Want to hide the reality of your home office, and show your support for local history at the same time? Well, you're in luck! The AADL Archives Team is proud to deliver to you these zoom-ready virtual backdrops! Choose from stately, serene, kooky, or more! Just download the images of your choice for use with your friendly neighborhood virtual-backdrop-supporting videoconferencing software.  Enjoy, and stay safe!

Kindergarteners from Bach Elementary Show Off Their Valentine's Bulletin Board, February 1964 | Photo by Eck Stanger, Ann Arbor News

The French Dukes Practicing for the President's Inaugural Parade, January 1969

New York Central "Mercury" in Station, December 1940 | Photo by Eck Stanger, Ann Arbor News

Martin Contreras at the \aut\ Bar, June 2000 | Photo by Robert Chase, Ann Arbor News

Downtown Library, Second Floor Reading Room, August 1989

The Ann Arbor Public Library - First Floor, July 1980 | Photo by Robert Chase, Ann Arbor News

Disco Dancing at the Blue Frogge, August 1976 | Larry E. Wright, August 1976, Ann Arbor News

Mallis Coffee Cup - Interior, September 1962 | Photo by Duane Scheel, Ann Arbor News

Children at Farm & Garden Association Picnic Investigate Trees Filled With Balloons, June 1956 | Photo by Eck Stanger, Ann Arbor News

Hall's Barber Shop, July 1980 | Conan D. Owen, Ann Arbor News

Furnished Living Space in an Upstairs Apartment on West Liberty Street, August 1988 | Photo by Robert Chase, Ann Arbor News

Second Baptist Church Annual Unity March to Honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., January 1991 | Photo by Grover Sanschargin, Ann Arbor News

The home of Bennie Oosterbaan, 1265 Ferdon Rd., June 1956 | Photo by Eck Stanger, Ann Arbor News

On Saturday June 1, 2019, Ann Arbor residents will gather for music, dance, food, crafts, and local business wares at the African American Downtown Festival. The festival was founded in 1996 by community leader Lucille Hall Porter (1917-2007). It celebrates the vibrant history of black-owned businesses and community organizations located on East Ann Street and North Fourth Avenue throughout the twentieth century.

In its early years, the festival was sponsored by Porter’s nonprofit, the Community Leaning Post, which operated out of 209-211 N. Fourth Ave. The building used to be owned by the Colored Welfare League, and before that by several different African American hoteliers, including heavyweight champion Hank Griffin. In 1966, Porter’s brother J.D. Hall purchased the building, recognizing its history as a cornerstone of the Ann Street Black Business District. By the mid 1980’s, Hall’s Barber Shop was the only black-owned business left in the once-thriving district.

Now the Ann Arbor Cultural and Community Events Coalition puts on the African American Downtown Festival, but the event’s location remains central to its mission. For most of the twentieth century, dozens of barber shops, shoe repair shops, dry cleaners, restaurants, pool halls, and blues bars anchored Ann Arbor’s black community, until police crackdowns and redevelopment pushed them out.

Some of the best-remembered black-owned establishments on E Ann St include Henry Wade Robbins’ Barber Shop (1911-1916); Sanford’s Shoe Repair (1928-1965); George Whitman’s Pool Room (1934-1952); Easley’s Barber Shop (1934-1962); David Keaton’s Midway Lunch (1941-1962); and Johnnie Rush Barber Shop (1964-1976). Now local artisans and black-owned businesses participating in the festival carry on the district’s legacy.

For more information about the district, including a list of black-owned businesses from 1879 to 1999, see the Ann Arbor District Library’s Guide to the Ann Street Black Business District.

Part III: “A Printer’s Supplies”

Like any other nineteenth-century newspaper, the Signal of Liberty relied on the receipt of printing supplies that were not always easy to come by in Western states and territories. Besides a press and typesetting equipment, printers needed several dozen cases of type and a regular supply of paper and ink. Local, as well as out-of-state, business connections with type foundries, paper mills, ink-makers, and bookstores were vital to the smooth operation of the Signal of Liberty. In some cases, these businesses’ support of the Signal also corresponded to the owner’s own antislavery convictions. Even when this was not the case, the Signal’s business networks paint a picture of industry and commerce in mid-nineteenth-century Ann Arbor, as well as the larger Great Lakes region.

