Viii

thought, the sense of participating in history
as it was being made ... I never took the train
from Washington - my eyes aching from the tiny
print, my clothes covered with dust, my right arm
stiff to the shoulder from taking notes - that I
didn't feel the high excitement cf having been
able to live for a while in another day.

Not all of the material for this History of Printing
in Maryland came from newspapers. There were a few manu-
script sources, notably the Hayes family Bible records
and the Hayes contracts, the archives of the Marine
Corps which detailed Philip Edwards' short and tragic
military career, the monumental fifty-seven volume
Memoranda of the Annals of Talbot County, Maryland which
proved to be a valuable source for James Cowan and
Thomas Perrin Smith of Easton, and the land records,
wills and inventories of the various counties, pro-
served in court houses. John Gruber of Hagerstown has
been the subject of several periodical articles, and
deservedly so, for he founded in 1796 an almanac which
is still flourishing today (1944) and which is the next
to the oldest almanac in the United States. Samuel
Sower, a member of the famous family cf Germantown
printers, figures prominently in William McCullcch^fs
"Additions to Thomas' History of Printing," and in an
address by Oswald Seidensticker before the Society for
the History of the Germans of Maryland, a synopsis of
which is printed in the third volume of the Proceedings
of that society. Several other printers are mentioned