|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Eleazer Oswald, Printer and Patriot
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
conclusion that there was no charge.38 The Jury printed a memorial in
Oswald's paper and in Hall & Seller's Gazette and the affair ended in
Oswald's favor.
On February 25, 1783, he announced that he had rented Bradford's
Coffee House and informed the former patrons that:
"All the various newspapers, magazines, EC., both foreign and domestic, will be regularly filed
in the public rooms for the information and amusement of the curious ... ,"39
Daniel Humphreys was taken into partnership in March 1783, and the
printing firm served the business men of the city. Oswald printed at
intervals in 1784 the Philadelphia Price Current, compiled by John Mac-
Pherson and probably the first publication of this sort in America.40
The partnership with Humphreys ended in June 1784, and from then
until 1795, Oswald's name appeared as the sole printer of the paper
although he was frequently on business in New York and even in Europe
on one occasion.
THE DUEL WITH MATTHEW CAREY
Oswald's relations with some of his fellow printers in Philadelphia
were by no means the best and his reputation as a fair and impartial
business competitor suffers from some of the bitter attacks which he
launched at those whose views did not agree with his own. Particularly
is this true of his relations with Matthew Carey. Carey arrived in
Philadelphia in 1784, after deliberating whether to go to Baltimore,
with only a few shillings in his pocket and a reputation as a worthy
printer persecuted for the cause of liberty in Ireland and England.
With a generous donation of four hundred dollars from Lafayette
he attended an auction where an old printing press was being sold.
He bought it, but the price was almost as much as that of a new press
because of the hostile bidding of Oswald who was determined in this
manner to discourage him from printing in Philadelphia.
A controversy was going on at that time as to whether Pennsylvania
should continue its unicameral legislature or should follow the consti-
tutional bicameral system which was becoming more popular among the
38 See Extracts from the Diary of Jacob Hiltzheimer, 1768-1798. In Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.
Vol. 16, p. 163. Hiltzheimer was a member of this grand jury and kept a record of the affair.
39 John W. Wallace, An Old Philadelphian, Colonel William Bradford, Philadelphia, 1884, pp. 61-62.
40 Evans, 18729, lists the Philadelphia Price Current but he does not locate copies or assign a printer. See Scharfand
Westcott, Vol. I, p. 425 for statement that Oswald was the printer.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