TYPE

One certainty of letterpress printing is that the lead-based cast metal type, which is particularly fragile and prone to dents, needs to be replaced after several years of use. The last stanza of a poem printed in the Signal of Liberty on June 23, 1845, “Lines to a Worn Out Fount of Type," features a newspaper printer’s emotional goodbye to his “inky friends”:

     I can’t pretend to mention half
     My inky friends have told,
     Since shining bright and beautiful
     They issued from the mould—
     How unto some, joy they have brought
     To others grief and tears;
     Yet faithfully a record kept
     Of fast receding years.

(The same poem was printed in the Ann Arbor Courier on May 21, 1880.) Although Signal of Liberty editors Theodore Foster and Guy Beckley began printing with fifty cases of second-hand type purchased from T. N. Caulkins in the spring of 1843, within three years their supply had dwindled to the point that they needed to order new cases. As repeated use led to loss, breakage, dents, scratches, and general wear, articles printed on broken type became increasingly common. For example, these January 1, 1845 and January 12, 1846 advertisements for wool in the Signal of Liberty show a broken capital “C” that was used for two years before the purchase of new type.

On April 20, 1846, Foster announced that the Signal would be ordering a new supply of type. Their order would have included several different typefaces, which at this time were named according to size. The Signal used Long Primer (equivalent to 10 point font) for most of its articles, and Brevier (equivalent to 8 point font) for its advertisements. Local business owners paid 3 cents per line for a single advertisement, or a discounted rate for long-term advertising.
 

But who supplied the Signal with new type, and how much did it cost? Specialized type foundries sold at rates of 30 cents to over a dollar per pound of type, depending on the size and intricacy of the font. A case of Long Primer, for example, would have cost about $17 at a rate of 34 cents per pound.
 

Beginning in the 1830s, many upstate New York and Michigan newspapers ordered type from the Buffalo Type Foundry, established in 1835 by Nathan Lyman, a former New York City businessman. On August 24, 1836, the St. Joseph County paper the Constantine Republican praised the new typography of an upstate New York paper, and stated that they had purchased from the same company: “The Albany Argus, published daily, semiweekly, and weekly, one of the large news sheets of the age, is dressed out complete, within the present month, with new and elegant type, from the foundry of N. Lyman, & Co., Buffalo, where we got ours.” The Detroit Free Press advertised regularly for the Buffalo Type Foundry in 1847 and 1848 in exchange for a liberal discount on their next order. Based on these Michigan connections, it is very likely that Theodore Foster, too, ordered from the Buffalo firm when the Signal of Liberty replaced its worn-out type in the spring of 1846.

While little information is available about the political convictions of Nathan Lyman, he sold to printers across the political spectrum, including the formerly enslaved abolitionist editor Frederick Douglass, whose Albany-based newspaper purchased a new set of type from the Buffalo Type Foundry in May 1855. The next month, Frederick Douglass’ Paper printed an array of notices congratulating the paper on its upgrade. The Rochester American, for example, wrote that “Frederick Douglass' Paper appears this week in a new dress, from the foundry of N. Lyman of Buffalo. We congratulate Mr. D. upon this evidence of success, and of the appreciation of his efforts to elevate the colored race, and to do good for humanity at large.” Like Frederick Douglass’ Paper, the Signal of Liberty took pride in its typographical upgrades as evidence of the success of its antislavery mission, and promised to deliver “a paper that shall not only be worth the subscription price, but will advocate, in all respects, the highest and best interests of the whole community.”

PAPER

While type remained an out-of-state purchase for several decades, Michigan-made paper began replacing imports in the late 1830s. Before that time, Michigan printers had relied on shipments from paper mills in Niagara Falls and elsewhere. Long-distance transportation of paper was inconvenient and could cause considerable delay in production. As newspapers and printing establishments began cropping up in higher numbers throughout the Michigan territory, demand for paper grew. An article published by the Ypsilanti Historical Society states that the first paper mill in Michigan was Christopher McDowell’s River Raisin Paper Company, established in 1834, just a few miles west of Monroe. This mill began by producing butchers’ wrapping paper made from straw, which was not of suitable quality for printing. The second known paper mill in Michigan was the Ann Arbor Paper Mill, established in 1839, which was located in lower town near Canal Street. This was the mill that supplied the Signal of Liberty, probably as early as its first issue. The Detroit Free Press also used Ann Arbor paper, publishing a notice on March 21, 1840 saying “We congratulate our friends of the press in this state, that they can now get their supplies of paper of good quality and of all sizes at home.”

