173
latter years, and who served in the Revolution as

Lieutenant, brevetted Captain. If the Pennsylvania
Archives list the services of two Stewart Herbert's,
it is difficult, if not impossible, to tell where the
record of one stops and the other begins. Therefore,
the early history of Hagerstown's Stewart Herbert must
remain uncertain, although the presence of a printer
of that name in Lancaster, in 1774, is an argument for
the Pennsylvania origins of this pioneer printer of
Western Maryland.

Herbert was an ambitious printer, "full of work"
as Scharf puts it⁸. On June 18, 1790, he published
the first issue of his newspaper, the Washington Spy.
Only six months later, he issued proposals for pub-
lishing a book, An Essay on Honour, by John Hildrop .
The price of this book was to be 3s, 9d,

one half (the printer being devoid of a large
capital) to be paid at subscribing, the other
half at the delivery of the essay.¹⁰

Subscriptions were to be taken in Carlisle, Lancaster,
York, Chambersburg and Greensburg, by merchants and
printers. An Essay on Honour was not ready for publi-
cation, however, until October at the earliest¹¹; and
it is to another publication, an octavo pamphlet of

8 Scharf, J.T. op. cit. v. 2, p. 1141.

9 Appendix A, Imprint bibliography, item 15,

10 Washington spy. January 6, 1791.

11 Ibid. October 12, 1791.