Purdie, Alexander Jr.

• formal_name: Purdie, Alexander Jr.
• first_date: 1785
• last_date: 1796
• function: Printer
• locales: Richmond
• precis: Printer in the Richmond office (1785-96) of Thomas Nicolson (315), both as apprentice and journeyman; son of Alexander Purdie, Sr. (345).
• notes: Printer
  Richmond
  Printer in the Richmond office (1785-96) of Thomas Nicolson (315), both as apprentice and journeyman; son of Alexander Purdie, Sr. (345).
  Purdie was the son of the Revolutionary-era printer Alexander Purdie of Williamsburg. But on his father's death in 1779, the surviving children – as brother Hugh later related – were "reduced … to service employments for their subsistence," despite their father's prestige, largely a consequence of his impoverished estate. Young Alexander was bound out by the Henrico County Court in August 1785 as an apprentice printer in the new Richmond office of Thomas Nicolson, himself a Williamsburg-trained printer who had learned his craft in the printing office of his father's former partner, John Dixon Sr. (140). The junior Purdie was still in Nicolson's employ when he died in 1796, never having forged an independent identity that approached that of both his father and his master.
  
  
  Personal Data
  
  Born:
  in
  1768
  Williamsburg, Virginia.
  
  Died:
  in
  1796
  Richmond, Virginia.
  
  
  No record of wife and/or children found; likely died childless.
  
  Sources: Gill, Apprentices; Williamsburg People files and York County Project files, CW Research Dept.; Goodwin. Bruton Church, account of Hugh Purdie's impressment detailed in editorial note in Papers of Thomas Jefferson accompanying relevant documents (summer 1790).
  
• Related Bios:
  • Thomas Nicolson
  • Alexander Purdie, Sr.

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.