The Ann Arbor Paper Mill was established by James Jones and John Foley, but by March 1842 Ann Arbor businessman and landowner Caleb Norman Ormsby had joined with Jones in the running of the mill. They ran a “Copartnership” notice in the Signal of Liberty that advertised “the manufacture and sale of PAPER, of various descriptions and quality” as well as their goal of “increasing their machinery” in the near future. The quality of the paper used by the Signal starting improving in January 1843. The mill’s new machinery may have included a tandem dryer, a device invented in the late 1830s that combined the drying and pressing of rag pulp to make a finer, smoother paper. They also improved the base materials used to make paper. In the early years of the Ann Arbor Paper Mill’s operations, much of the paper was made from swingle tow, which was refuse flax or hemp. Swingle tow produced much lower quality paper than paper made from linen or cotton rags, and it may have been the source of the thick, heavy paper that the Signal of Liberty was printed on during its first two years. By January 1843, however, the Signal of Liberty was using fine rag paper from Ormsby’s Paper Mill, which the editors called “a superior article.”

Besides hired labor, paper was the Signal of Liberty’s biggest expense. By the time the Signal had graduated from its original five columns to the seven-column spread that marked its continuing success during the years of 1843 to 1848, the editors were ordering “double demy” size newsprint paper, which was approximately 35 x 22 ½ inches. Printed on both sides and then folded in half, one sheet produced a sizeable four-page newspaper. During the 1840s, a ream of newsprint paper cost anywhere from $3 to $4 dollars. Theodore Foster’s Day Book, an account book available to researchers at the Bentley Historical Library, offers a partial record of the Signal’s expenditures during the years 1847 to 1848. Entries in the Day Book reveal that a typical issue used 88 quires of paper, which corresponds to nearly four and a half reams, or 2,112 sheets (there were 20 “quires” in a 480-sheet ream). Though the Day Book does not specify how much Foster paid for each ream of paper, the yearly expenditures that he lists in an 1846 article discussed in Part I suggest that paper cost the Signal of Liberty approximately $850 each year, or $3.72 per ream, which seems a reasonable estimate for what the Ann Arbor Paper Mill charged local patrons.

The Signal of Liberty’s printed notices and advertisements for the Ann Arbor Paper Mill demonstrate a strong working relationship between the editors of the antislavery newspaper and the mill’s owner, Caleb Ormsby. Advertisements for the mill ran in subsequent issues for nearly a year after the announcement of Ormsby’s sole ownership in January 1843. Advertisements for Ormsby’s mill also appeared in other regional newspapers including Nicholas Sullivan’s Livingston Courier, demonstrating the breadth of 1840s Michigan abolitionist networks. Sullivan, a former printer for the Jackson-based Michigan Freeman as well as the Signal of Liberty, probably started ordering paper from the Ann Arbor Paper Mill as soon as it opened in 1839. The Library of Michigan was generous enough to share an image of Ormsby’s advertisement in the September 27, 1843 issue of the Livingston Courier. (Click here to see the Library of Michigan’s extensive microfilm newspaper collection.)

The terms of Ormsby’s advertisement—which was reprinted almost verbatim in both the Signal of Liberty and the Livingston Courier—suggest that he was a savvy businessman who was open to partnerships with printers of all political orientations, except for those who would not pay their debts. He described his mill’s paper as “of a kind that will work easy upon types, set to almost any creed or principle,” and enlisted the patronage of printers invested in “equal rights and reciprocal advantage.” Politically, Ormsby was affiliated with the Whig Party in the early 1840s, but by 1848 he ran for Congress as a Free Soil candidate. These affiliations, particularly his turn to the Free Soil Party, suggest that he was in agreement with antislavery principles. (Read more about Ormsby, including his departure from Michigan to join the ‘forty-niners’ in the gold rush, in Lela Duff’s Ann Arbor Yesterdays, published by the Friends of the Ann Arbor Public Library in 1962.)

