Foreword

THIS volume records in permanent form the papers read at a conference sponsored by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts that was held at its house, 87 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, on April 1 and 2, 1971. The inspiration for this sprang from the Sixteenth Annual Winterthur Conference, held on March 19–21, 1970, at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware. That series of conferences on aspects of museum operation and connoisseurship began in 1954 as a part of the course of study of fellows enrolled in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware. As the years passed graduates were invited to return to Winterthur for the annual conference; more recently a small number of outside art historians, collectors, antiquarians, editors, and authors who had a special interest in the subject under discussion have been asked to take part in these family gatherings. Several members of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts were among the guests asked to attend the 1970 conference, where the theme was “Prints in and of America to 1850.” The chairman was Jonathan L. Fairbanks, Associate Curator of the Winterthur Museum, who has since become Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Of the papers two were given by visiting Bostonians: Richard B. Holman’s “Seventeenth Century American Prints” and Sinclair H. Hitchings’ “The Graphic Arts in Colonial New England.” Later in the year the proceedings of the conference, as edited by John D. Morse, were published for the Winterthur Museum by the University Press of Virginia.

The gathering of so many collectors, curators, and enthusiasts over American prints in an institution where there were notable examples to be seen proved so pleasant that there was a strong hope expressed that informal annual gatherings focused upon American prints might be held in other places in future years. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts agreed to sponsor a conference on Boston prints and printmakers of the colonial period in the spring of 1971 and charged its Editor and its Recording Secretary with planning the details.

As the desire was to have a group small enough for easy give-and-take in discussion, and as the Society’s house did not lend itself to lantern-slide projection, attendance was strictly limited and by invitation. Representatives of various neighboring institutions brought original prints of considerable rarity from their collections, which were supplemented by facsimiles of other prints that The Meriden Gravure Company had made over the years for the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenæum, the Essex Institute, the American Antiquarian Society, the John Carter Brown Library, and other institutions. Participants came from states ranging from Maine to Virginia; the majority had been present at the 1970 Winterthur Conference.

On the morning and afternoon of the first, papers were read and prints discussed at 87 Mount Vernon Street. Lunch and dinner was provided at the Club of Odd Volumes at number 77. On the morning of the second of April the conference migrated to the Print Room of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square to see an exhibition and to hear three papers whose authors felt the need of lantern slides. After luncheon at the Club of Odd Volumes, the conference adjourned, in the hope of reconvening in Washington in 1972.

As the interest of the papers well warranted publication, the Colonial Society agreed to issue them as volume 46 in its numbered series, but to have a larger edition printed separately for a wider distribution by the University Press of Virginia. We have illustrated the great majority of known surviving works of Boston printmakers of the colonial period. Many of them have previously been reproduced elsewhere, thanks to the craftsmanship of The Meriden Gravure Company. The one great novelty, appearing for the first time on any stage, is Nathaniel Hurd’s view of the Old State House that illustrates Abbott Cummings’ paper. As it is not easy to assemble all these scattered reproductions, even in a large library, it seemed a desirable occasion to bring together as many Boston colonial prints as possible within the covers of this single volume. In volume vii of Printing & Graphic Arts, published in 1959 by The Stinehour Press, Gillett Griffin’s article “John Foster’s Woodcut of Richard Mather” was illustrated in all five copies of the print, photographed in The Meriden Gravure Company studio from the originals. Later in the same volume Richard B. Holman in “Some remarks on ‘Mr. Richard Mather’” noted that this article, with its reproductions, “has cleared away much cloudy thinking,” and observed that “to have the five actual prints on permanent loan for study would hardly be better than to have these exact-size collotype reproductions.” It is our hope that the illustrations of this volume may prove equally useful to students. Where The Meriden Gravure Company did not have existing negatives, nearly all of them have been specially photographed for this volume from the originals.

While the papers printed here represent a large part of the returns of the conference, they should be supplemented by a few glimpses of contributions made during discussion and during the preparations for the conference.

During the conference, for instance, Howard Rice pointed out that the image of a city is often fixed by a viewmaker who establishes a likeness accepted and followed by successive generations of engravers. So it was with William Burgis’ views of Boston. The pattern and viewpoint remain very much alive in Paul Revere’s engravings of almost fifty years later.

