The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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1935 article, where he wrote, “Thomas Jefferson and his friends persuaded William
Rind … to settle in Williamsburg,” but the Jefferson connection was not repeated
in his book on the subject of colonial newspapers and the Revolution a few decades
later. 29 More recently, other prominent historians continued the error. Jack Greene
cites Carl Bridenbaugh when he writes of the Jefferson connection, and an article by
Robert Weir in Bernard Bailyn’s book on The Press and the American Revolution
notes that the new printer “had come to Williamsburg at the invitation of Thomas
Jefferson and some other leading men.” 30 Numerous other works have also included
the assertion that the former president wrote about this specifically in a letter to
Isaiah Thomas. 31
While such prominent historians apparently did not see the weakness in
Thomas’ attribution, a 1998 dissertation by Laurie Godfrey did raise serious
questions about Jefferson’s direct participation. Godfrey wrote that it was extremely
unlikely that Jefferson was that deeply involved. She noted that at the young age of
twenty-two, Jefferson was likely to be merely a bystander in procuring a printer, and
that the widely repeated claim actually came from a letter Jefferson wrote to
someone else. She does not speculate as to why Jefferson included himself by using
the term “we,” why Thomas might have claimed that Jefferson wrote that in a letter
to Thomas, nor does she recognize the significance of print competition on the
ideological bent of the newspapers. As a minor point not central to her larger work,
the argument was not completely researched and developed, and few have noticed
29 Schlesinger, “Colonial Newspapers and the Stamp Act,” 78, Schlesinger, Prelude to
Independence, 79.
30 Greene, Quest for Power, 289, fn 5, Bridenbaugh, Myths and Realities, 41-42. Robert M.
Weir, “Newspaper Press in the Southern Colonies" in The Press and the American Revolution,
Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds., 109.
31 See for example, “Old Virginia Editors,” William and Mary College Quarterly Historical
Magazine, 7, no. 1. (July 1898): 9-17, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography
(New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1915), 2: 255-6, McMurtrie, Beginnings of Printing in
Virginia, 20-21, Calhoun Winton, “Eighteenth Century Southern Book Trade” in Colonial Book
in the Atlantic World, 239, and King, “Making an Impression,” 122.