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A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland: 1686-1776 by Lawrence C. Wroth
Volume 435, Page 91   View pdf image (33K)
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Jonas Green, his Family and his Associates

1767, she be allowed the sum of "Nine hundred and forty-eight dollars and
one half a dollar," and further that for her future services as public printer
she receive forty-eight thousand pounds of tobacco annually for those years
in which there was a session of the Assembly, and thirty-six thousand one
hundred and nine pounds of the current medium for the years in which no
session was held, the same terms of payment as had been accorded to Jonas
Green in the year 1765.

Throughout her eight years of service to the Province as public printer,
Mrs. Green's allowance remained unchanged. She attempted no enlarge-
ment of interest; her output consisted mainly of the government business
and the Maryland Gazette, although in addition to work of this character
she published an annual almanac, an occasional political pamphlet and one
or two satirical pieces. Of literature and religion she published almost noth-
ing except the frequent essays on these subjects which appeared in her news-
paper. The most ambitious work of her press, besides the government and
newspaper publications, was the neatly printed octavo in which was com-
prised Elie Vallette's Deputy Commissary's Guide, a choice volume where
appeared the engraved title-page by Thomas Sparrow of Annapolis, which
has been referred to here as the best known example of that engraver's
work. In speaking of individual examples of her press, there should not be
overlooked her issue of The Charter and Bye-Laws of the City of Annapolis,
a beautifully printed little volume of fifty-two pages, which for typograph-
ical nicety could hardly have been surpassed by the best of her contempo-
raries in the colonies.

During the years of her conduct of the press, after 1768, Mrs. Green
worked in partnership with different ones of her sons. Various imprints,

that the recognition of Mrs. Green's merits was not the only motive which actuated the Assembly in appointing
her to the office left vacant by her husband's death. Throughout the spring and summer of 1768 the columns of
her journal had been given over week after week to the controversy between "C. D." (Walter Dulany) and "The
Bystander" (the learned and unscrupulous Bennet Allen, rector of St. Anne's Parish, pluralist, rake and duel-
list). Finally, Mrs. Green and her son William refused to publish other letters of "The Bystander" unless he
should indemnify them against suit and declare his identity. Allen declared that the Greens, as Jonas Green had
been, were under the thumb of the Dulany family and complained strenuously of his exclusion from their news-
paper while his enemies were permitted still to use its columns. Mrs. Green's son-in-law, John Clapham, came to
the support of his wife's family in a long letter in the Gazette of September 22, 1768, in the course of which he
wrote: "Mr. Allen's Treatment to Mrs. Green, left a widow, with large Family, he never can justify. On the 27th
of May, he called at the Printing-Office, and endeavoured to intimidate her, by threatening to knock up her
press, if ever she published any more pieces against him: Accordingly, next Morning, a Manuscript... was pri-
vately stuck up at the Door of the Stadt-House, the General Assembly then sitting, and the Office of Provincial
Printer vacant, by which (tho' not intended) he did her real Service; for she was so happy, soon after, as to be
unanimously chosen. It is generally supposed, had he acted a contrary Part, and given her a Recommendation
to the Public, she wou'd not, for that very Reason, have received so general a Mark of Friendship and Approba-
tion."

In the bibliographical appendix, under the year 1768, are entered certain broadsides which relate to this
quarrel between the Greens and Parson Allen.

[91]


 

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A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland: 1686-1776 by Lawrence C. Wroth
Volume 435, Page 91   View pdf image (33K)
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