First Printing Press in North Carolina
New Bern, Craven County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
First Printing Press In N.C.. Est. 1749 by James Davis who published the first book & newspaper in colony. Shop was nearby.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
In 1749 James Davis established North Carolina's first printing press near this spot, publishing the colony's earliest book and its first newspaper. In a young colony where information traveled slowly, a working press was a powerful new tool for law, commerce, and public debate. Davis went on to serve as the colony's public printer for decades.
Why it matters
The arrival of the printing press marks the beginning of a free press and public literacy in North Carolina, foundations of the civic life that would help fuel the Revolution.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the middle of the eighteenth century, North Carolina was a young and thinly settled colony spread along rivers and sounds, where news traveled by word of mouth, by hand-copied letters, and by whatever printed sheets happened to arrive by ship from Boston, Philadelphia, or London. There was no local press to record a new law, announce a ship's cargo, or argue a point of politics. To read something printed was almost always to read something made somewhere else.
New Bern sat at the meeting of two rivers, a trading town well placed to receive both goods and ideas. It was exactly the kind of growing colonial port where a printer might find enough business — official notices, legal forms, advertisements — to make a go of a trade that depended on a steady stream of customers.
The year 1749 falls into the long stretch of colonial America when the thirteen colonies were maturing under British rule, decades before independence was imagined. Setting up a printing press then was no small undertaking. The press itself, the type, and the paper were costly and often imported, and running one required real skill and patience.
People & events
James Davis is the name to remember here. He brought the first printing press to the colony and set it working near this spot, and in doing so he became the person through whom North Carolina first spoke to itself in print.
With that press he produced the colony's earliest book and its first newspaper — milestones that sound modest until you picture the alternative, a colony with no way to print its own laws, notices, or opinions. A working press meant that the acts of government could be set down uniformly and distributed, that merchants could advertise, and that arguments could be circulated beyond the reach of a single voice.
Davis did not simply arrive and leave. He went on to serve for decades as the colony's public printer, the official responsible for putting the business of government onto paper. That long tenure tells you how central the press quickly became — once North Carolina had one, it did not want to be without it.
Its place in the American story
The arrival of a printing press in a colony is one of those quiet turning points that shapes everything that comes after. Across colonial America, the spread of presses is closely tied to the growth of public literacy, of local government that could document itself, and eventually of a press free to question authority.
When a community can print its own laws, news, and debates, it begins to hold a conversation with itself. That habit of public argument — carried on in newspapers and pamphlets — became one of the foundations of American civic life, and in the decades before the Revolution the colonial press would prove to be a powerful engine of political awakening.
So the story that begins near this corner in New Bern is really the story of how a whole colony gained a voice. Every later newspaper, broadside, and printed law in the state traces back to the moment a press first inked a page here.
If you visit
Stand near this marker in New Bern and try to imagine the scene the inscription points to: a working printer's shop somewhere close by, the smell of ink, the clack of a hand press, sheets hung to dry. The shop itself is long gone, but the marker fixes the spot in memory.
New Bern is a walkable, history-rich town, and this marker fits naturally into a stroll through its older streets. Give yourself a moment to notice how compact the colonial core is — the kind of place where a single printer could genuinely reach the whole community.
If you're building a road trip around North Carolina's beginnings, this is a satisfying first stop: a reminder that before the grand events of history get recorded, someone has to invent the means of recording them. From here, the town's other markers carry the story forward.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · James Davis
Themes & tags
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