John T. Sharrocks

• formal_name:
• first_date: 1811
• last_date: 1828
• function: Bookbinder, Publisher
• locales: Winchester
• precis: Bookbinder at Winchester (1811-28) and publisher of an 1817 historical novel through the press of Jonathan Foster (168) there.
• notes: Bookbinder & Publisher
  Winchester
  Bookbinder at Winchester (1811-28) and publisher of an 1817 historical novel through the press of Jonathan Foster (168) there.
  Sharrocks was a bookbinder who left only a spare trace on the historical and bibliographic record. His trade craft is recorded in newspaper advertising alone, indicating that he had established a bindery business in Winchester by July 1811, and was part of printer Jonathan Foster's efforts to transform his Republican Constellation office into a book-printing concern there in the fall of 1816. The following year, he published a historical novel through Foster's press: The Irish Emigrant. An Historical Tale Founded on Fact. By an Hibernian. The author, that "Hibernian," was Adam Douglass of nearby New Market, an Irish immigrant who taught school and surveyed land in the central Shenandoah Valley. Both contemporary and later accounts report that Sharrocks remained in the bookbinding business in Winchester until his death in September 1828.
  Still, it also appears that Sharrocks attempted to leave the northern Valley in the early 1820s and become a cotton manufacturer. In June 1823, he was granted a patent for an "improvement in manufacturing Cotton" (Patent # 3716X); the following summer he was in New York City, apparently pursuing investors in and/or licensees for his patented process. That he subsequently died in Winchester while conducting his bindery suggests that his foray into manufacturing was unsuccessful.
  
  
  Personal Data
  
  Born:
  ca.
  1784
  ---
  
  Died:
  Sept. 14
  1828
  Winchester, Virginia.
  
  
  No record of wife or off-spring yet discovered.
  
  Sources: Imprint (S&S 41151); Morton, Winchester; Russell, Winchester; National Calendar for 1823; notices in [Winchester] Republican Constellation (1811-17) and [New York] National Advocate (1824); obituary in [Richmond] Visitor and Telegraph, Sept. 27, 1828; Sharrocks is not listed in MESDA Index.
  
• Related Bios:
  • Jonathan Foster

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.