Maryland Gazette

Maryland Historical Society

Anne Catharine Green, printer and publisher, was born in the Netherlands and emigrated to America as a young child. Nothing else is known of her early life until her marriage, recorded in the register of Christ Church, Philadelphia, on April 25, 1738, to Jonas Green (1712–1767), the Boston-born son of Timothy Green and Mary Flint. The descendant of New England printers, Green learned his craft in New London and Boston and worked as a printer in Philadelphia after his arrival in that city c.1736.

Within weeks of their marriage, the Greens moved to Annapolis, Maryland, renting a small house on Charles Street, with Jonas's print shop occupying one room of the home. Subsequent improvements to the property included moving the print shop to a separate building in the rear yard and enlarging the house to accommodate the growing family. Anne Catharine gave birth to fourteen children between 1738 and 1760, eight of whom died as infants or young children. In addition to her household and family responsibilities during these years, at various times in the 1740s Anne Catharine advertised the sale of coffee, raisins, and chocolate in the pages of her husband's newspaper.

When Jonas Green died in 1767, his widow included a lengthy appeal in the next issue of the Maryland Gazette for the continued support of her husband's customers: "I shall venture to supply [them] with News-Papers, on the same Terms he did.and shall be ready to publish.the Advertisements that shall be sent to the Printing-Office." She continued uninterrupted publication of the newspaper, at first on her own and then with her son William's assistance, beginning in January 1768, but she alone carried on the public printer's work, with the same compensation that had been accorded to her husband. After William's death in 1770, the paper again continued solely under her name for a year and a half, and then as the product of "Anne Catharine Green & Son" (this being Frederick).

Several events in Green's life further support the portrait of a woman independently and competently managing her own affairs. Shortly after her husband's death, Green informed those "long in Arrears, owing to my late Husband's Lenity and Backwardness in collecting his just Debts," that she was prepared to take legal action against the debtors and willing to publish in the paper the names of the twelve hundred individuals with unpaid accounts. Some time after Jonas's death, Green moved the print shop supplies into the family home and connected the house directly to the shop, arrangements that undoubtedly made easier the tasks of running her household, supervising her youngest children, and managing the printing operations. In 1769 Green paid £6.6.0 to have her portrait painted by Charles Willson Peale (one of the first portraits Peale painted after his return to Annapolis from studying in London)?a portrait in which she holds a document inscribed with the wording "ANNAPOLIS Printer to." The following year Green purchased the lot, house, and outbuildings that she and Jonas had been leasing since 1738.

The "most ambitious work" to appear during her tenure was Elie Vallette's Deputy Commissary's Guide (1774), whose title page, prepared by silversmith Thomas Sparrow, is the only engraved title page from a colonial Maryland press. The leading scholar of colonial Maryland printing has described Green's issue of the Charter and Bye-Laws of the City of Annapolis as "a beautifully printed little volume., which for typographical nicety could hardly have been surpassed by the best of her contemporaries in the colonies." Noteworthy also is the first publication of John Dickinson's 1768 Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in Green's newspaper.

When Anne Catharine Green died on March 30, 1775, five of her children survived as her heirs: Rebecca, Mary, Frederick, Samuel, and Augusta. Green's obituary praised her in the pages of her newspaper as a woman of "mild and benevolent Disposition, and for conjugal Affection, and parental Tenderness, an Example to her Sex." Although the obituary chose to focus on her domestic role, Green proved herself a worthy successor to her husband as printer and publisher.

Wroth, Lawrence C. . A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland: 1686-1776. Baltimore: Typothetae of Baltimore, 1922, available as vol. 435 of the Archives of Maryland Online.