INK

Unlike paper, printing ink made up only a small portion of the Signal of Liberty’s regular expenditures—approximately $40 per year—but the supply chain features an array of local Michigan bookstores whose owners were active in antislavery circles. Advertisements in the Signal reveal business relationships with at least three different bookstores: Chauncey Morse’s Michigan Bookstore and Alexander McFarren’s book and stationary shop, both on Jefferson Street in Detroit, and William R. Perry’s bookstore in Ann Arbor’s Lower Town. On March 4, 1844, the Signal printed advertisements for all three, which shows how eager the editors were to promote (and receive advertising revenue) from local businesses, even those who might be in competition with one another. The Signal purchased ink from both Detroit bookstores on different occasions, but by the end of the 1840s they had the most regular arrangement with Alexander McFarren.

The first hint of where the Signal purchased its ink appears in a March 6, 1843 advertisement for “Boston Printing Ink,” which was likely reprinted in many Michigan newspapers. Supplied by Chauncey Morse’s Michigan Bookstore, the advertisement offers a $1 discount on ink for newspaper printers who include the ad in two or three subsequent issues. The issues in which the “Boston Printing Ink” advertisements appear were the first issues of the Signal produced by Theodore Foster and Guy Beckley after they purchased a printing press, type, and other equipment from their former printer, T. N. Caulkins. Searching for the supplies they needed, the editors turned to Morse’s recently-established Detroit bookstore for discounted ink. The Michigan Bookstore continued to sell Boston Printing Ink for at least two or three years, and it supplied other local newspapers including the Whig-affiliated Oakland Gazette.
 

The Signal of Liberty also had regular business relations with another recently opened bookstore, this one closer to home. Beginning in January 1844, William R. Perry was advertising a “New Book Store” in Ann Arbor’s Lower Town, near the Flouring Mill. Perry was a regular subscriber and advertiser in the Signal, which indicates his affiliation with the Liberty party and antislavery principles. Theodore Foster’s Day Book reveals significant evidence of purchasing and trade between the Signal and Perry’s Ann Arbor Bookstore, but the goods purchased were usually small in number at a fairly high frequency, suggesting that the editors turned to Perry’s store more out of convenience than for bulk supplies. Although Perry did sell ink, most recorded transactions indicate the purchase of paper, usually fine quality letter paper, which he sold at rates of $3 to $4 per ream. Perry’s advertisement boasts “Detroit prices” for customers paying in cash, but the Signal found better prices for printing ink at Detroit bookstores that had the luxury of a direct supply from East Coast cities like Boston and New York via the Erie Canal.
 

The Detroit bookstore that emerged as the Signal of Liberty’s primary ink supplier was Alexander McFarren’s book and stationary shop on Jefferson Street, established in 1837 or 1838. Foster’s Day Book records two 1847 ink purchases that document regular transactions between the Signal and the Detroit shop. Foster usually sent his reliable compositor and pressman, S.B. McCracken, to purchase the ink directly from McFarren’s shop. A September 22, 1847 order shows that McCracken bought a small $5 “keg of ink,” while a December 9, 1847 order shows that McCracken bought a 43 lb. keg for $12.90, a price of 30 cents per pound. A Detroit Free Press ad from December 28, 1849 reveals the source of McFarren’s news ink: John D. McCreary’s ink manufactory in New York City, which supplied dozens of newspapers across the continent, from New Orleans to Montreal.
 

Like the Ann Arbor bookseller William R. Perry, Alexander McFarren was a regular subscriber and advertiser in the Signal of Liberty, but he was even more active in antislavery organizing. Beginning as early as January 1842, McFarren was an agent for the Signal, most likely using his bookshop as a base for soliciting subscriptions and selling the Signal to Detroit readers. He also sold locally printed abolitionist books including antislavery almanacs, and he was a member of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society. The Signal’s close collaboration with business partners like McFarren shows the newspaper’s commitment to supporting local business owners who promoted the antislavery cause in their personal lives as well as in their commercial enterprises. The New York and Michigan-based foundries, mills, and bookshops that supplied type, paper, and ink to the Signal of Liberty all offered fair prices and high-quality products that helped advance the antislavery cause in Michigan.

For a closer look at how Signal of Liberty editors Theodore Foster and Guy Beckley decided what to print in their paper on any given week, check out the fourth installment of “Paper, Ink, and Pi,” coming soon!

Part II: “Printers & Presses”

What printing press did the Signal of Liberty use? In his 1960 dissertation, John Edgar Kephart wrote that it was “probably” a Washington hand-press because of its popularity in America’s frontier states at the time. But he was not certain.

