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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Printing in Vermont

Printing has long been a profession of our ancestors.   Currently Ronald F. Ginn is employed as a printer.  He learned this profession from his father  -in-law Donald J. Howie.  However, William R. Howie was the first in the family line.

A newbie by settlement standards of the east coast, Vermont has an early history of printing. The oldest newspaper was the Vermont Gazette, published in Westminster from 1781 to 1783 by Alden, Spooner, & Green. Interestingly, the printing press used was the first one brought to the colonies from England in 1683. The oldest continuously published family-owned newspaper in the country is the Rutland Herald, covering the entire state since 1794. Newspaper publishing was centered in four locations: Bennington, Brattleboro, Rutland, and Burlington. Most towns in Vermont had their own local newspapers by 1830, which corresponds with the peak population of rural Vermont towns.