Background
George Bruce was born on June 26, 1781 in the outskirts of Edinburgh, Scotland and was the son of John and Janet Gilbertson Bruce.
George Bruce was born on June 26, 1781 in the outskirts of Edinburgh, Scotland and was the son of John and Janet Gilbertson Bruce.
George was the son of a tanner, and was educated in the public schools.
Before he was fifteen he gained the consent of his family to join his older brother, David, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There he became an apprentice in book-binding, but, chafing under the direction of a tyrannical and exacting master, he apprenticed himself to Thomas Dobson, a Philadelphia printer by whom David was also employed.
The destruction of the Dobson plant by fire in 1798 and the prevalence of a fever in Philadelphia, led the brothers to leave the city. Traveling by foot, George was stricken with the yellow fever at Amboy, New Jersey, and was nursed by David.
For a time both worked in a printing office at Albany, New York, but the firm there failed, and they followed the Post Road on foot to New York City. George was employed in various offices until 1803, when he was made foreman on the Daily Advertiser, to which he had contributed articles, and in the same year he became the printer and publisher of that newspaper for the proprietor, David being associated with him in this venture.
In 1806 the brothers opened a book-printing office at the corner of Pearl St. and Coffee House Slip, and in the same year brought out an edition of Lavoisier's Chemistry on their own account, doing all the work with their own hands, with borrowed type and press.
Their industry and zeal soon brought them abundant commissions, and, in 1809, when they removed to Sloat Lane, near Hanover Square, they were running a veritable battery of presses.
In 1812, David brought from England the secret of stereotyping, but their attempt to introduce the process here encountered many difficulties which it required all of their ingenuity to surmount. The type of that day was cast with so low a beveled shoulder that it was not suitable for stereotyping, since it interfered with the moulding and weakened the plate.
The brothers found it necessary, therefore, to cast their own type. At the same time they added several important improvements to the English process. Their first stereotyped works were school editions of the New Testament in bourgeois, and the Bible in nonpareil, about 1814-15, and they subsequently stereotyped the earlier issues of the American Bible Society, and a series of Latin classics.
In 1816 they sold their printing business and bought a building in Eldridge St. for their foundry, and two years later they erected their own foundry in Chambers St. George gave his attention not alone to the typemaking end but to the enlargement and development of the business. The partnership was dissolved in 1822. Soon thereafter, George relinquished stereotyping to give his whole attention to type-founding.
He introduced valuable improvements into the business, cutting his own punches, making constantly new and tasteful designs, and graduating the size of the body of the type so as to give it a proper relative proportion to the size of the letter.
His death called forth memorials from the various printing industries in New York.
George Bruce was a member of the New York Typefounders' Association, of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, of the New York Typographical Society, a member of the New York Historical Society, and of the St. Andrew's Society.
Bruce was twice married: on January 1, 1803 to Margaret Watson of Schenectady, who died of yellow fever in October of that year, and in 1811 to Catherine Wolfe.