It was an ordinary day. Looking over the sheet of paper that my son had spread over our kitchen counter. The latest job that he had run for Intelligencer Printing Company located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Tad is a pressman for the commercial printing company. My older son, Derek, happens to be a pressman for Donnelley Printing Company in Lancaster. Donnelley, which is based in Chicago, has plants spread throughout the USA and is the second largest printer in the USA behind the United States Printing Office. Funny how both my sons ended up in the printing trade, since I had both of them as students at Manheim Township High School where I taught, among other things, printing. Printing has a rich history in the city of Lancaster dating back to the mid-1700s. In 1751 Ben Franklin partnered with Quaker printer James Chattin to start printing in Lancaster City. Ben probably provided James with a printing press and type, and sent James here from Philadelphia. Ben typically paid one third of the expenses in exchange for one third of the profit, as he did with other printers in New York, New Haven, Annapolis and Charleston. Eventually, in 1952 Ben sent German printer Heinrich Miller and printer Samuel Holland to Lancaster to replace Chattin, who returned to Philadelphia. Miller and Holland printed the first item in Lancaster City history when they printed an 11-page, German pamphlet titled Circular Letter of the United Reformed Preachers in Pennsylvania. Later that same year they printed Lancaster's first newspaper, The Lancaster Gazette. It included the same stories in both German and English text. Eventually the shop failed so Franklin put William Dunlap in charge of the shop. It was during this time that Willam's nephew, John Dunlap, arrived in Lancaster from Ireland to apprentice in the shop and eventually became one of the great printers of Lancaster and the first to print the Declaration of Independence. In 1957 Ben moved to England and moved William Dunlap to Philadelphia to replace him as the postmaster, and the printing shop closed. Eventually Francis Bailey who had learned the printer's trade at the Ephrata Cloisters located north of Lancaster. He set up shop in downtown Lancaster at the site of what is now the Lancaster Newspaper on the first block of West King Street. Francis printed some of the great iconic works of our Early American nation. A few of the printing firsts for him are: First printer to name George Washington, in print, as the Father of Our Country; first to print the official U.S. constitution (the Articles of Confederation); first to print the major book of poetry of the "Father of American Poetry," Philip Freneau, also known as "The Poet of the Revolution"; first printer to print government securities for the first opening of the New York Stock Exchange in 1792; printed many historic imprints including Thomas Paine's "Crisis No. 4"; and the official printer of the U.S. Congress and the state of Pennsylvania. His shop was located in downtown Lancaster from 1773 until 1780 when he moved his shop to Philadelphia. In 1794 the site where Francis Bailey had his shop became home to The Lancaster Journal. The Journal was published and edited by William Hamilton and Henry Willcocks and eventually merged with the Intelligencer, which was founded in 1799, to form the Intelligencer Journal, which is today the thirteenth oldest newspaper in the United States. In 1877, the right-leaning Lancaster New Era was added and in 1923 the Sunday News began. They still all share the same building on the site where Bailey first started his print shop. The Intelligencer Printing Company where my son Tad now works is the descendant of the first company by the same name, but now located on the outskirts of Lancaster. I'm proud that both my sons have followed in my footsteps and have kept the "Black Art" of printing alive and well in our family as well as Lancaster. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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| Historical Sign outside the Lancaster Newspapers Building |
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