This simple research question launched a month-long hunt for clues about printers and presses in early Michigan history. The search led me from the digitized newspaper holdings of the Ann Arbor District Library to the 19th century newspapers and archives of the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library to online forums about the history of letterpresses in the United States. I became a 19th century detective; and my quarry turned out to be not just one press, but many.

To find out what kind of press the Signal of Liberty was printed on during its peak years in the mid-1840s, I also had to research three other newspapers that were sponsored by the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society: the American Freeman (1839) and Michigan Freeman (1839-1841), both published in Jackson, and Battle Creek’s Michigan Liberty Press (1848-1849). I learned that the Signal and its immediate predecessors and successors were printed on at least four different printing presses during a cumulative 10-year run. The table below maps out the editors, printers, and presses of these papers. The rest of the post explains how I tracked them down.

Nicholas Sullivan’s Ramage Press

One of the first clues I followed was the first printer of the Signal of Liberty, Nicholas Sullivan, whose name appeared on the masthead from April 1841 to April 1842. Sullivan’s affiliation with the paper stretched back to the Signal’s very first predecessor, the Jackson-based American Freeman. Very little information exists about the American Freeman. It was edited by Nicholas Sullivan’s abolitionist brother, Rev. William M. Sullivan, until it was replaced by the weekly Michigan Freeman. Only three issues remain from the American Freeman’s very short run in the spring and summer of 1839. I read these in the original at the Bentley Historical Library. A recurring illustration caught my eye: a printing press spreading light across the globe, accompanied by the motto “Our country must be preserved.”

Could this illustration be a representation of the American Freeman’s printing press, I wondered? Or was it a popular woodblock engraving available for purchase—a 19th century version of a “stock photo”? Whether or not it was specially drawn for the Freeman, further research convinced me that the press represented here is accurate. The sturdy, square frame is that of a wooden hand-press, specifically a model called a Ramage.

The Ramage was a popular press in early Michigan newspaper history. A full-sized hand-press with a wooden frame, it was light enough to transport to far-flung territories, but it was more labor-intensive than the new iron lever presses that replaced it. Two pressmen working at top speed could only print a “token” of paper per hour (that’s 240 sheets, or a half ream): one man would spread ink on the type, and the other would “pull the devil’s tail,” the lever that brought the platen down to create the impression. As long-time Michigan newspaperman S. B. McCracken recalled from his time working as an apprentice for Pontiac’s Jacksonian (1838-1839), “two pulls were required to print one side of a four or five column paper.” By the time McCracken was a compositor for the Signal of Liberty in the mid-1840s, Ramages had been largely replaced by the faster, more efficient Washington presses, which required only one pull per side.

After a good deal of sleuthing, I confirmed that the American Freeman was, indeed, printed on a Ramage press. The key to identifying Nicholas Sullivan’s press was his apprentice or “devil,” Charles “Vic” DeLand, who assisted Sullivan in printing the Jacksonburg Sentinel (1837-1840). Recalling his boyhood days in the printing office, DeLand wrote that the Jacksonburg Sentinel “was printed on an old-fashioned Ramage press, mostly made of wood, and required four impressions to print a single paper. The ink was spread on the type with buckskin balls, about the size of a dinner plate, which was spatted over the form.” The American Freeman was printed by the exact same process.

An even more fascinating discovery was that Sullivan’s press was only the third printing press in Michigan: before traveling to Jackson, the old Ramage printed Detroit’s first weekly newspaper as well as the first newspaper in Washtenaw county! This discovery came from my historian’s impulse to follow an obscure footnote, which led me to an 1854 article published by DeLand in his newspaper the American Citizen (now the Jackson Citizen-Patriot). The Jackson District Library was kind enough to share the article with me. DeLand wrote that Sullivan’s press was part of “the old Detroit Gazette establishment” before it was brought to Ann Arbor in 1829 to print the Western Emigrant, the first newspaper in Washtenaw county. From there, 22-year-old Nicholas Sullivan purchased the press while en route from Vergennes, Vermont to Jackson. Following in the footsteps of these historic predecessors, he set out to print Michigan’s first antislavery newspaper.

