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Elaborately Printed Colonial Pennsylvania Land Deed

Printed in 1763 by Peter Miller at the Ephrata Cloister on Coarse "Makulatur" Paper

A rare and beautiful example of colonial provincial printing, this rare Pennsylvania indenture was executed in manuscript in 1782 on a form that was printed at Ephrata, Pennsylvania in 1763. The indenture documents a land transfer from John Abbet (also known as John Abbett and more correctly John Abbott, founder of Abbottstown) and his wife Alice Abbet to Jacob Winter. Executed in manuscript on July 20, 1782, in Berwick Township, then part of York County, Pennsylvania, the deed represents an important example of colonial American printing from an early German religious community settlement west of the Susquehanna River.

As an example of 18th-century colonial printing this deed is quite impressive: the heading or title text "This indenture" is printed from a single cast piece of metal with an elaborate architectural decoration and flourishes. Incorporated within the decorative device is the typographical imprint: "Ephratae [i.e. Ephrata, Pa.] : Typis Societatis." Near the top of the sheet is the date of printing: "Impressum Anno Domini M[DCC] LXIII."  The imprint is that of the religious society at Ephrata, a community of German Baptists established in the early 1730s in present-day Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The coarse laid paper used for the printing of the document was made in the community's own mill: The Paper Mill of the Brotherhood at Ephrata or Die Papier Mühle der Bruderschaft zu Ephrata. According to Dard Hunter and other paper historians, the Ephrata paper mill's main product was a thick coarse paper with a brown tinge, often referred to as "macalatur" (cf. Hunter), makulatur or maculature. Dard Hunter states that this paper was never watermarked.

Ephrata Cloister and Peter Miller's Printing Press

The community at Ephrata followed a Sabbatarian branch of the German Baptist Brethren, also called the “Seventh-Day Dunkers” or, after 1814, the German Seventh Day Baptist Church. Founded in 1732 by the German Pietist Conrad Beissel, the group kept the Saturday (seventh-day) Sabbath, practiced adult believers’ baptism, and adopted a semi-monastic discipline of celibacy, vegetarian diet, long night vigils, and communal worship. In short, Ephrata’s religion was a German-language, Pietist-Anabaptist hybrid that observed the seventh-day Sabbath and eventually incorporated under the name “German Seventh Day Baptists.” 

The present deed was almost certainly printed by Johannes Peter Miller, a noted colonial printer described by Isaiah Thomas in his classic History of Printing in America (1810): "About the year 1746, Miller opened a printing house, and he and his associates erected a paper mill. Miller printed a number of books in the German language, and a few in English; all on religious subjects, and written chiefly by himself."

The indenture records the sale of land forming part of a larger tract originally granted to Abbott in the 1730s, reflecting the expansion of private ownership and development in the mid-Atlantic frontier. It is interesting to note how the printed portion of the document includes the name of John Abbot and Alice, his wife, along with other particulars ("Berwick Township County of York"), suggesting multiple planned land dealings. The transfer details the precise location and boundaries of the parcel, referring to surveys recorded in Philadelphia:

Lots or pieces of Ground, situate in the town of Berwick...known on the general Plan of the said Town by the Numbers Six and Seven, Beginning at the corner of the Lot Number Five on King Street thence along said Street Eight Rods untill the Corner on Cheapside Street, thence along Said Cheapside Street Eleven Rods untill the corner on Water Street, thence along said street Eight Rods Untill the aforesaid Lot Number Five...

Witness signatures, wax seal marks, and certification clauses at the bottom further authenticate the transaction. Both John and Alice Abbott signed the document with their marks.

John Abbott (1700-1786) was a interesting early figure in southwestern Pennsylvania history, having immigrated from Huntingdonshire, England, around 1735. After receiving a land grant in 1737, he established his farmstead and later founded Abbottstown around 1753-1755 at the strategic crossroads of major colonial routes between Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore. Abbottstown became a vital stopping point for waggoners transporting goods inland, and Abbott himself operated a tavern there from roughly 1750 to 1763. The present land document clearly suggests he was active in subdividing his land holdings over a period of decades in the 1760s-1780s.

Rarity

Extremely rare.  Not in Evans, Bristol, or Shipton & Mooney. Not in Hilderbrun. Not in Doll & Funke, Ephrata Cloister: An Annotated Bibliography (1942) - which lists 4 imprints from the year 1763. The Library Company of Philadelphia holds a similar Ephrata-printed deed document (printed on vellum), part of the Michael Zinman Collection of Early American Imprints, described: here.