James Davis (printer)
James Davis was an early American printer and the first printer and first postmaster of the colony of North Carolina. He was also the founder and printer of the North-Carolina Gazette, North Carolina colony's first newspaper. After working with William Parks in Virginia he removed to New Bern to pursue a printing career upon learning that an official printer was needed in that colony. Soon after his arrival he began to put down roots, married, and became active in local politics, holding several positions in public office, including membership in the North Carolina Assembly and thereafter a county Sheriff.
Davis secured the position of the official printer for the colonial government of the North Carolina colony and was first to print its laws and paper currency. As an accomplished and official printer, Davis was later suspected by some of counterfeiting monetary notes, but the allegations were made by a career criminal, himself convicted of multiple counts of counterfeiting and thievery, while facing execution, and the allegations were never substantiated. Thereafter he went on serving as the colony's official printer and as a North Carolina justice of the peace. Davis supported the cause for American independence and to this end was politically active as a printer and politician before and during the American Revolution.
Early and family life
Davis was born in Virginia on October 21, 1721, but the specific location is not known. Nothing else is positively known about his early life until 1745, when he was living in Williamsburg, Virginia. He moved to the Colony of North Carolina in New Bern in 1749, and soon married Prudence Hobbs, the widow of Christopher Gregory Hobbs and daughter of William Carruthers. Shortly after Davis married he acquired the property on the southwest corner of Broad and East Front streets in New Bern, where his printing office was located for many years. Their marriage produced four sons and three daughters. The eldest son, James, was a merchant in New Bern. The second son, John, became a ship captain, but died during the American Revolutionary War while held prisoner aboard a British ship anchored in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor. Davis' youngest son, Thomas, who was an apprentice to his father and the only son known to have followed in his father's footsteps, assisting him in his print shop until he was drafted into the Continental Army in 1778. In 1785 Thomas succeeded his father as state printer, acting in this capacity until 1785.Printing career
North Carolina was the last colony except Georgia to receive a printer and printing press, as it was largely unsettled during the early 18th century. As Davis worked for William Parks who established the first press in Virginia in 1736, it is generally assumed by historians that he obtained his training as a printer from him, but any apprenticeship with Parks has not been conclusively established.Upon receiving word that the North Carolina Assembly, seated in New Bern, needed an official printer to publish their laws, legislative journals and other official documents, all of which were hand-written in manuscript form and generally disorganized, Davis moved from Virginia to North Carolina with his printing press. At the age of 28, he became the first printer to set up a print shop in that colony in New Bern, situated at the mouth of the Neuse River near the coast.
One of Davis' first undertakings was to acquire property. When the Governor and Council met in April 1749, and again in autumn, Davis submitted an application to the Council for land. The Council granted him 200 acres in Johnston County and another 200 acres in Craven County. On June 24, 1749, he began setting up his print shop on Pollock Street in New Bern.
On April 4, 1748, the North Carolina General Assembly passed an act to have printed £21,350 of currency in various denominations, but no printing was forthcoming until the arrival of James Davis to New Bern. One of his first assignments as public printer was the printing of paper money, for the North Carolina provincial government. On October 17, 1749, several months after Davis' arrival to North Carolina, the Assembly finally passed a resolution to pay Davis a six-month advance on his salary of £80, and commissioned him to print the bills authorized the year before.
Davis did not engrave the copper printing plates but was authorized to account for and handle the actual printing.
In 1751 Davis printed an edition of the Laws of North Carolina, containing five hundred and eighty pages. He was paid an annual salary of £160 proclamation money, and given copyrights on all government publications he printed. That year Davis printed Swann's Revisal, so entitled because Samuel Swann was chairman of the commission which prepared it. It became popularly known as "The Yellow Jacket" for the yellowish hue of the parchment it was printed on. This was the first book published in North Carolina.
In 1752 he relocated his shop to the corner of Front and Broad Streets. His first commission was the printing of The Journal of the House of Burgesses, September 26, 1749. Davis was considered to be a respectable man, and was given a commission as a magistrate by North Carolina's governor, William Tryon, governor of North Carolina from 1764 to 1771.