Like the Winterthur Conference a year earlier, the conference in Boston continued a process of discovery which has produced, already, a surprisingly large list of surviving original engraved eighteenth-century copper plates with designs by Peter Pelham, Thomas Johnston, Nathaniel Hurd, and Paul Revere, among others. At the conference, Marcus A. McCorison, Director of the American Antiquarian Society, showed the original copper plate of Pelham’s mezzotint portrait of Mather Byles. Recently acquired by the Society from descendants of the family, it is in perfect condition.

2. A View of the Obelisk, 1766 (modern restrike)

The conference proved to be an opportunity to exhibit the American Antiquarian Society’s impression of Paul Revere’s engraving, A View of the Obelisk Erected under Liberty-Tree. This was believed by Clarence Brigham to be the only surviving copy, but comparison revealed that a second impression is owned by the Boston Athenæum. While the two impressions were being examined, several participants pointed out that the original copper plate survives, with a design for a Masonic certificate by Revere on the other side. The plate is owned by Lessing Rosenwald.

Preparations for the Boston conference included a listing of “Portraits, Maps and Views by the Printmakers of Colonial Boston, 1670–1775” which was distributed to all participants, has since been revised and enlarged, and may merit printing at a later date.

Also in preparation for the conference, an attempt was made to survey and summarize the major collections of colonial American prints in Boston, Worcester, Providence, and Salem. Surveys (currently in typescript and perhaps suitable for publication later) were completed of collections at the American Antiquarian Society, Boston Athenæum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Public Library, Essex Institute, John Carter Brown Library, and Worcester Art Museum (Goodspeed Collection). The inventories of two other collections, those at Harvard and the Massachusetts Historical Society, are still not complete, and students can expect surprises when a full listing is made of early American prints owned by these institutions.

The examination of various collections brought to light a number of interesting facts. Different states of several of Peter Pelham’s mezzotint portraits of Boston divines are owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and deserve further study, since they suggest that printing from several of the plates continued throughout the eighteenth century.

At Harvard, a little-known strength of the collections is a group of the imprints of James Franklin, including a publication of 1718 which adds another important detail to the still-growing record of Franklin as a printmaker. Titled A catalogue of curious and valuable books (which mostly belonged to the Reverend Mr. George Curwin, late of Salem, deceased) it has the following imprint: “Boston: Printed by J. Franklin, at his printing-house in Queen street, over against Mr. Sheaf’s school; where all sorts of printing work and engraving on wood, is done at reasonable prizes. 1718.”

Also at Harvard, in Houghton Library, is a framed copy of Nathaniel Hurd’s Harvard bookplate, printed in red. On the back of the frame is the following extract from a letter of President Holyoke to Thomas Hollis, July 9, 1766 (Blackburne’s Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, 11, 603): “. . .there is pasted on the inside of the cover of each of your boks [sic] the inclosed, cut in black as to those of them we suffer to be lent out, and in red as to those we think too precious for loan, which those gentlemen who want them may consult in the library, we having all conveniences for that purpose, and the Librarian always ready to attend them.”

Colonial American printmaking is one area of English provincial printmaking of the years from 1670 to 1775. For this reason, the series Engraving in England, begun by A. M. Hind, will begin to be of great value to students of early American prints, provided it can be continued in additional volumes. Three volumes have been issued: Volume i (Tudor), Volume ii (James I), and Volume iii (Charles I). American students continue to concentrate on sources at home and on printed sources; we work far too infrequently in London, and to date have learned little or nothing of the English careers of some of the printmakers who came over to try their skills in the colonial cities.

Roderick D. Stinehour, who participated in the conference, has designed and composed this volume at The Stinehour Press. Although E. Harold Hugo was unable to attend because of absence in England, he has more than played his part through the subsequent work of The Meriden Gravure Company. As the Editor was also in England until the last day of March, he is grateful to the Recording Secretary not only for coping with final details of the conference but for carrying a large share of the production of this volume.

Walter Muir Whitehill

Editor

Sinclair H. Hitchings

Recording Secretary

87 Mount Vernon Street

Boston, Massachusetts

September 7, 1971

1 George Francis Dow, The Arts & Crafts in New England, 1704–1775 (Topsfield, Mass., 1927; reprinted: New York, 1967), p. 27.

2 James Clements Wheat and Christian F. Brun, Maps and Charts Published in America Before 1800: A Bibliography (New Haven, 1969), pp. 50–53.

