The Library's only other examples of Kentucky printing from 1788 are eight additional issues of the _Gazette_, for November 8 through December 27, which have been detached from a bound volume and are still joined together. These belonged to Walter Carr, who was serving as a magistrate in Fayette County by 1792 and who in 1799 attended the convention to form the second constitution of Kentucky.[41] Nothing more can be ascertained about the acquisition of these holdings than that the March 1 issue is first listed in the 1912 edition and that the later issues are first listed in the 1936 edition of _A Checklist of American Eighteenth-Century Newspapers in the Library of Congress_.
[Illustration: (THE KENTUCKE GAZETTE, March 1, 1788.)]
[Footnote 38: See J. Winston Coleman, Jr., _John Bradford, Esq._ (Lexington, Ky., 1950).]
[Footnote 40: J. Stoddard Johnston, _Memorial History of Louisville_ (Chicago and New York [pref. 1896]), vol. 2, p. 3.]
[Footnote 41: C. R. Staples, _The History of Pioneer Lexington_ (Lexington, 1939), p. 78 and 151.]
Late in 1790 Nathaniel Willis, grandfather of the writer Nathaniel Parker Willis, established at Shepherdstown the first press within the present boundaries of West Virginia. For some years he had published _The Independent Chronicle_ at Boston, and earlier in 1790 he had been printing at Winchester, Va. At Shepherdstown Willis published _The Potowmac Guardian, and Berkeley Advertiser_ from November 1790 at least through December 1791.[42] By April 1792 he had moved to Martinsburg, where he continued publishing his newspaper under the same title.
The earliest example of West Virginia printing in the Library of Congress is a broadside printed at Martinsburg in 1792. Entitled _Charter of the Town of Woodstock_ [Pa.], it consists of the printed text of a legal document in the name of one John Hopwood and dated November 8, 1791. The preamble of the document reveals its nature:
Whereas I John Hopwood, of Fayette-County, and Commonwealth of _Pennsylvania_, have surveyed and laid out into convenient lots or parcels, for the purpose of erecting a Town thereon, the quantity of two hundred acres of land, being part of the tract of land on which I now live, situate in Union Township, and County aforesaid, on the great road leading from the Town of Union to Fort Cumberland, on the River Potowmack; and for the purpose of encouraging the settlement, growth, and prosperity of the said Town, as laid out agreeable to a plan and survey thereof, hereunto annexed and recorded, together with this instrument of writing, have determined to grant and confirm to all persons, who shall purchase or become proprietors of any lot or lots in the said Town, and to their heirs and assigns, certain privileges, benefits, and advantages herein after expressed and specified....