much
need be said, but with a full heart, we can return thanks that his printing
was better than his punning, of which a few examples are represented in
the minute book. He has been remembered, however, as a man of wit, and
it does not become one century to judge the humor of its predecessors, lest
in its turn it too be judged. With the knowledge that we gain of him in his
hours of relaxation, he appears to us as a whimsical, good-natured man,
quick of wit, kindly and obliging, the friend and comrade of all his little
world. One may not doubt that the printing office and residence in Charles
Street, the latter still occupied by his descendants,² formed a rendezvous

¹ One large volume and a few sheets of these minutes, in manuscript still, form one of the chief treasures of
the Maryland Historical Society. A smaller volume is in the Ms. Division of the Library of Congress.

² "The building occupied by Mrs. Anne Harwood, in Charles Street, is said to be the most ancient house now

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