John Hass

• formal_name:
• first_date: 1799
• last_date: 1801
• function: Publisher
• locales: Winchester
• precis: Publisher of the Winchester Triumph of Liberty (1799-1801) with George Trisler (419).
• notes: Publisher
  Winchester
  Publisher of the Winchester Triumph of Liberty (1799-1801) with George Trisler (419).
  Hass was part of a Jeffersonian newspaper founded in Winchester in the summer of 1799. He was evidently the financial side of the firm of Trisler & Hass, as George Trisler is regularly reported as the practical printer in their concern. If so, then Hass was also likely a merchant-planter in the lower Shenandoah Valley. Hass apparently ended his association with Trisler about January 1801, once the election of Jefferson had been secured. Without Hass, Trisler struggled on alone for another two years before selling his press office in 1803.
  John Hass did not again take a part in the Virginia printing trade, or so it seems. A definitive statement is impossible, however, given the absence of unambiguous evidence about him. The multiplicity of like-named individuals in that neighborhood, as well as variations in the spelling of his name (see below), make a determination of his full identity difficult, as does the dearth of surviving copies of their paper where more evidence might be found. That scarcity reflects the problematic nature of their Triumph of Liberty in challenging the long-established dominance of the Federalist journals of Richard Bowen (045) there, and of John Alburtis (004) in nearby Martinsburg. Moreover, the most frequently consulted memorial of nineteenth-century Winchester conflates his connection to Trisler's paper with the paper of Bowen and his successor William Heiskell (211). Thus only his brief involvement with Trisler can be discerned with any certainty. It is suggestive though that a trained printer named Jacob Haas (196) emerged within a decade in Shenandoah County, just to the south, whose father was a merchant-planter named John Haas.
  NB: The use of the archaic "long S" in spelling his name in the firm's imprints – Ha∫∫ ‒ has led to erroneous transcriptions of his name – Haff ‒ in the bibliographic record. His surname is also spelled as Haas in many nineteenth-century histories, a more common spelling of the name – and its phonetic equivalent – in the German-speaking regions of Virginia.
  
  
  No Personal Data yet discovered.
  
  Sources: Imprints; Brigham; Russell, Winchester; Morton, Winchester: Wayland, German Element.
  
• Related Bios:
  • Haff
  • George Trisler

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.