Harper

• formal_name:
• first_date: 1817
• last_date: 1819
• function: Publisher
• locales: Shepherdstown
• precis: Publisher of the American Eagle (1817-19) at Shepherdstown with one Maxwell (283), and its continuation, the Potomack Register (1819) with partner named Robinson (361).
• notes: Publisher
  Shepherdstown
  Publisher of the American Eagle (1817-19) at Shepherdstown with one Maxwell (283), and its continuation, the Potomack Register (1819) with partner named Robinson (361).
  Harper is an enigmatic figure, as no record of his given name has yet been found, making any identification speculative. Given the timing of his appearance in Shepherdstown and the origin of the American Eagle's founder, one John N. Snider (392), this Harper was almost certainly Kenton Harper (203), the son of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, printer-publisher George Kenton Harper, who had trained Snider. If not, this Harper was probably a like-named relative who came to Shepherdstown from that Pennsylvania press. He took control of the paper in mid-1817 and operated it for about two years.
  Harper's two unidentified partners – Maxwell (1817-18) and Robinson (1818-19) – were probably local financiers and/or editors with short-term contractual associations with this printer. Robinson may have been Israel Robinson (1773-1828), a Berkeley County merchant-planter who then represented the county in the House of Delegates. The grandson of a like-named settler who came to the Back Creek area in the late 1740s, Israel Robinson served in the Assembly four times (1817-18, 1818-19, 1823-24, 1824-25) with his second term there matching the brief life of the Potomack Register. But as few copies of the Eagle survive, and none of the Register at all, and as the public record sheds almost no light on the partners involved with Harper, any fuller descriptions are impracticable.
  
  
  No confirmed Personal Data yet found
  
  Sources: Imprints; Brigham; Norona & Shetler.
  
• Related Bios:
  • Maxwell
  • Robinson

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.