Lydia Bailey: A Checklist of Her Imprints

The Early Years

Mistress of Her Situation D 9 relatives and acquaintances in the printing trades, among them his sister-in-law, Ann Franklin; the aforementioned Elizabeth Timothée; her daughter-in-law, Ann; and his granddaughter, Sally Mecom.38 Lydia Bailey would never have succeeded in her operations if it were not for such historical precedents. That said, her achievements were due to a much wider set of circumstances, both social and personal, some of which indeed had been in place for generations, but others of which were of more recent vintage. The Early Years Lydia Bailey’s surviving business accounts are the primary tools for understanding how she responded to these circumstances, both immediately after her husband’s death and in subsequent years. The bulk of these accounts are in six volumes at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and one at the American Antiquarian Society.39 Such workbooks, generated for practical purposes without a great deal of introspection, are a particularly authentic guide; unlike diaries, which are reflective, or court records, which chronicle only certain contentious circumstances, they open historical moments to readers with a unique transparency.40 However, an important observation to make when one is trying to analyze the progress of Lydia Bailey’s business is that most of her extant account books cover only the early part of her career. It is clear from comparing these books with the work she produced in later years that her business focus evolved so much over the decades that her early output little resembled her later work. She inherited and successfully continued a printing operation that depended on local booksellers for most of its work, but by the late 1820s she was relying much more on an assortment of government offices and charitable institutions; and by the end of her career these were the only patrons she had. As required by law, Lydia began by paying off her husband’s sizable debts (creditors’ rights came before a widow’s rights in Pennsylvania law) and proceeded with business at hand.41 In one notebook, just days after Robert’s demise, she wrote, “Cash Lydia R. Bailey Received as administratrix to the estate of her husband Robert Bailey from Jacob Johnson 52.95. Ditto from Domonac Sanford 3.33.” This is followed by a long list of debts paid, consisting of twenty-five names at a total of $601.56.42 She completed various unfinished transactions and printed the next numbers in a series of almanacs that Robert had been printing. In addition, she continued what was already a flourishing business for the Bailey shop in the “finishing” of maps and globes. This 10 D lydia bailey specialty entailed coloring, backing with linen, varnishing, and putting maps on rollers. This was historically a point of intersection between map publishers and women involved in cottage industries that related to their traditional domestic responsibilities of fabric making and sewing.43 These women are largely lost to history. Contemporaries viewed their work as menial, and it was very poorly paid, but Lydia turned this seemingly insignificant manual labor into a long-lived and lucrative business. Her map memoranda book (fig. 2), in which she itemized each map she treated, for whom, and for how much, chronicled decades of work that she did for numerous individuals, schools, booksellers , institutional patrons, and the municipal government.44 (Two hand-colored and varnished engraved maps at the Library Company of Philadelphia bear a small clipped printed label reading “Varnished, &c., &c. by Lydia R. Bailey .”)45 She took stock early on and submitted, “The following is the necessary expenses in finishing maps, my object in keeping an account of it is mearly for my own satisfaction to know what I clear by them in the course of each year.”46 At the same time, Lydia soon departed from certain established practices. She did not run a large retail bookshop. As other scholars have pointed out, the livelihood of colonial booksellers frequently depended on imported stock, so this was a significant departure. There are no indications that Lydia operFig . 2 Lydia Bailey, Map Memoranda Book (HSP, Am 9065,v. 4, 15–16) Mistress of Her Situation D 11 ated a dry goods store, as did some predecessors, Deborah Franklin being the most obvious example.47 There is evidence in her workbooks that she initially was buying almanacs in bulk, though for what precise purposes is unclear...