The Press from Ohio

I dug into the next iteration of the paper, the Michigan Freeman, at the Bentley Historical Library. In August 1839 the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society purchased its own press and equipment, hired New Yorker Seymour B. Treadwell as editor, and rebranded the American Freeman as the Michigan Freeman (1839-1841). A letter from Treadwell to his sixteen-year-old son described his commitment to “go to Jackson to labor for the enslaved and for our country.” I found very little information about the new printing press, however. A line in a biography of Treadwell, written by his daughter, stated that it was transported via open wagon from Columbus, Ohio, while an undated newspaper clipping claimed that “the press and type were brought from Cincinnati in a common market wagon.”

Treadwell had initially recruited his colleague Morgan S. Moore, a printer from Rochester, to print the Freeman. However, ads for Nicholas Sullivan’s printing office that reappear in 1840 suggest that Sullivan resumed his role as printer when Moore resigned to start the Michigan State Gazette (1840-1849). It seems that Moore and Sullivan swapped presses at this point: Moore used Sullivan’s old Ramage for the Gazette, while Sullivan took over the press owned by the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society to continue printing the Michigan Freeman.

By 1841, the Freeman was severely underfunded and Treadwell resigned. Determined to continue the paper as a core component of the society’s antislavery mission, the executive committee of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society resolved to “edit the Freeman themselves.” Naming committee members Theodore Foster and Rev. Guy Beckley as editors of the new Signal of Liberty, they transferred the paper and its press to Ann Arbor and commenced publishing on April 28, 1841. Their printer was, once again, Nicholas Sullivan. Within a year, however, Sullivan had decided to start his own paper. He moved to Brighton and then Howell, where he settled in as printer and editor of The Livingston Courier (1843-1857).

T.N. Caulkins’s Washington Press

Even with Sullivan’s departure, the Signal of Liberty continued to publish weekly issues. How did they do it? The next major clue I followed was an article in the Signal of Liberty itself. On March 6, 1843, the editors Theodore Foster and Reverend Guy Beckley announced that they had purchased a press and fifty cases of type from T. N. Caulkins. The newspaper missed one of its weekly installments while they moved the printing equipment to the second floor of Josiah Beckley’s (Guy Beckley’s brother’s) mercantile shop on the Huron block of Broadway in Ann Arbor.

But who was T. N. Caulkins, and what kind of press did he have? The Signal of Liberty’s masthead indicates that he was the printer from April 1842 to February 1843. He was also the editor and printer of Ann Arbor’s Democratic Herald (1839-1842). According to local historian Louis William Doll, the Signal was “printed on the Herald’s press by contract” until Caulkins’ ideological disagreements with the Democratic party—including the fact that he was also printing an antislavery paper—led to complaints by readers of the Herald and his decision to sell his equipment to Foster and Beckley. Caulkins originally purchased the press from the Herald’s predecessor, the Michigan Argus (1835-1839). Unfortunately, none of the sources I found about the Argus, the Herald, or the Signal give clues as to what kind of press Caulkins operated. However, the decades of its active use—from as early as 1835 to as late as 1857—suggest that it was a durable Washington hand-press, just as Kephart guessed.

The Washington hand-press—which was three or four times faster than a Ramage—was a popular model for mid-nineteenth-century newspapers, including the Michigan-based Detroit Free Press (1831-present) and Grand River Times (1837-1841). First patented in 1821 and then improved in 1829 by Samuel Rust, the Washington press featured an efficient toggle joint lever, a larger platen, and a relatively light-weight iron frame that could be disassembled for transport to Western territories—most often by boat or wagon, but in at least one local case by a team of sled dogs. It was also very durable: while en route from Niagara Falls, the press of the Grand River Times survived a shipwreck off Thunder Bay Island and a fall through river ice before running its first issue on April 18, 1837. Michiganders can see a nineteenth-century Washington hand-press in person at the Print & Tin Shop in Greenfield Village at The Henry Ford.

Woolnough’s Washington Press

When the Signal of Liberty folded in 1848 due to lack of funding and personnel changes, the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society transferred their antislavery paper to Battle Creek, where they employed local printer Walter W. Woolnough, former editor of Battle Creek’s first newspaper, the Western Citizen and Champion (1845-1848), to print the newly-named Michigan Liberty Press. Within a few months they had purchased Woolnough’s Washington press, and the paper came under the editorship of abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Erastus Hussey.

