Background
William Nuthead was born about 1654 in England.
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William Nuthead
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William's name occurs for the first time in colonial records in a minute of the Governor and Council of Virginia, dated February 21, 1683, in which it appears that, sponsored by John Buckner, Gentleman, of Gloucester County, he had set up a press at Jamestown and printed, without license, several papers and two sheets of the acts of assembly of November 1682. From Buckner's testimony before the Council, it became clear that in this instance the printer had acted prematurely. Because of the official dislike of "the liberty of a presse, " Nuthead and his sponsor were thereupon required to give bond jointly that nothing else should be printed until the royal pleasure were known. In response to the Council's immediate representations, the king's orders of December 14, 1683, forbade that any person in Virginia "be permitted to use any press for printing upon any occasion whatsoever, " and it was not until the coming to Williamsburg of William Parks in 1730 that the press was reestablished in Virginia.
None of the papers or trial sheets of the acts printed by Nuthead at Jamestown is known to have survived, and his record as an American printer would consist of what has been said above if the government of the neighboring province of Maryland had not been more liberal in its policy than the Virginia Council at the time of this critical situation in his affairs.
In the appropriation act of the Maryland Assembly of October 1686, three years after the inhibition of the Jamestown press, occurred the item: "To Wm. Nutthead Printer five Thousand five Hundred & fifty pounds of Tobaccoe. " It is uncertain whether Nuthead had come to Maryland immediately after the stopping of his Virginia press, or whether this entry represents his first association with the government of that province. If the payment had been made for services rendered, however, it would mean that he had been at work in St. Mary's City for a year at least at the time of passage of the money act of October 1686. It is certain that he remained there from that time until his death in 1695. His name, with the designation "printer, " appears in land records in 1686 and 1687; he was reproved by the Council in 1693 for actions that seemed to show partiality to the party of the dispossessed Proprietary; and in the same year he was engaged by that body for a service of some delicacy.
In October 1694 he signed an address protesting the removal of the capital from St. Mary's City to Annapolis.
Only a single imprint from the Maryland press of Nuthead remains--The Address of the Representatives of Their Majestyes Protestant Subjects, in the Provinnce of Maryland Assembled, August 26, 1689--but he is known to have printed a week or two earlier the more extensive Declaration of the same body. Among his accounts, moreover, was found a list of sums owed him by various persons and officials, which suggests a moderate activity of his press during the years of his Maryland residence. Nuthead set up in Jamestown the earliest press in this country south of Massachusetts. Because of this fact and because of his persistence in the operation of his later Maryland press in spite of poverty and governmental interference, he has place in typographical history with Stephen Day of Massachusetts and William Bradford of Pennsylvania.
