Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • Page 121

Daily Press, Sunday, Sept. 16, 1984 J3 Parke Rouse Virginia's first Public Printer began Williamsburg Gazette in 1730 JU yAX? A ir WILLIAMSBURG Virginia in 1730 was a colony of 114,000 people without a single printer. Ever since it had been settled in 1607. the government had discouraged printing. One British governor at Jamestown, Sir William Berkeley, had even exulted because Virginia had neither "free schools nor printing." He hoped his people would escape such heretical influences.

Then an English printer changed all that. He was William Parks, who had plied his craft briefly in Annapolis and then moved to Williamsburg in 1730. He had to apply and to receive permission from Governor William Gooch in Williamsburg to set up his shop. Parks was designated as "Public Printer of Virginia" at a salary of 120 pounds to print the laws passed by the Virginia Assembly annually in Williamsburg. Today William Parks is recalled in Williamsburg by the restored Colonial Williamsburg Printing office on Duke of Gloucester Street.

There, simple presses and type of Parks's day show visitors his craft. In the shop, costumed craftsmen set type by hand, ink it, and print it on rag-content paper in a simple hand-press, much as William Parks did from 1730 till 1750, when he ran his Williamsburg shop. He died on a trip to England in 1750. The most important thing William Parks did was to start Virginia's first newspaper. It was the Virginia Gazette, and it told Virginians a lot about what was going on in England and the colonies.

In time, the Virginia Gazette that Parks founded helped to spur Virginians to revolt against England and to take the lead in the Revolution. The free press that Berkeley had decried had helped to change America. I'd like to know a whole lot more about William Parks, but we know little about him except for what historians tell us from his newspaper and the books and the job-printing that his little press produced. We know he settled in Annapolis about 1727 and moved on to Williamsburg three years later. For awhile he did business in both places, but after 1730 he spent his years in Virginia.

Soon after he came to Williamsburg, Parks advertised for subscriptions to his proposed Virginia Miscellany perhaps a magazine "at his House, near the Capitol, in Williamsburg." Soon he began to print books. One was "The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia," by President William Stith of William and Mary. Parks published it in 1747, making it one of the first histories in the colonies. Parks printed a poem to thank Governor Gooch in appreciation for his patronage. It was an ode to printing, titled "Typographia," which Parks signed Markland." It may have been a nom de plume for the printer.

In the high-flown style of that day, the ode concludes: "A Ruler's gentle Influence Shall o'er his Land be shewn; Saturnian Reigns shall be renew'd, Truth, Justice, Vertues, be pursu'd, Arts flourish, Peace shall crown the Plains. Where GOOCH administers, AUGUSTUS reigns." William Parks was the first of a dozen printers who lived and worked in 18th-century Williamsburg, but he is the best known of them all. He was a contemporary of Benjamin Franklin, the Philadelphia printer who gave him advice and backing when Parks started a paper mill on a stream in Williamsburg now called Paper Mill Creek. (The site, now rural, is on the Colonial Parkway.) It was described as "the first Mill of the Kind, that ever was erected in this Colony." Franklin later bought paper from the mill. A few specimens of Parks's paper have been identified.

Parks printed his first weekly newspaper, the Virginia Gazette, in 1736. The tiny four-page paper was made up chiefly of dispatches from Europe, small ads, and the text of laws passed by the Assembly. Copies of Parks's Virginia Gazette are rare today, but the State Library and Colonial Williamsburg have accumulated some of them. Nobody has a complete run of Parks's paper, however. Those early Gazettes tell us a lot about life in Virginia in those early days.

They are helpful to historians in tracing the growth of Revolutionary sentiment in Virginia. Foreign news was sometimes copied by Parks from letters received by Virginians arriving by ships from abroad, for Parks's Gazette office was Virginia's post office as well as its printer. Incoming and outgoing ships' mail often went through his shop, handled by ships' captains. Oddly enough, the Virginia Gazette rarely reported Williamsburg or Virginia events except for brief mentions of ship arrivals, marriages, deaths, fires, and the like. It often ran letters on politics.

In those days, it wasn't proper to sign your name to a letter to the editor, so letters usually had a fictitious name. Much that Parks printed is fascinating to today's reader: notices of runaway slaves, of strayed farm animals, of husbands deserted by wives, or of blooded stallions standing at stud on some plantation or other. From the ads of shops in Williamsburg and Yorktown, readers were told of the arrival of new goods by ship from London articles prized by Virginians because of their scarcity. In an early issue of his 1736 Gazette, Parks in- vited readers to insert advertisements: "ADVERTISEMENT, concerning ADVERTISEMENTS "All Persons who have Occasion to buy or sell Houses, Lands, Goods, or Cattle; or have Servants be performed by "the Gentlemen and Ladies of this Country." After Parks died, his daughter sold his printery to William Hunter, formerly of Hampton, who continued publication of the Gazette until Hunter himself died in 1762. Parks's granddaughter married Patrick Henry, and some of William Parks's books thus came into Henry's library.

After Virginia grew angry with Britain in the 1760s, Williamsburg got two newspapers simulta-'. neously, both calling themselves the Virginia Ga- zette. One was pro-British and the other anti. The printers moved with the state capital to Richmond in 1780, where they published and competed for state printing. Williamsburg after 1780 was without any paper, but the name of the Virginia Gazette was revived here many years later.

It is now published twice a week. It's hard to conceive of our country without newspapers. I'm glad William Parks brought his press to Williamsburg. As Governor Berkeley said, "learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them Virginia's "disobedience" and "heresy" resulted in American independence, and her "sects" led to Jefferson's Statute for Religious or Slaves Runaway; or have lost Horses, Cattle, or want to give any Publick Notice; may have it ad-vertis'd in all these Gazettes printed in one Week, for Three Shillings, and for Two Shillings per Week for as many Weeks afterwards as they shall order, by giving or sending their Directions to the Printer hereof. "And, as these Papers will circulate (as speedily as possible) not only all over This, but also the Neighbouring Colonies, and will probably be read by some Thousands of People, it is very likely they may have the desir'd Effect." Besides his Gazette, William Parks printed a Virginia Almanack, which sold for iy2 pence a copy.

Many buyers bought almanacs and used them as account books and journals to record their finances and personal events. Such almanacs as survive are among the best sources we have on everyday life in 18th-century Virginia. Parks also published in 1742 one of the first cookbooks, titled "The Compleat Housewife," by one E. Smith. In addition, he published playbills announcing theatricals at the first Williamsburg theatre, built on Palace Green about 1716.

One of Parks's playbills announces "The Tragedy of Cato," to be performed by "the young Gentlemen of the College," and another heralds "The Busy-Body," "The Recruiting Officer," and "The Beaux' Stratagem," to Main Street is dead Freedom. In a small way, William Parks helped to give us both of them. Parke Rouse is a contributing editor of the Daily Press. William Raspberry World without morning coffee: Not ever enough handbaskets i 1 1 Main Street once housed. Still, most of the best Main Street activities do not occur in the shopping mall.

It doesn't Russell Baker WASHINGTON I don't understand people who are muddle-minded and cranky and unable to get going until they've had their first cup of coffee. I haven't had a trace of caffeine since yesterday, and yet I have no problem writing a column. Children are no damned good. That sounds crotchety, I know, and you're thinking it's because I haven't had my coffee. You're wrong.

It's because I've just finished reading a piece by the education correspondent of the Guardian of London, and. Well, read it yourself. It begins; "An increasing number of children starting primary school (in England and Wales) are aggressive, obscene, and destructive, according to a teaching union's report published today. Children aged four or five often cannot go to the lavatory unaided, cannot dress or undress for PE, lack even the most basic manners, and give infant school teachers serious discipline problems, says the report "The teachers find that the child insists on having its own way and uses such techniques as tem home" as well as an epidemic of "parental weakness." In other words, parents are no damned good. And there is television.

"Pupils aged four to seven who are watching 'late night' movies and also seeing videos before breakfast are not in a fit state to work sensibly at school," the report announces. Television (and most especially videos) is no damned good. The Guardian quotes Peter Smith of the AMMA as laying to rest the "traditional view of primary schools (with) clean, rosy-cheeked children sitting in rows and singing 'All Things Bright and Beautiful. Unfortunately, says Smith, "That is sentimental fiction. There are a large number of disturbed children in our primary schools." And what does Peter Smith propose to do about it? Why, the AMMA is going to sponsor research into the problem, drawing on experts from London University and Goldsmiths' College, to discover the reason why British youngsters are no damned good.

Well, take it from me, the research will be useless, the diagnosis worthless, and the kids will keep right on their merry way to hell. And if Peter Smith thinks otherwise, then Peter Smith is no damned I think I'll have that cup of coffee after all. NEW YORK Main Street is dead. Dead as the Bijou Theater with double-feature programs that changed three times a week. Dead as the dry-goods store that used to sit at the intersection of Washington Avenue.

Dead as the trolley car that used to clang down the middle from the First National Bank all the way out to the Bosky Dale Amusement Park. Dead as Sinclair Lewis. Dead, dead, dead. I must have been aware of its death for years, but I had never acknowledged it, had never said right out loud: "Main Street is dead. It died years ago.

Main Street has been dead for years, and it's never coming back." I think you know why I never said that. It was the same reason so many of you have never said it, I suspect. It was because well, what was America without Main Street? It was a place that mind and soul did not want to be forced to come to grips with. Without Main Street, it was hard to distill America into a handful of simple truths. Main Street was where the Fourth of July parade was held, where you got the mortgage for your first house and bought the presents for your child's first Christmas; but, more than that, it was the center of things.

It was the product of an age when the country had a center that held. When you stood on Main Street, you could tell yourself, "This is the center, the point on which all things converge," and feel the inexplicable but nonetheless vital comfort that results from knowing where you stand in the world and what the score is. No wonder I had never consciously conceded that Main Street was dead. What made me speak the truth aloud was a television show on which some professional right-wingers were countenance the Fourth of July parade, for instance, since the shopping mall is for parking cars, and parades make a mess of the parking lot, More importantly, the shopping mall is not at the center of It is located on the edge of something, probably a black hole that was once a city centered on Main Street. And it is at the foot of a superhighway access ramp, along which no trolley cars clang off toward the Bosky Dale Amusement Park, for the sufficient reason that the Bosky Dale Amusement Park lies buried under the very shopping-mall asphalt to which the access ramp delivers cars without unseemly clanging.

Can shopping-mall people be devoted to the good old-time conservatism that fetched the people of long-dead Main Street? Not likely. On the shopping mall, people know they are standing not at the center, but somewhere vaguely off toward the edge of a center that has failed to hold. Not knowing where they stand or what the score is, shopping-mall people must have a hard time staying calm and conservative. People who do not know where they stand or what the score is tend to be twitchy, suspicious, accident-prone and suckers for confidence men, rather than cool, level-headed conservatives. I doubt President Reagan, or anybody with good sense, would dare turn his back on people like that.

grousing about President Reagan's being a dangerous liberal. This kind of malarkey affects me like chloroform, and I was near deep slumber when one of these philosophers said, "Reagan has turned his back on Main Street and sold out to Wall Street." If I hadn't been weakened by sleep, I might have let this pass as meaningless political blather; instead, I spoke aloud. "Main Street is dead, you idiot!" And came wide awake feeling terrible, because I had finally uttered the dreadful truth. It left me in a sour mood toward professional right-wingers. But for their imbecilic metaphors, I might have got through the rest of my life without coming to grips with the debilitating truth.

I found myself cussing, them. "What the hell do you mean, saying Reagan has turned his back on Main Street? You know as well as I do there isn't any Main Street left to turn your back on." Well, it's useless spending good anger on politicians; it just encourages them. Instead, I fell to speculating on American geography and wondering which part of the landscape can best be said to shelter today's right-wing constituency. Which piece of American geography has President Reagan betrayed by selling out to Wall Street? The shopping mall seems the logical answer. While Main Street spent all those years dying, the shopping mall was slowly replacing it as the home of commercial activities i- William Raspberry is a columnist with the Washington Post.

per tantrums, obscenities, and aggression toward other pupils in an attempt to get it." You get the drift. We've grown used to such outlandish behavior in America, where too many teachers are ill-prepared and too many parents are neglecting their children in their pursuit of the dollar. But the picture we've held of English schools is of Little Lord Fauntleroys in Eton collars, smiling cherubically and filling the air with their polite "Yes, ma'ams." Well, even in England, the children are no damned good. Also in Japan, another land of false impressions. You ought to read some of the reports of Japanese teen-agers assaulting teachers, killing vagrants, beating their classmates.

Russian children are no better, and I can hardly wait for word out of the People's Republic of China. Kids are rotten the world over. The report cited by the Guardian does not attribute the startling sassiness of British brats to the incompetency of their teachers, which isn't very surprising, since the report was done by the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association, which is to say, by teachers. But it finds plenty of other places to put the blame. NCREDlBLEIWWW I TUSTSU PLANET JOY JUST I WflU JEUVBEANS AND CANW I RONALD 1 I CANES AND FLUfTY PlNK CLCUK 1 KAN' 1 I AMP FLPWEBS AND HBHES! I WNVBOPY LIVE TUEKEi 'jf.

i There is, says the AMMA report, a "lack of clear standards, expectation, and example in the Russell Baker is a columnist with the New York Times. I A.