Unfortunately, the Michigan Liberty Press did not last long. As was the case with several other newspapers promoting abolitionism and anti-racism in the nineteenth century, the press itself became a target for attack. According to Battle Creek historian Berenice Bryant Lowe, Hussey’s press and all its equipment was burned in June 1849 by proslavery arsonists. The power of the printing press in promoting abolitionism at mid-century emerges clearly in the pages of antislavery newspapers, as well as in this incident of backlash-fueled vandalism. The destruction of Hussey’s press marked the end of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society’s sponsorship of an antislavery newspaper, but abolitionist sentiment was on the rise, and papers in nearby states such as Marius R. Robinson’s Salem, Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle (1845-1861) and Frederick Douglass’s Rochester, NY North Star (1847-1851) took up the cause.

To learn more about printing the Signal of Liberty—including what kinds of paper and ink were available to Michigan printers in the 1830s and 40s, and a glimpse into a newspaper editor’s daily tasks—check out Part III and Part IV of “Paper, Ink, and Pi,” coming soon! (Or return to Part I.)

Louisa Pieper, longtime Ann Arbor Historic Preservation Coordinator, local historian, and friend to the Library passed away on Wednesday, August 15, 2018.  

After coming to Ann Arbor in 1968, Louisa spent years with Ann Arbor's Historic District Commission, first as staff director and then as Historic Preservation Coordinator for the last 17 years of her career.  In these positions she fought to preserve the fabric of Ann Arbor's past through architecture, helping to establish 12 of the city's Historic Districts.  Many of the buildings in these areas would long since have disappeared or been changed beyond recognition were it not for her tireless efforts.  She was also a founding member of the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, which works on legislative issues at the state level to protect and restore Michigan's architectural heritage.

Louisa's work helped to keep the past alive in Ann Arbor by ensuring it surrounded all who inhabited the city.  She had the true preservationist's commitment, not to stopping development, but to balancing development with history in order to enrich the tapestry of city life.  Her goal in all of her work was to preserve "the feeling that people have the past all around them" and to ensure that there would be enough visible evidence of that past that "we can feel connected with it".

Another piece of Louisa's legacy that will endure is the Downtown Ann Arbor Historical Street Exhibit program, which created and maintains the glass and porcelain history panels around the city.  As one of the project's principal creators, Louisa had a hand in researching and writing each of those panels, putting the city's history in front of everyone who walked the streets of Ann Arbor as a citizen or a visitor.  Her ability to convey the large movements of history without losing sight of individual stories is evident in each of these panels.  Each exhibit also demonstrates her eye for the locations and images that would arrest pedestrians and make them pause to learn a bit about the past in the midst of their day.

We are thankful to Louisa as historians for the past that is evident all around us as we walk through the city of Ann Arbor and we are thankful to Louisa as friends for her years of friendship and her unfailing sardonic wit.  Louisa will be missed by all who knew her but her work will live on in the city for generations to come.

Part I: “Pi”

On April 14, 1845 the editors of the Signal of Liberty (1841-1848), a weekly Ann Arbor antislavery newspaper, ran an apologetic notice stating that “Last week our whole advertising page was knocked into pi, and we were obliged to insert some advertisements in two places, while others did not appear at all.” While twenty-first-century readers may wonder whether they dropped the page into someone’s dessert (or a geometric formula), the term meant something quite different to a nineteenth-century printer. Newspapers such as the Signal of Liberty relied on a laborious technique of arranging individual pieces of cast metal type into lines, columns, and page-sized “forms” before they could be inked and pressed. Types became “pied” if they were mixed up, dropped, or otherwise jumbled to the extent that each letter and punctuation mark had to be manually resorted into cases before the printer could resume composing. For a whole page of a 4-page issue to be “knocked into pi”—that’s up to 56,000 pieces of type!—was quite a disaster, indeed.

To become a printer, you had to master the counter-intuitive practice of setting letters into your composing stick upside-down and backwards—no easy feat—as well as the vocabulary of the printing trade. In fact, the origin of the saying “mind your p’s and q’s” may very well have been in printing shops, where compositors had to double-check their selection of these easily-confused letters. It certainly helped to have a “lower case” and an “upper case,” which were wooden boxes designed to place the most commonly-used letters close to hand. Other printers’ terms included “devil,” a nickname for a young apprentice who got the messiest, most tedious jobs like rolling ink, sorting pied type out of the “hellbox,” and “distributing” it back into the proper cases. As one Signal of Liberty article joked, a mischievous newspaper printer might tell his young “devil”: “get your stick and conclude the horrid murder which Joe began last night—wash your hands and come to dinner, and then see that all the pi is cleared up.”

