College and Research Libraries


"The Library Association, 1878-1886," 
seems more an appendage than an integral 
part of the biography and one feels that the 
work as a whole lacks unity.-Edward G. 
Holley, University of Houston. 

Pioneer Printer, Samuel Bangs in Mex-
ico and Texas. By Lota M. Spell. Austin: 
University of Texas Press, 1963. 229p. 
$5. (63-11190). 

The life o'f Samuel Bangs reads somewhat 
as a picaresque novel. He was already a 
journeyman printer when he departed his 
native Boston as a young boy in 1816 to 
join the military forces of General Fran-
cisco Xavier de Mina seeking the independ-
ence of Mexico from Spanish rule. As print-
er to the expedition, but drawing the pay of 
a captain of artillery, Bangs printed on the 
island that is now Galveston and in Soto La 
Marina before the small army suffered total 
defeat and he was imprisoned in Monterrey. 
Later released, he was made to print for the 
Spanish government there and, upon the 
successful attainment of independence in 
1821, for the Mexican authorities both there 
and in Saltillo. He was, of course, the first 
printer to work in any of these locations. 

Permitted to leave Mexico in 1823, he 
visited his home and family, was married, 
and printed for a time for the Methodist 
Book Concern before deciding to return to 
the Latin world in 1826. He was appointed 
official printer to the Mexican state of Nue-
vo Leon, but he did not work at it, taking 
instead a similar assignment for the state of 
Tamaulipas and later for the state of Coa-
huila and Texas. At this time he also de-
veloped a sizable business for the importa-
tion of presses, types, and other printing 
equipment from the United States. 

In 1830 Bangs was granted a vast tract 
of land in what is now Texas-more than 
a quarter million acres-for his services to 
the Mexican Revolution, but he was fleeced 
out of it by a fast-talking attorney. In 1837 
his wife died of yellow fever and a disheart-
ened Bangs returned to the United States. 
By mid-1838, however, he was remarried 
and back in Texas, this time publishing a 

newspaper in Galveston. Successively there-
after he printed in Houston, Corpus Christi, 
and Matamoros, and was proprietor of a 
press in Point Isabel, but life was hard on 
Bangs. The misfortunes of war, the vagaries 
of Texas politics, the uncertainties of land 
speculation in troubled times, all militated 
against him. Although his several news-
papers were of recognized high quality, they 
uniformly failed. On one occasion Bangs 
was even thrown upon the device of keeping 
a hotel in order to furnish livelihood for 
his family. 

Finally, in 1849, with nothing to show 
for more than a half century of hard work, 
Bangs made a hard decision. Leaving his 
family behind until he could find permanent 
work, he went to Kentucky where he print-
ed for a time in Louisville and later in 
Georgetown. Before he could earn passage 
money to bring his wife east, however, 
Samuel Bangs contracted typhoid fever and 
·died on May 31, 1854. He was buried in 
Georgetown, far from his family and from 
the great Southwest that had been his home 
for more than thirty years. 

Lota M. Spell, long a student of the his-
tory of the region, has spent much of her 
life doing research on the activities of Sam-
uel Bangs, publishing her first article about 
him 'in 1931. She has now put together 
more than three decades of work into a 
brief but comprehensive and very readable 
biography of the man. Setting his life well 
into its important historical perspective, 
Mrs. Spell has written a good account of 
Bangs' travels and adventures which be-
speaks clearly his influential role as a pio-
neer bringer of letters to a sizable segment 
of the nineteenth-century frontier in two 
cultural settings. 

Full documentation and extensive biblio-
graphical apparatus make Pioneer Printer 
well-nigh definitive as a study of Bang's 
life and of early printing in northeastern 
provinces of Mexico and in south Texas. 
Impeccable scholarship is clearly evident, 
and the book is recommended highly to all 
libraries and individuals having interest in 
the subject, the region, or just plain good 
reading.-D .K. 

350 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES