Printers
- William Parks (1736–1750)
- William Hunter (1751–1761)
- Joseph Royle (1761–1766)
- Alexander Purdie and John Dixon (1766–1774)
- John Dixon and William Hunter Jr. (1775–1778)
- John Dixon and Thomas Nicolson (1778–1781)
Virginia’s first printer was William Parks. He began publishing the first Virginia Gazette in 1736. Having won the colony’s lucrative government printing contracts, his growing wealth helped to establish him as one of Williamsburg’s most prominent gentlemen. He even briefly served as the town’s mayor. He died suddenly in 1750, aboard a ship leaving Britain. 1
After Parks’s death, the printing shop was seized to pay his debts. After a break in publication, his shop foreman William Hunter purchased the business at auction. He restarted publication of the Gazette in 1751. Hunter was also the Deputy Postmaster General for the colonies. Along with his friend Benjamin Franklin, he helped to modernize the postal system in the southern colonies.2
Franklin traveled to Williamsburg to visit Hunter in 1756. Afterward, Franklin suggested to a philanthropic group known as the Associates of Dr. Bray that Williamsburg would be an appropriate place to set up a school for the education of Black children. On Franklin’s recommendation, Hunter served as one of the first administrators of the Bray School. However, he died in 1761, shortly after the school opened. 3
After Hunter’s death, the newspaper changed ownership several times in a short period of time. Hunter’s will indicated that his shop foreman, Joseph Royle, should operate the printing business and split the profits with Hunter’s son. Royle died in 1766, and his part of the business passed to Alexander Purdie.4 Purdie partnered with John Dixon, a local businessman. Dixon married Royle’s widow, Rosanna Hunter, who was the half-sister of William Hunter. Family and business relationships often overlapped in the printing business. 5
In late 1774, Purdie left this business to start his own Virginia Gazette . John Dixon replaced him with William Hunter Jr., the son of the earlier printer and now Dixon’s nephew. They published the Gazette during the early stages of the Revolutionary War, which may have been tense. Dixon was an ardent revolutionary, elected as the city’s mayor in 1774 and serving as a colonel in the militia. Hunter, in contrast, was a staunch Loyalist, as he explained, “ever averse to the proceedings of the Americans.” He would eventually join the British army. 6
Perhaps because of their differences, Dixon and Hunter dissolved their partnership in late 1778. Dixon replaced Hunter with Thomas Nicolson, who helped to print the Gazette briefly before it moved to Richmond, along with the state capital, in 1780.
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Sources
- A. Franklin Parks, William Parks: The Colonial Printer in the Transatlantic World of the Eighteenth Century (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 164; Mary Goodwin, “Printing Office and Post Office Historical (LL) Report, Block 18 Building 12B Lot 48,” Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library, accessed Jan. 18, 2024, p. 8–15.
- Goodwin, “Printing Office and Post Office,” 16–29.
- John C. Van Horne, ed., Religious philanthropy and colonial slavery: the American correspondence of the Associates of Dr. Bray, 1717-1777 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985): 22, 144, 147, 152–53; Terry L. Meyers, “Benjamin Franklin, the College of William and Mary, and the Williamsburg Bray School,” Anglican and Episcopal History 79, no. 4 (Dec. 2010): 379–80, 389.
- Goodwin, “Printing Office and Post Office,” 32–35.
- Joseph Adelman, Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), 25.
- Goodwin, “Printing Office and Post Office,” lxiii, 46–47.