Clementina Rind

Born around 1740, Clementina Rind’s early life details are not known. She may have been born in the colony of Maryland or she may have immigrated to the colonies with her father in 1756. 

Sometime after 1762, she married William Rind, a printer in Maryland. He had been an apprentice to Jonas Green, learning the printing trade, and later became a business partner with Green, printing the Maryland Gazette. William and Clementina Rind attended St. Anne’s Parish church in Annapolis, Maryland, and they had four sons and a daughter.

In 1765 or early in 1766, the Rind family moved to Williamsburg, the capital of the colony of Virginia. Resistance to the Stamp Act was rising, and several Virginia leaders, including Thomas Jefferson, encouraged a new, competitive newspaper in the capital city to challenge other opinions in print. On May 9, 1766, William Rind announced that he was opening a printing office in Williamsburg; the following week the first issue of his Virginia Gazette appeared, under the motto “Open to All Parties, but Influenced by None.” Rind became the public printer for the colony of Virginia, a competitive contract, which allowed him to receive extra income for printing law, proclamations and other documents from the Virginian House of Burgesses. 

Clementina Rind made a new home in Williamsburg for her family, raised their children and may have occasionally helped in her husband’s print shop. By 1767, the business expanded, and the family moved into a comfortable brick structure on Duke of Gloucester Street (the main street in Williamsburg) which served as both home and print shop.

On August 19, 1773, William Rind died, leaving Clementina a widow with young children, a print shop and business debts. Though some possessions had to be sold, she kept the printing press, type and other necessary shop items—partly by insisting that she had to fulfill her husband’s contract as the colony’s printer. Within a week of her husband’s unexpected death, she took over the printing and operations for the Virginia Gazette, publicly announcing in that week’s edition that she was “unhappily forced to enter upon Business on my own Account” and asking that advertisers be prompt in remitting their payments. The next year in April 1774 Clementina Rind executed a deed of trust with local civic leaders, and she listed the printing press and some household goods as security. 

In the print shop, Rind may have been assisted by a male relative and by an enslaved man who was probably a semiskilled tradesman. There was plenty of news and subscribers in Virginia’s colonial capital, and she continued to print the four-page weekly editions for each Thursday. Prominent leaders like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington numbered among the subscribers to the Virginia Gazette during the time Clementina Rind oversaw the publishing. 

She petitioned the House of Burgesses in May 1774 to receive the appointment of public printer that her husband had held; the legislators voted strongly in her favor and the continuing contract ensured a steady income for her and her family. She made editorial decisions, refusing to publish a libelous article by an anonymous author and printing a clarification of her stance that she would not print it anonymously but would in the principle of free press if the author disclosed his or her name. She published noteworthy accounts of educational reforms at the College of William and Mary and welcome notices about the arrival of the British governor’s wife when she journeyed from England. Rind also sold and occasionally printed books, almanacs, pamphlets and custom print orders; one of the pamphlets that she is known to have printed was Thomas Jefferson’s “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” 

For 13 months, Widow Rind operated her print shop, supporting her family and also helping to distribute important news and opinions about the Boston Tea Party, the Continental Congress and Virginian responses to the rising revolutionary conflict. She died of illness on September 25, 1774, and was probably buried at Bruton Parish Church near her husband. A brief obituary appeared in a rival newspaper, noting Clementina Rind as “a Lady of singular Merit, and universally esteemed.”