The Printing Office & Post Office on Duke of Gloucester Street.,
This building is a reconstruction of Parks' print shop and post office at Colonial Williamsburg. VA. Parks came from Maryland to do government printing and commercial work. Six years later, he started Virginia's first newspaper. With the advice and investment of Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin, Parks opened Virginia's first paper mill in 1743.
Parks' double-bay-windowed shop served as a stationer's, a post office, an advertising agency, an office supply shop, a newsstand, and a bookbindery. He sold magazines and books, maps and almanacs,and even sealing wax! His press printed broadsides and business forms, laws and proclamations, tracts and blank record books. In the 20th century, while excavating the site of Parks' shop, archaeologists found lead border ornaments used for French and Indian War currency.
Thomas Jefferson's "Ideas on American Freedom" was first printed on Clementina Rind's hand-pulled press in this building
The Printing Office & Post Office on Duke of Gloucester Street.,
This building is a reconstruction of Parks' print shop and post office at Colonial Williamsburg. VA. Parks came from Maryland to do government printing and commercial work. Six years later, he started Virginia's first newspaper. With the advice and investment of Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin, Parks opened Virginia's first paper mill in 1743.
Parks' double-bay-windowed shop served as a stationer's, a post office, an advertising agency, an office supply shop, a newsstand, and a bookbindery. He sold magazines and books, maps and almanacs,and even sealing wax! His press printed broadsides and business forms, laws and proclamations, tracts and blank record books. In the 20th century, while excavating the site of Parks' shop, archaeologists found lead border ornaments used for French and Indian War currency.
Thomas Jefferson's "Ideas on American Freedom" was first printed on Clementina Rind's hand-pulled press in this building