3 The map by Capt. Cyprian Southack shows the English colonies in North America. The John Carter Brown copy is untitled; that in the Public Record Office has this title in manuscript: “A New Chart of the English Empire in North America by Captain Cyprian Southack.” Both show the following engraved signature: “Engraven and Printed by Fra Dewing Boston New England. 1717.” Lawrence C. Wroth and Marion W. Adams, American Woodcuts and Engravings, 1670–1800 (Providence, 1946), pp. 16–17; Wheat and Brun, p. 8. An earlier copper plate map may have been printed in America although the circumstances of its publication do not seem to have been firmly established. See Charles Harper Walsh, “The Earliest Copper Engraving Executed in the American Colonies,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, xv (1912), 54–72. Dewing engraved another Southack map in 1720, “The Harbour and Island of Canso Part of the Boundaries of Nova Scotia” (Wheat and Brun, p. 13). That Dewing was thought to have been involved in a different aspect of his trade is mentioned by Winsor in his discussion of the Boston plan of 1722: “The engraver of this map is probably the same Francis Doing, who in 1718, as appears by the Council Records, was suspected of being concerned in counterfeiting the Province bills of credit. There is no evidence known to sustain the case.” Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston (Boston, 1882), ii, liii.

4 I. N. Phelps Stokes and Daniel C. Haskell, American Historical Prints: Early Views of American Cities (New York, 1932), p. 20.

5 One and perhaps two plans or views of Boston had been published prior to 1722. No copies have survived, and brief references in contemporary correspondence provide our only information. Wait Winthrop, writing to his brother on July 20, 1680, stated: “I haue sent you a map of the towne, with Charlestowne, taken by Mr. Foster the printer, from Nodles Island. Twas sent for Amsterdam, and y^r printed.” Six years later Judge Samuel Sewall wrote Edward Hull: “There is inclosed in the top, a Mapp of this Town which please to accept off” (Henry H. Edes, “The Burgis-Price View of Boston,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1906–1907, p. 245). The letters can be found in Winthrop Papers, iv, 421, and Sewall Letter Book, i, 32.

6 As quoted in Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge, 1963), p. 7.

7 Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1891), pp. 159, 162.

8 William Wood, New Englands Prospect, as quoted in Shurtleff, p. 41.

9 As quoted in Shurtleff, p. 160.

10 As quoted in Shurtleff, p. 62. Bonner had drawn a view of Long Wharf in 1714 and obviously used this in compiling his plan of the city. Bonner’s manuscript drawing of the wharf is reproduced in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 1863–1864 (Boston, 1864), facing p. 477.

11 The Boston Gazette for April 19–26, 1725, carried an advertisement by William Price for a view of Boston and “Also an exact Plan of the Town, shewing the Streets, Lanes, and Publick Buildings” Dow, pp. 16–17. The view was the Burgis view described below. The plan was undoubtedly Bonner’s as reissued by Price.

12 My description of the additions and erasures from one state of the Bonner plan to another follows the useful analysis provided in Wheat and Brun. Even their minute examination of various states fails to distinguish all differences. For example, they fail to note that vertical rules in the legend and shoreline hatching were added on State ii.

13 A copy in the Massachusetts Historical Society is the only known impression, but George Smith in 1835 published a facsimile of this when it belonged to William Taylor. The facsimile omits some material and mistakenly gives Bonner’s age as 60 rather than 80.

14 Dow, pp. 15–17. For some details about Price see Emma Forbes Waite, “William Price of Boston: Map-Maker, Merchant and Churchman,” Old-Time New England, xlvi (1956), 52–56.

15 Wheat and Brun, who apparently examined the original impression in the John Carter Brown Library, state unequivocally that “traces of the erasure of ‘T. JOHNSON SCULP’ still remain.”

16 An earlier plan by Carleton in 1796 measured only 8¼ by 14¼ inches. His 1797 plan was on a scale of one inch to 21 rods (about 350 feet) and was an impressive 37⅜ by 41 inches in size. Wheat and Brun, p. 246.

17 Edes, p. 246; Dow, pp. 15–16.

18 The view was announced in the Boston Gazette for April 19–26, 1725, as “A New and Correct Prospect of the Town of Boston, curiously Engraved on Copper, according to the Proposal some time ago printed in this paper.” A second advertisement appeared in the New-England Courant for July 24–31, 1725 (Dow, pp. 16–17).

19 The complete text of the engraved description can be found in Edes, pp. 248–249. Since Price’s advertisement for subscriptions in December 1723 stated that the drawing from which the engraving would be made was then on view at his shop, the year of depiction would seem to be clearly established. The date of c. 1722 assigned in the Stokes Collection catalogue is probably erroneous (Stokes and Haskell, p. 20).

