 - 1847
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| Name |
Willam Applegate |
| Gender |
Male |
| Voress Number |
5A3E1 |
| Died |
26 Nov 1847 |
New York City, New York, USA  [2] |
| Notes |
- 5A3E1A William Applegate
William was born in 1803, died 26 November 1847. He married Elizabeth Price.
William was a printer in New York City. According to son Edwin:
“he was the first man who made a business of doing press work for a trade. He had six cylinder presses and commenced business for himself in 1840 as a successor to Jared W. Bell. He did a large business in theatrical, book and messotint plating and press work for New York Newspapers.”
From the History of Monmouth County (Lewis, 3:416):
“The New York Typothetae states that William Applegate was "the first man who made a business of doing press work for the trade." The office was on the east corner of Ann Street and Theatre alley, the first floor was his composing room. The building is still standing (1888) as a front of the Everett building, but completely changed in appearance. He had six cylinder presses, and commenced business for himself, in 1840, as a successor to Jared W. Bell, whose name is first found in the New York City Directory in 1822. Bell had a large office for those days, but was always in pecuniary difficulties. As early as 1837 Bell had a mortgage of $10,000 on his concern. The earliest theatrical New York printers were Bell & Conrad. Applegate, upon his purchase of the plant, ordered one of the new plan cyclinder presses from London, and after its arrival waited three months for a mechanic to come from England to put it together. This was the first cylinder press that was operated with any great degree of success in New York City, and its improvements were viewed and utilized by various inventors in the United States, and its endless driven movement is about the same as now used. This press was exhibited at the Crystal Palace in 1854, after which it was broken up. William Applegate did a large business in theatrical, book and mezzotint printing, and also did the press work for the "Sunday Times," "Sunday Mercury," "Daily Arena," "Sober Thought," "New York Dispatch, etc. William died in New York City on 26 November 1847.”
As a commercial printer, William became involved in the scandalous “flash press” in New York City in the 1830s and 1840s. A history of the flash press gives a description:
How did the flash papers make money, and how could such young men enter the business? In general, start-up costs for any new four-page weekly produced on speculation were low if an editor subcontracted production to print jobbing firms, an option increasingly available in the 1830s and 1840s in New York City. Or, if an editor already worked on another paper (as did Thaddeus Meighan), he might have access, either ready or after-hours, to a printing press.
Because of a legal dispute over a promissory note that stretched out for a year, we have an unusually clear picture of how the Sunday Flash was produced. Snelling and Wilkes testified in a trial in November 1842 that they wrote their fall 1841 articles in Brooklyn and in West Broadway, probably in their living quarters. The type was set at various jobbers’ shops, after which the locked-up forms of the type for each page were conveyed to William Applegate, a major print jobber. Applegate ran frequent ads soliciting business for his shop at 17 Ann Street, on the corner of Theatre Alley, where he had thirteen presses including a “mammoth” press for printing large wall signage.
When Myer Levy sued the Sunday Flash for libel, Applegate worried about his own liability. He had printed the paper for four months, on a cash-and-carry basis, but now he wanted to stop. He offered to sell a press to the men for $750 so they could print the Sunday Flash themselves. Lacking cash reserves, Snelling approached Adeline Miller, and the wealthy female entrepreneur endorsed a note for the full amount to Applegate, who made it abundantly clear that he preferred Miller’s credit rather than Snelling’s. The press was removed to a rented site in Jersey City and one of Applegate’s pressmen was hired to run it. Wilkes and Snelling intended to pay Miller back out of the future earnings of the paper, but in fact the paper had only a short future. The Jersey City site was unheated and the cold weather chilled the ink, producing marred copies. Three issues were printed in December, followed by a long break until late January when the final two issues were struck. The trial of the two editors for libel against Myer Levy and for obscenity ended in a hung jury, Wilkes quit the paper. By the end of January Snelling, unable to carry it alone, shut down the Sunday Flash. Applegate demanded either full payment on the note, or partial payment of $500 plus return of the press; Mrs. Miller refused, and their legal battle dragged on for ten more months, at which point a court rendered a judgment of $422 in favor of Applegate.
“The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York”, Patricia Cline Cohen, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2008)
Following his death, wife Elizabeth took over the business (Voress).
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| Person ID |
I1752 |
Applegate Main |
| Last Modified |
11 Oct 2018 |
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| Sources |
- [S24] The Hightstown Gazette (extracts), 1885-01-22.
- [S5] Jersey Coast, William Nelson, (Lewis Publishing Co. 1902), 392.
Gives alternate date 1849
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