Existing comment:
James Johns (1797-1874), Vermont Autograph and Remarker (Huntington, Vt.), 1 December 1854.
Were it not for its upward slanting lines of text, one might guest this tiny newspaper rolled off a press, but it was "pen printed." Pen printing was a form of precise penmanship which strove to mimic type. A master of the art, and the creator of this issue of the Vermont Autograph and Remarker, was James Johns, self-appointed (and largely self-educated) chronicler of the Green Mountain State. For nearly sixty-five years he churned out stories, poems, sermons and acrostics, but his occasional newspaper enjoyed the widest circulation. He distributed it for token sums (but more frequently gratis) between 1833 and 1873. Although Johns acquired a hand press in 1857, it lacked sufficient type of ink all four pages of the paper simultaneously, so he reverted to his tried -- and quicker -- method of pen printing. |