20 Ibid., pp. 20–21. This imprint appears to have been engraved by another hand and may well have been added by Price in Boston after he received the plate from John Harris in London.

21 For the deduction by Justin Winsor, after his study of the 1743 state, that there must have been an earlier version, see Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xviii (1880–81), 68–69. Winsor evidently learned subsequently of the existence of the British Museum copy, wrote in 1884 to his fellow Bostonian C. C. Smith, asking him to examine it, and Smith reported his finding to the Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2d ser., i (1884–85), 249–250.

22 Dow, p. 20.

23 The Burgis view of Harvard College was first advertised in the Boston News-Letter for July 7–14, 1726, as follows: “This Day is Published a Prospect of the Colleges in Cambridge in New England, curiously Engraven in Copper; and are to be sold at Mr. Price’s Print-seller, over against the Town-House, Mr. Randal Jappaner in Ann Street, by Mr. Stedman in Cambridge, and the Booksellers of Boston” (Dow, p. 18).

24 Clarence S. Brigham, Paul Revere’s Engravings (Worcester, 1954), pp. 60, 134.

25 Brigham, p. 59, gives the text of Revere’s advertisement along with a detailed discussion of the view and a full-size color facsimile of it.

26 Ibid., pp. 79–80.

27 A copy is in the Sinclair Hamilton Collection, Princeton University. The plan is briefly described in Peter J. Guthorn, American Maps and Map Makers of the Revolution (Monmouth Beach, N.J., 1966), pp. 36–37. The artist is unknown, but Guthorn gives the publisher as Robertsons and Trumbull.

28 Arthur Gilman, The Story of Boston (New York, 1889), pp. 281–289.

29 Winsor, ii, xxxii. Winsor in identifying property owners by reference to the Bonner plan states that in the 1720’s the lot on which the tree stood was owned by Garret Bourne.

30 Pelham was born in Boston on Mar. 14, 1748/9, the only son of Mary Singleton Copley Pelham by her second husband, Peter Pelham. Henry’s father died in 1751, and it was doubtless from his half brother, John Singleton Copley, eleven years his senior, that Henry learned to draw and paint. Copley’s portrait of Henry, probably not then more than ten, is known by the title, The Boy and the Squirrel. See Denison Rogers Slade, “Henry Pelham, the Half-Brother of John Singleton Copley,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1897, 1898 (Boston, 1902), pp. 194, 196.

31 James [?] Johnson to Henry Pelham, Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, lxxi (1914), 350.

32 Pelham to Copley, Aug. 19, 1775. Pelham then added that he had been advised by General Gage “that it would not be altogether proper to publish a plan of Charlestown in its present state, as it would furnish those without with a knowledge of the fortification [s] erected there and in a polite manner desired I would postpone the sending it at present” (ibid., p. 351).

33 Philip Lee Phillips, for many years chief of the Library of Congress Division of Maps, regarded this map as the most valuable single sheet acquisition during his long tenure in that position (conversation with his former assistant, Mrs. Clara E. Le Gear, Washington, 1968).

34 Pelham to Copley, Jan. 27, 1776, Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, pp. 367–368.

1 A Volume of Records Relating to the History of Boston, Twenty-Ninth Report (Boston, 1900), p. 273.

2 Dunlap, History of the Arts of Design in America, Bayley and Goodspeed, eds. (Boston, 1918), ii, 286.

3 John H. Edmonds, “The Burgis Views of New York and Boston,” Proceedings of the Bostonian Society (Boston, 1915), pp. 29–33.

4 J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits (London, 1884), p. liii.

5 Edmonds, pp. 33–37.

6 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, xix, 104–106.

7 Hamilton Vaughan Bail, Views of Harvard, a Pictorial Record to 1860 (Cambridge, 1949), p. 41.

8 Edmonds, p. 49.

9 Barbara Owen, The Organs and Music of King’s Chapel (Boston, King’s Chapel, 1966), pp. 5 and 7.

10 Cecil Clutton and Austin Niland, The British Organ (London, B. T. Batsford, Ltd., 1963), pp. 217 and 219.

11 Edmonds, p. 49.

12 Edmonds, p. 50.

13 William Loring Andrews, The Bradford Map (New York, 1893), p. 21.

1 Johnston’s trade card is reproduced in Joseph Downs’s article on “American Japanned Furniture” in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, xxviii, No. 3 (March 1933), 44; in The Walpole Society Note Book (1935), opposite p. 33, with notes by Philip Leffingwell Spalding; and in George Francis Dow’s article on “Trade Cards,” Old-Time New England, xxvi (April, 1936), 115–137. A second installment of Dow’s article appeared in Old-Time New England, xxvii (July, 1936), 3–22. The card, as Spalding explains, was found on the back of the inside of a clock made by Benjamin Bagnall (1689–1773) of Boston. Spalding writes: “The case, which is of pine, undoubtedly was japanned at one time, but was refinished in the natural wood before it came into my possession.” Paradoxically, the only japanned piece of furniture for which there is clear evidence showing that Johnston provided the decorations is this clock, which no longer has its japanning! Downs attributed several pieces of japanned furniture to Johnston, but was never able to put together a clear and well-documented description of Johnston’s style. He was forced to reason entirely from the evidence of Johnston’s trade card. See his American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods, in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum (New York, 1952), item 187; also p. xiv and item 188.

2 The American Antiquarian Society owns a water color coat of arms made for the Mather family and in 1814 given to the society by Hannah Mather Crocker. Harold Bowditch attributed the picture to Thomas Johnston, and his opinion is preserved in a note on the back of the frame. Bowditch also attributed to Johnston a painting on canvas in oils of the Barton arms, thought to have been made as a funeral hatchment; it is owned by the Essex Institute. See “Early Water-Color Paintings of New England Coats of Arms” by Dr. Harold Bowditch, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxv (Boston, 1951), Fig. 18 and pp. 200–201.

3 I am grateful to Mrs. Fales for her analysis of Johnston’s engraved heraldic and emblematic designs, presented in this volume and extremely helpful to me in compiling a new and more comprehensive listing of Johnston’s prints.

4 Alan Burroughs, John Greenwood in America 1745–1752 (Andover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, 1943), p. 74; also pp. 12 and 80.

5 Copperplate printing continued to be a part of Rea’s business. In March 1770 he sent Henry Pelham a bill for “Printing 575 of your Prints @ 12 /Pr. Hund. 319:” This presumably was the first of the Boston Massacre prints, copied by Paul Revere and made familiar by him in the course of his energetic campaign to spread it abroad. See Brigham’s Paul Revere’s Engravings (Worcester, 1954), pp. 41–42.

6 Later, Nathaniel Hurd (1729–77) and Joseph Callender (1751–1821) were among the engravers who found additional business engraving compass cards.

7 Burroughs, John Greenwood in America, p. 12.

8 Burroughs, pp. 64 and 80; Harriette M. Forbes, Gravestones of Early New England (Boston, 1927), pp. 59–60. The stone, which survives in Copps Hill Buyring Ground, is reproduced by Forbes opposite p. 43. There is also discussion of the funeral decorations in Flexner’s American Painting: First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 242.

9 Mary Kent Davey Babcock printed the list of subscribers to the organ in her Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston (Boston, 1947), pp. 241–242. Esther Stevens Brazier analyzed the inventory of Davis’ estate in “The Early Boston Japanners,” Antiques, xliii, No. 5 (May 1943).

10 In the Boston Gazette of June 27, 1763, Lewis Deblois advertised for sale “an Organ, made by Mr. Thomas Johnston of this Town, formerly made Use of in Concert-Hall, and can be recommended.—An abatement of Ten Guineas will be made, (from the real Value of said Instrument) if bought and made Use of for any Congregation in this Town.”

The inventory of Johnston’s estate is indispensable to an understanding of his many-faceted business. It is printed in full at the end of this article.

11 The property listed in his inventory was valued at a total of £912:1:10, including “The Mansion House and Land & house up the Yard” which were valued at £666:13:4.

12 Lawrence Wroth in The Walpole Society Note Book (1950), p. 30. See also Wroth’s article, “The Thomas Johnston Maps of the Kennebeck Purchase,” In Tribute to Fred Anthoensen Master Printer, ed. Ruth A. Chaplin (Portland, Me., 1952). This detailed study was a breakthrough to much fuller understanding of Johnston’s skills and conduct of business.

