Name/Title
(FRANKLIN PRINTING). (ANTIGUA)Scope and Content
(FRANKLIN PRINTING). (ANTIGUA). [Printed Passport Issued by
the Island of Antigua]. By His Excellency William Mathew, Captain-
General and Governor in Chief in and over all His Majesty's Leeward
Charibbee-Islands in America. License is hereby granted unto
[Walter Weir Esq] to depart this Island, he having given [Bond with
Security]. This TICKET to be in Force Ten Days. Given under my Hand
the [Eighteenth] Day of [September] Anno Dom. [1749]. Signed by
William Mathew.
An unrecorded printed passport by one of Benjamin Franklin's
journeymen, Thomas Smith, the first printer on Antigua, and just
two years prior to Benjamin Mecom's brief time on the island. The
press, paper, type, and ink were all supplied by Benjamin Franklin
who saw fit to have Thomas Smith open and operate the very first
printing press on the island. Even while Benjamin Mecom was on the
island, Thomas Smith was still in charge of the operation.
"Franklin decided, in 1748, to send a printing outfit to St.
John's, the chief town of the island [Antigua]. He chose as manager
a young man named Thomas Smith, who had worked for him in
Philadelphia, and also in his New York office under [James] Parker.
Writing from Philadelphia to William Strahan in London, October 19,
1748, he says: `I have lately sent a Printing-house to Antigua, by
a very sober, honest and diligent young Man, who has already (as I
am inform'd by divers Hands) gain'd the Friendship of the Principal
People, and is like to get into good Business. This will open
another Market for your Books if you think fit to use it, for I am
persuaded that if you shall send him a Parcel with any Quantity of
Stationery he may write to you for, he will make you good and
punctual Returns. His Name is Thomas Smith; he is the only Printer
on that Island; had work'd with me here, and at my Printing-house
in New York 3 or 4 years, and always behaved extreamly well. -B.
FRANKLIN.'
The exact date when the new press began work in the
printing office on Kerby's Wharf in St. John's is not known with
certainty. An entry in Franklin's Ledger `D ,' under date of April
16, 1748, on page 86, opens the account of Thomas Smith Dr.,
Antigua, for cash loaned, skins, ink, paper, etc" - The Antigua
Press, p. 304.
Walter Weir, to whom the passport was issued, came from a
family of sugarcane plantation owners who arrived on the island in
1679. The Weir family owned over 400 acres of land and had multiple
plantations with 184 working slaves by 1829. Their family business
would grow to the 20th century sugar empire which was the Antigua
Sugar Factory Ltd., which held and operated hundreds of mills on
the islands of Antigua and Barbuda through the 1940s.
This passport accomplished, and possibly printed, the same
year as the first book printed on Antigua entitled Occasional Poems
by Rev. William Sherving [1749]. Two copies of this book can be
traced, one owned by the British Museum (incomplete) and another
which was discovered and owned by Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach.