J. Kyle

• formal_name:
• first_date: 1801
• last_date: 1806
• function: Bookseller
• locales: Virginia
• precis: Partner in the firm of J. & D. Kyle (1801-06) with D. Kyle (255) selling the almanacs of Samuel Saur of Baltimore.
• notes: Booksellers
  Virginia
  Partners in firm of J. & D. Kyle (1801-06) selling the almanacs of Samuel Saur of Baltimore.
  The firm of J. & D. Kyle was an outlet in Virginia between 1801 and 1806 for the German-language almanacs published in Baltimore by Samuel Saur. However, the location of that outlet is masked by the simple "in Virginia" next to their names on the imprint's title page.
  Given the geographic spread of the other distributors of Saur's almanac, as well as the need for a suitable market, it could be that this retailer was David Kyle of Rockingham County, a merchant who purportedly arrived in the county in the 1790s as an Irish-immigrant peddler and who died there as its richest inhabitant in 1844. The Cross Keys neighborhood where he established a store and mill was heavily German and those customers' only other option for an almanac in published their mother tongue was that of Johan Gruber in Hagerstown. As Gruber dominated the trade in such works along the Wagon Road of the Valley, the English-speaking Kyle may have reached out to Saur for such items, having them shipped to his eastern Rockingham base along with the other goods procured in that port city. But lacking definitive evidence of such a link, as well as the numerous Kyles then in Virginia (esp. in Botetourt County), this suggested association is essentially speculative.
  
  
  No Personal Data yet discovered.
  
  Sources: Imprints; Wayland, Men of Mark (1943 ) and Virginia Valley Records (1930).
  
• Related Bios:
  • D. Kyle

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.