Colonial Printing

2009 Harvard Yard Archaeology

Could James Printer, the Native American Nipmuc who ran the press at the Indian College, have handled the pieces of 17th-century print type excavated from Harvard Yard? Find out more about him in the video.

Two student interns attempted to match the metal print type pieces with early books printed at Harvard. They helped produce casts for the more than two dozen pieces of print type, then printed each cast like a stamp, comparing the prints to letters in the books. They confirmed that much of the same font was used in several early volumes.

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