13 James Thomas Flexner in American Painting: First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 311 (see entry for John Greenwood), says that Johnston was an “engraver, printer, designer of gravestones, painter of houses, fire buckets, ships, and almost certainly portraits.” The houses, fire buckets, and ships are mentioned in the Rea and Johnston account books dating from after Thomas Johnston’s death; Flexner was reasoning back from that evidence. (Today we know about Johnston’s house-painting from the bill of 1764 to Samuel P. Savage printed in this article.) On the subject of possible portraits by Johnston, Flexner cites (p. 284) an entry in the inventory of Johnston’s estate listing portraits of Dr. Mayhew and Mr. Gee and says that these were “probably painted by himself.” There is at least an equal chance, however, that they were painted by someone else; a portrait of Joshua Gee, for instance, was painted by John Smibert (The Notebook of John Smibert [Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1969], p. 91). Lila Parrish Lyman in her excellent article on William Johnston (1732–72) in the New-York Historical Society Quarterly, xxxix (January 1955), 63, calls Thomas Johnston “a portrait and heraldic painter, japanner and engraver.” Sidney Gunn, who is one of the authorities she cites, had written in his sketch of Johnston, published in the Dictionary of American Biography in 1933, “There is a portrait attributed to him in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and another is owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society.” Today the portrait in the Boston Museum cannot be identified, while the well-modelled and convincing pastel portrait of Dudley Atkins at the Massachusetts Historical Society represents a mastery of portraiture in a difficult medium which would be surprising for someone who, if he did paint portraits, tried his hand at it only occasionally. A more tempting reference to Johnston as a portrait painter is provided by Jules Prown in his comments on John Singleton Copley’s portrait of John Codman, the eldest of three John Codmans whom Copley painted. According to Prown, this portrait “is said to be a copy after a painting by Thomas Johnston, taken to England from Boston by the sitter’s son, . . .” (John Singleton Copley in England 1774–1815 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966], p. 377).

14 All three of the Copley portraits can be seen in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

1 Anne Allison, “Peter Pelham, Engraver in Mezzotinto,” Antiques, lii (Dec. 1947), 441–443. See also Frederick W. Coburn, “More Notes on Peter Pelham,” Art in America, xx (June–Aug. 1932), 143–154.

2 John Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotint Portraits, 4 vols. (London, 1884), iii, 964–978.

3 Boston Gazette, Feb. 19–26, Feb. 26–Mar. 4, 1728.

4 “Boston, March the 19th. 1727/8.

“Received of the Rev’d. Mr. Benjn Coleman the Sum of 3 shillings being the first Payment of the Subscription for a Print in Metzo:^o of the Late Rev. Dr. COTTON MATHER, by which the Bearer is Entitled to the said Print Paying 2 shillings at the Delivery of the same. By me Peter Pelham.” Reproduced in facsimile in Guernsey Jones (ed.), Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Vol. lxxi (Boston, 1914), p. 5; hereafter cited as Copley-Pelham Letters.

5 Boston Gazette, May 20–27, June 10–17, 1728.

6 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 32.

7 Boston Gazette, Aug. 18–25, 1729.

8 Quoted in Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, 3 vols. (Boston, 1882), 1, 397.

9 Boston News-Letter, Dec. 23, 1731.

10 John Tasker Howard, The Music of George Washington’s Time (Washington, 1931), p. 9.

11 Boston Gazette, Nov. 13–20, 1732. The game was continued in the following issue of the Gazette, Nov. 27–Dec 4, when an unnamed writer replied indignantly to the former notice, stating that he “could not help being very much pleas’d at the Sight of such a Number of agreeable Ladies as appear’d at Mr. Pelham’s; where every Body seem’d to be well Satisfy’d, and a Chearful & Innocent Conversation was carried on, with open & honest Faces, and all Mankind must allow, that such a Society well Regulated, is the best School for a true and polite behaviour.”

12 William K. Bottorff, “Peter Pelham, Late of Boston,” The New-England Galaxy, Winter 1970, p. 37.

13 Boston Gazette, Jan. 1–8, 1733.

14 Boston Gazette, Apr. 5, 1734, quoted in George Francis Dow, The Arts& Crafts in New England 1704–1773 (Topsfield, Mass., 1927), p. 11.

15 Sir David Evans, John Kerslake, and Andrew Oliver (eds.), The Notebook of John Smibert (Boston, 1969), pp. 87–91.

16 Ebenezer Turell, The Life and Character of the Reverend Benjamin Colman (Boston, 1749), p. 23.

17 James T. Flexner, First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 195.

18 Original parish records of Trinity Church, Newport, vol. entitled “List of Baptized Persons”; in the possession of Trinity Church, Newport.

19 Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, 2d ed. (New York, 1955), p. 441.

20 Bridenbaugh, p. 355.

21 Records of Boston Selectmen.

22 Boston Gazette, Jan. 16–23, Feb. 6, 1738.

23 Boston Gazette, May 1–8, 1738.

24 For Pelham’s Masonic connections see Melvin M. Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America (New York, 1924), and Harvey N. Shepard, History of St. Johns Lodge (Boston, 1917).

25 Boston Gazette, Sept. 25, Oct. 23, 1741.

26 The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., reprint (Gloucester, 1962), 1, 270, July 2, 1791.

27 Sibleys Harvard Graduates, viii, 48.

28 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 3.

29 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 14.

30 Original minutes of the vestry of Trinity Church, unpublished, in the possession of Trinity Church, Boston.

31 The News-Letter, May 10, 1744.

32 Boston Gazette, Aug. 27, 1751.

33 Boston Gazette, Sept. 16, 1746.

34 Boston Evening Post, July 7, 1747, quoted in Dow, p. 35.

35 Boston Evening Post, Dec. 11, 1749.

36 Boston Gazette, July 12, 1748.

37 Boston Gazette, Sept. 20, 1748.

38 Boston Gazette, Mar. 21, 1749.

39 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 18.

40 Alan Burroughs, John Greenwood in America (Andover, Mass., 1943), p. 79.

41 The News-Letter, May 24, 1750.

42 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 19.

43 Boston Gazette, Mar. 12, 1751.

44 Boston Gazette, Sept. 17, 1751.

45 Burroughs, Greenwood, pp. 18 and 69; The News-Letter, July 18, 1751.

46 Boston Gazette, Aug. 4, 1752.

47 Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 1, 162.

48 Smith, iii, 966.

1 Sydney P. Noe, The Pine Tree Coinage of Massachusetts (New York, 1952), pp. 21–22.

2 Hermann Frederick Clarke, John Coney, Silversmith, 1655–1722 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1932), pp. 9–10, pi. xxxi. Andrew McFarland Davis, “The Massachusetts Bay Currency, 1690–1750, The Plates,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, xii (October 1898), 410–424.

3 Hermann Frederick Clarke and Henry Wilder Foote, Jeremiah Dummer, Colonial Craftsman & Merchant, 1645–1718 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1935), p. 27, pl. xxii.

4 Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 101, No. 525.

5 During the summer following the print conference, Sinclair Hitchings discovered at the New Hampshire Historical Society proof that John Coney was paid for engraving the plates for New Hampshire bills in 1722. The manuscript treasurer’s accounts for New Hampshire record:

“By Sundry paym^ṭs since May y^e 18^th 1722

M^ṛ Allen print^g. y^e Bills p^d £18..10

M^ṛ Cunny doing the plates p^d £15..10”

6 Matt B. Jones, in “The Early Massachusetts-Bay Seals,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, ns 44 (April to October 1934), 13–44, believed that the Cambridge seal had been cut in England. Recent scholars suggest that it may also have been cut by John Foster but proof is lacking and the question raised by Jones as to why the 1675 cut should be inferior to the 1672 cut if both were the work of Foster remains unanswered. Richard B. Holman, “Seventeenth-Century American Prints,” Prints in and of America to 1830 (The University Press of Virginia, 1970), pp. 33–35.

7 Richard Le Baron Bowen, Massachusetts Records (privately printed, Rehobeth, Mass., 1957), pp. 48–52.

8 Louis F. Middlebrook, Seals of Maritime New England (Salem, Mass: The Essex Institute, 1926), pp. 8–10.

9 Hollis French, Jacob Hurd and His Sons (The Walpole Society: Cambridge, Mass., 1939), p. 70.

10 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), iii, 144–146.

11 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), iv, 205–206.

12 Samuel Eliot Morison, “Harvard Seals and Arms,” The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, Sept. 1933, pp. 1–15, and letter to the author from Harley P. Holden, Assistant Curator, Harvard University Archives, April 16, 1971.

13 Addenda to French’s Jacob Hurd and His Sons (1941 ed.), pp. 7–8.

14 Ibid.

15 French, pp. 67–69.

16 Middlebrook, p. 40. Dewing was suspected in 1718 of being concerned with counterfeiting the province bills of credit according to Justin Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston, ii, liii.

17 The first American bookplate apparently was the bordered name plate used by Thomas Smith of Boston and dated 1707 (Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670–1870 [Princeton, N.J., 1958], p. xxv). Other early armorial bookplates used by Americans were engraved in England.

18 Suffolk County Court House, #14045. Harold Bowditch suggested that this book may have been the 1724 edition of Guillim subsequently owned by the heraldic painter John Coles of Boston (“Early Water-Color Paintings of New England Coats of Arms,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxv (December 1944), 178).