While Davis was considered a competent hard working printer there were times where he faced serious difficulties regarding his overall performance. In 1752, he was summoned by the General Assembly and charged with failing to perform his duties by not delivering various official documents printed for officials of North Carolina. In his defense he maintained that on the salary the General Assembly was paying him he could not afford the expenses needed for the time and traveling required to deliver the documents. The General Assembly, however, disagreed with his reasoning and he was subsequently fined.
Just before and during the American Revolution, paper became scarce and hence expensive, and delivery costs also rose sharply. Davis appealed to the General Assembly for more money to print North Carolina's laws but they could not pay Davis as much as the laws cost him to print, and he was forced to resign as official printer to remain solvent. After Davis had resigned, the General Assembly hired a replacement printer, but he died just a few weeks after his arrival. The Assembly searched earnestly for another replacement, but were unable to find a qualified printer who would perform his duties for the amount of money they were offering. Upon learning of the difficulties the General Assembly was facing, and feeling a patriotic duty to his country in its time of need, Davis offered to take up the state's printing once again, and was willing to accept payment whenever it was possible. Because of mounting war time debts, however, Davis did not receive payment for most of the work he performed in the following few years. Once again he had to deal financial stress, and at a time his health was worsening. Davis was forced to retire from his printing in 1782. Davis' son, Thomas, took over his father's printing business, but he died a short time later.
Over a thirty-three year period Davis printed and published books and pamphlets mostly of a legal nature. There were, however, a fair variety other topics he published. In 1753 he published a work by English missionary Clement Hall, rector of Saint Paul's Church in Edenton, entitled, A Collection of Many Christian Experiences, and Several Places of Scripture, the first non-legal book printed in North Carolina. According to Benjamin Franklin's account books, Davis, late in 1752 and in 1753, purchased from him paper for printing, pasteboard, and parchment. North Carolina historian William S. Powell maintains that it is quite likely that Hall's work was printed with materials purchased from Franklin. Another printing by Davis, The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times, was humorous text. He also printed and published in 1778 an introduction to Latin grammar, by Thomas Ruddiman, entitled Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, and The Spelling Dictionary, by Thomas Dyche. Davis also published various semi-public works, including his Justice of the Peace, of 1774. It was a 407 page manual and outlined the various duties and responsibilities of a Justice of the Peace, authored and printed by Davis.
''North Carolina Gazette''
In 1751 Davis established and began the publication of the North-Carolina Gazette, North Carolina's first newspaper. The earliest known copy is dated November 15, 1751. The Gazette was a journal like newspaper containing essays as well as the news. It was issued weekly on Thursdays and was published for approximately eight years and then discontinued for a time in 1761, though no copies after 1769 are known to exist. On the May 27, 1768, the Gazette was started up again with its publication continuing until after the commencement of the American Revolutionary War. Its front page inscription read:After winning the Seven Years' War with France, England found itself heavily in debt and in 1764 began imposing a series of taxes on the colonies. The first was the American Revenue Act, followed by the Currency Act. Davis reprinted these acts in several issues of his newspaper in August 1764, coverage of which took up most of the printing space in an issue. In the August 17 issue of the Gazette he also printed a petition, which was sent to King George III, protesting England's failure to enforce an indemnity from France rather than seeking revenues from the colonists. Davis also reprinted letters that appeared in The Boston Gazette and the New Hampshire Gazette denouncing the Sugar Act and Revenue Act. In 1778 during the Revolutionary War Davis was forced to suspend publication of the Gazette when his son and assistant, Thomas Davis, was conscripted into joining the Continental Army. One North Carolina historian said that the Gazette earned Davis the title, "The Father of Journalism in North Carolina". Davis was joined by other printers in publishing North Carolina newspapers, including Andrew Steuart Boyd, a Presbyterian minister from Pennsylvania, who published Wilmington's Cape Fear Mercury in 1776.