Douglas Crawford McMurtrie

Background

Douglas Crawford McMurtrie was born on July 20, 1888, in Belmar, New Jersey. He was one of the two children of William McMurtrie a well-to-do industrial chemist, and Helen M. (Douglass) McMurtrie.

Both parents were of Scottish ancestry; his father's forebear Joseph McMurtrie had settled in Oxford Township, New Jersey, about 1712.

Education

After attending private schools in New York City, Douglas McMurtrie prepared for college at the Hill School, Pottstown, Pennsylvania. A boyhood interest in printing and journalism continued at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he entered in 1906, intending, at his father's insistence, to take a degree in electrical engineering.

After three years, during which he designed the student yearbook, served as managing editor of the college newspaper, and acted as campus correspondent for three Boston papers, he dropped out without graduating.

Career

McMurtrie's first job, in 1909, was as a statistician for the Pittsburgh Typhoid Fever Commission. He was soon producing its printed matter, and before long he returned to New York as a free-lance designer and printing broker. Some of his work came to the attention of Ingalls Kimball, co-designer of the famous Cheltenham typeface, who appointed McMurtrie general manager of the Cheltenham Press.

His duties there were primarily managerial; he did not become involved in the production end of the printing business until 1917 when he was made the director of the Columbia University Printing Office. Two years later, Columbia sold its plant equipment, and McMurtrie left to become president of the Arbor Press.

Feeling strongly that high-quality printing could best be produced in the country, free from metropolitan distractions, yet close enough to a large city to provide easy access to customers and materials, he built a modern printing plant in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1921. Lack of capital forced him to sell the plant to Condé Nast that same year, but McMurtrie remained for a time as manager.

Leaving Condé Nast Publications in 1923, McMurtrie turned again to free-lancing in New York. After three years, during which time he served (1925 - 26) as editor of Ars Typographica, he became typographic director of the Cuneo Press in Chicago, and the next year moved to the Ludlow Typograph Company.

His primary responsibilities were in advertising and public relations, for which he was eminently suited, being gregarious, fluent, and an excellent copywriter. The Ludlow company also provided him with substantial support for his writing and research, an activity to which he became increasingly devoted.

His chief importance rests upon his bibliographical work. Upon discovering in his research that little had been written about American printing since the History of Printing in the United States by Isaiah Thomas, McMurtrie plunged into the task of filling the many historical gaps. He intended to issue his own four-volume history, but only Volume II, dealing with printing in the Middle and South Atlantic states, appeared.

It was published in 1936, and that same year McMurtrie was appointed an editor of a national Works Progress Administration project known as the American Imprints Inventory. Before its dissolution, it issued some thirty-five publications, and the work was continued for a time at the Newberry Library in Chicago; the unpublished cards, estimated at over fifteen million, were eventually deposited at the Library of Congress.

McMurtrie also directed another WPA project, an unpublished index to printing periodicals; its thousands of index cards were later transferred to Michigan State University. During World War I, he served as director of the Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, whose work included physical and emotional rehabilitation, vocational training, and job placement.

He died suddenly of a heart attack in Evanston, Illinois, at the age of fifty-six. His body was cremated at Graceland Cemetery, Chicago.

Achievements

• McMurtrie designed two typefaces, McMurtrie Title and Vanity Fair Capitals, and helped design the format of the New Yorker magazine. He was also instrumental in forming the Continental Typefounders Association, which introduced many European typefaces into the United States, and imported several on his own, among them Cochin and the original Didot. While much of his work can be criticized as hasty and superficial, a solid contribution remains.

Works

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  • L'Oeuvre d'Une École Américaine de Rééducation Des Mutilés (Classic Reprint) (French Edition)

    (Excerpt from L'OEuvre d'une École Américaine de Rééducati...)

  • The Relation of Earning Power to Award of Compensation for Disability Incurred in Military or Naval Service: A Memorandum on the Pensions Practice of Other Nations (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Relation of Earning Power to Award of Co...)

  • Publications

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Notes in Supplement to "the First Printers of Chicago" (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Notes in Supplement to "the First Printers o...)

  • The First Printers of Chicago, with a Bibliography of the Issues of the Chicago Press 1836-1850

    (The First Printers of Chicago, with a Bibliography of the...)

  • A Bibliography of Peoria Imprints, 1835-1860 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Bibliography of Peoria Imprints, 1835-1860...)

  • A Check List of Eighteenth Century Albany Imprints: New York State Library, Bibliography Bulletin, No. 80

    (University Of The State Of New York Bulletin, No. 1155.)

  • Antecedent Experience in Kentucky of William Maxwell, Ohio's First Printer: Filson Club History Quarterly, V5, No. 3, July, 1931
  • The First Printing in Indiana: American Book Collector, May-June, 1934
  • Some Massachusetts Broadsides of 1711
  • The organization, work and method of the Red cross institute for crippled and disabled men

Personality

McMurtrie was a facile and prolific writer and his bibliography numbers over five hundred titles. A gargantuan man, weighing usually well over three hundred pounds, with appetites to match, McMurtrie had an enormous capacity for pleasure as well as work. Something of a dandy, he was a fluent lecturer and an engaging conversationalist; his wit and generosity won many friends, though some were put off by his flamboyance.

His chief outside interest was the care and education of crippled children and the rehabilitation of the crippled. From 1912 to 1919, he edited the American Journal of Care for Cripples, and in 1915, he became president of the Federation of Associations for Cripples.

Connections

On February 20, 1915, McMurtrie married Adele Koehler, by whom he had three children: Havelock Heydon, Helen Josephine, and Thomas Baskerville.

Father:

William McMurtrie

Mother:

Helen M. (Douglass) McMurtrie

Daughter:

Helen Josephine McMurtrie

Son:

Thomas Baskerville McMurtrie

Son:

Havelock Heydon McMurtrie

Wife:

Adele Koehler