Maryland Revolutionaries: Jonas and Anne Catharine Green

In 2024, Governor Wes Moore issued an Executive Order establishing the Maryland 250 Commission, which was tasked with promoting Maryland’s contributions to American history. This commission also offered various grant programs to support local, regional, and municipal efforts in commemorating America’s 250th. The Maryland Historical Trust (MHT) received one of these grants for the project “Revolutionary Maryland: Freedom of the Press Then and Now.” A portion of this grant is funding efforts to rehouse, conserve, and curate one of Maryland’s most significant archaeological collections, the Jonas and Anne Catharine Green House and Printshop (Figure 1).

Figure 1: MAC Lab intern, Ben Prunty, rehousing lead printer's type from the Green Printshop site.

The Jonas and Anne Catharine Green House (Figure 2) was the subject of four Archaeology in Annapolis (AIA) field seasons from 1983 to 1986. These investigations, led by the University of Maryland Department of Anthropology, discovered the location of the detached printshop in the backyard of the house, from which thousands of pieces of lead printer’s type were recovered.

Figure 2: The Jonas and Anne Catherine Green House in Annapolis.

One piece of type included a Death’s Head that is strikingly similar to actual font that appeared in copies of The Maryland Gazette, the colonial paper published by the Green family (Figure 3). The archaeological collection from these excavations consists of over 200,000 artifacts, 11,000 of which are lead printer’s type. Having been in the care of Historic Annapolis for many years, this collection has been transferred to MHT and is now curated at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory (MAC Lab).

Figure 3: Death's Head printer's type recovered from the Green Printshop site. Image courtesy of Historic Annapolis.

Jonas Green was born in 1712 in Boston into a long line of New England printers. In 1735, he moved to Philadelphia, where he spent three years as a journeyman with notable printers Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Bradford. Jonas Green married Anne Catharine Hoof in the spring of 1738. The couple moved to Annapolis to fill the need for a government printer shortly thereafter.

When the Greens arrived in Annapolis, they set up a printing business and Jonas became the printer and editor of The Maryland Gazette in 1745. Both Jonas and Anne Catharine Green

were supporters of the fight for independence and did not shy away from using their

newspaper as a platform for political debate. Evidence of this exists in surviving issues of The

Maryland Gazette, which feature exchanges between important revolutionary figures such

as Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Daniel Dulany on the imposition of tobacco fees, as

well as Green’s use of a Death’s Head type he created to oppose the British-imposed Stamp

Act of 1765. In addition to incorporating the Death’s Head imagery in the paper’s printed

protests against the British government, Jonas Green authored several pieces attacking other

colonial policies in North America.

After his death in 1767, Anne Catharine assumed the day-to-day operations of The

Maryland Gazette and became the paper’s official editor. She took over the printshop,

becoming one of the first woman publishers in the American colonies, providing uninterrupted

publication of the only newspaper in Annapolis at the time. Historical research on the Green

family’s printing business found that many items that had formerly been in the printshop,

including paper, various printing tools, and a book binding press, had been moved into

the house after Jonas’ death. Moving the printing business into the house allowed Anne

Catharine to continue publishing while still managing the household and caring for her six

children. This was a bold move that challenged a woman’s expected domestic role in colonial

America.

The grant-funded work on the Green Family Printshop collection will ensure that its

extraordinary research potential, which contains the largest collection of lead printer’s

type ever recovered archaeologically in the United States, is preserved and made available

for future generations. Combined with Anne Catharine Green’s 1775 probate inventory

and other primary source information, this collection can provide a better understanding

of the role of the press in Colonial America. It is also a remarkable story of a woman

who took on the challenging role of both newspaper editor and single mother following

her husband’s death. The Maryland Gazette continued to be printed by Jonas and Anne

Catharine’s descendants until 1839.