The Project

William Maxwell is recognized as the first person to publish a newspaper in what is now Cincinnati. With his press, Maxwell helped shape the history of the Ohio Valley. He brought information to the Northwest Territory by printing the first weekly newspaper, The Centinel of the Northwest Territory in 1793. In the summer of 1795 (territorial) Governor Arthur St. Clair and two judges, John Cleves Symmes and George Turner, met in Cincinnati and voted to adopt a legal code for the Northwest Territory, and charged Maxwell with its printing. In 1796 Maxwell, with the help of his wife and an apprentice, set the type, printed, bound, and distributed 1,000 copies of the resulting 225-page book, Laws of the Territory of the United States Northwest Territory of the Ohio, that became known as the “Maxwell Code”.

While we will never know exactly what Maxwell's press looked like, it was likely a used model, imported from England. Our project will use the few known original presses from the mid-18th Century, as well as the 1978 schematics of the Smithsonian's "Benjamin Franklin Press," as references. Our hope is to create a replica press as close to the one Maxwell used as possible.