Today, letterpress printing is an artisanal practice mainly pursued by small independent publishers, artists, and the makers of handmade greeting cards and other ephemera. The technique, however, dominated the history of printing for centuries, from Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the movable-type printing press in 1439 up until the rise of offset printing in the twentieth century. Theodore Foster and Reverend Guy Beckley joined the ranks of thousands of country newspaper editors in the U.S. and its territories—in profession, if not in political affiliation—when they began publishing the Signal of Liberty on an iron hand-press on behalf of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society in April 1841. But the practical workings of a newspaper, including its budget, remained mysterious to most subscribers, who were notorious for neglecting to “pay the printer.”

A March 23, 1846 article targeted at delinquent subscribers offered a crash course in the Signal of Liberty’s day-to-day operations and yearly expenses:

EXPENSES

Paper and Ink $580 [$850]
Interest, Insurance, and Repairs, 100
Four hands 936
Pay of Editors and correspondents, 400
Incidental expenses, 100
__________

$2,386

As the article makes clear (despite the unfortunate typographical error of $580 instead of $850 for “Paper and Ink”), the Signal of Liberty barely broke even. To supplement the money received from subscriptions (which varied from $1 to $2 per year, for a total revenue of $2,025), the paper depended on job printing and advertising. Sometimes the editors even placed ads asking for daily staples such as wood and produce in exchange for subscriptions. (A nineteenth-century printers’ proverb could have been “You can’t have your pi and eat too.”)

So how did the Signal of Liberty stay in print for seven years, and what printers, paper- and ink-makers, and other local business connections contributed to its success? How does the story of the Signal compare to that of other early Michigan newspapers, and the history of nineteenth-century letterpress printing? Parts II-IV of “Paper, Ink, and Pi” will give the details! (Read Part II here!)

In the meantime, if you want to try your hand at letterpress printing, the Ann Arbor District Library holds a weekly “Letterpress Lab” featuring the library’s historic Kelsey and Vandercook letterpresses—check out the next event on August 15. And definitely don’t miss the upcoming 2018 Ann Arbor Wayzgoose & Printing Festival on August 24 and 25!

Donald Hall, one of the last major poets of his generation, former University of Michigan professor, and 14th Poet Laureate of the United States, died June 23 on his farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire, where he'd been in declining health. 

Last year, AADL celebrated Hall's poem "Eating the Pig" with a website chronicling in poetry, prose, photographs, and paintings the now-famous Ann Arbor literary dinner that inspired his poem.

Listen to Donald Hall reading his poem "Eating the Pig."

Check out this collection of black and white photos of Ann Arbor from over 40 years ago!

Shared by local resident RJ Godin, this collection includes vintage shots of past local businesses like the Flame Bar, Omega Pizza and Central Cafe. 

Also in this collection are charming street scenes of downtown Ann Arbor; and shots of iconic campus locations like the Observatory, Nickels Arcade and the Campus Corner. You can see more from this collection here.

 "Just before the bus left this morning, taking him to Detroit and induction in the armed services, the last Ann Arbor draftee in the second bus (above) received the most appropriate of all farewells. More than 500 townspeople heard Mayor Leigh J. Young and the University ROTC and marching bands in the send-off program for the men of Selective Service Board No. 1 this morning."

More photos from that day here.

The Dexter-Ann Arbor Run turns 45 next year and the Ann Arbor Track Club, who among many things helps to sponsor the run, turns 50 this year! You can see all the spectacular moments from start to finish like the winner of the first run. Participants range from the oldest to one of the youngest as well as those in wheelchairs. There are photos of the victors to those just clearly exhausted. See the moms & dads that participated, one carried his kids in the race and others pushed their strollers through it all while still other parents ran with their kids. But the most inspiring photos are those that show support between runners as well from family & friends here and here. So enjoy the walk (or run as the case may be) down memory lane with articles & more photos for the DX-A2 Run. You can also see more of the Ann Arbor Track Club like their relay team from 1966 and others here.