19 Mary Means, “Early American Trade Cards,” (Master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1958).

20 The History of Printing in America by Isaiah Thomas, edited by Marcus A. McCorison from the second edition (Barre, Mass.: Imprint Society, 1970), p. 256. I am indebted to Sinclair Hitchings for calling this and other related materials to my attention.

21 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, iii, 145.

22 Bowditch, “Early Water-Color Paintings,” pp. 179–181. Although Bowditch believed there were two different James Turners, one from Boston and one from Marblehead, it now appears that James Turner whose bill to the estate of William Lynde was inscribed Marblehead, 1752, is the same James Turner who also worked in Boston, and later moved to Philadelphia.

23 In Massachusetts the encircling snake was used as a design on the gravestone of Mrs. Susannah Jayne of Marblehead in 1776 and on Massachusetts bills and lotteries in 1777–79. In Philadelphia in 1775 the snake was used to enclose a patriotic emblem advertising an American edition of Swan’s Designs in Architecture to be published by Robert Bell and John Norman.

24 The bill of Paul Revere for engraving the seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, dated Aug. 5, 1775, is preserved at the Massachusetts State House.

1 The only study of this specific subject known to me is my “Prints and Scientific Illustration in America,” in Prints in and of America to 1850 (Winterthur, Del., & Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), pp. 161–191. This study is concerned mainly with early nineteenth-century illustration.

2 Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670–1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958).

3 Barbara Gelman, The Wood Engravings of Winslow Homer (New York: Crown, 1969). On the general subject of early American book illustration see Georgia C. Haugh, “The Beginnings of American Book Illustration,” in Francis J. Brewer (ed.), Book Illustration (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1963), pp. 34–44.

4 The best single study is Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970).

5 William Smellie, An Abridgement of the Practice of Midwifery (Boston: J. Norman, 1786).

6 Richard B. Holman, “Seventeenth Century American Prints,” in Prints in and of America to 1850, pp. 23–52.

7 I have not been able to determine exactly when the first copperplate intaglio print for scientific purposes was employed, but it was certainly within the time span of this paper.

8 Unpublished research notes of Sinclair Hitchings, in a letter to the author dated March 19, 1971.

9 A long note on this book is given in The Colonial Scene (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1950), pp. 32–33.

10 As indicated especially by the elegant upswept tail of the bull, a stylized convention which probably has its origin in “high art.”

11 W. M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), Chap. 2.

12 As illustrated in Pl. 15 of G. E. Fussell, The Old English Farming Books From Fitzherbert to Tull 1523 to 1730 (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1947).

13 See note 9.

14 Joseph Ewan (ed.), William Bartram Botanical and Zoological Drawings 1756–1788 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968), p. 4.

15 Stearns, p. 144.

16 Manasseh Cutler, “An Account of Some of the Vegetable Productions Naturally Growing in this part of America Botanically Arranged,” Memoirs of the American Academy, 1 (1785).

17 Ewan, p. 4.

18 Bruce R. Voeller and Paul F. Cranefield, Three Centuries of Botany in North America, an Exhibit (New York: The Rockefeller University, 1967), p. 8.

19 Joseph and Nesta Ewan, John Banister and his Natural History of Virginia 1678–1692 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970).

20 Joseph Ewan, “First Fern Records from Virginia: John Banister’s Account of 1679–1692,” American Fern Journal, 53 (Oct.–Dec. 1963), 138.

21 Ewan, John Banister, pp. 74–75.

22 Ibid., p. 51.

23 Ibid., p. 83.

24 George F. Frick and R. P. Stearns, Mark Catesby: The Colonial Audubon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961).

25 Elsa G. Allen, The History of American Ornithology before Audubon (New York: Russell & Russell, 1969), pp. 463–477.

26 Voeller and Cranefield, p. 10.

27 See note 14.

1 I have seen photographs of the Schenck prints, through the courtesy of Mrs. Carl Dolmetsch, assistant curator of prints at Colonial Williamsburg, where examples are to be found.

2 Since this paper was read in Boston, I have learned of William G. Sturtevant’s paper, “Lafitau’s Hoes,” in American Antiquity, vol. 33, no. 1 (Jan. 1968). Sturtevant demonstrates that Lafitau’s plate of Huron agricultural practices, in the 1724 edition, borrows shamelessly from a De Bry plate of 1591, showing Timucua agricultural practices in the vicinity of St. Augustine, Florida. Here, then, is further evidence of both the longevity of the De Bry tradition and the tendency of one printmaker to borrow from another.