Image: Receipt for a Library Company share, 1733.

We continue our monthly “Shareholder Spotlight” series by taking a closer look at Share #195 and its first owner, John Dunlap (1746-1812).

Shareholders have always been the backbone of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Starting with the first group of fifty tradesmen who formed the library in 1731, shareholders have provided crucial financial support each year for our mission to “pour forth benefits for the common good.”

We keep careful track of who has owned each historic share, and our list of 9,800+ shareholders includes signers of the Declaration and Constitution, merchants, doctors, soldiers, scientists, artists, philanthropists, politicians, and much more.

Share #195

This share was first issued to “John Dunlap” on April 6, 1769. Like a number of previously profiled shares, that puts him among the shareholders of the Union Library Company, which merged into the Library Company on this date. As previously discussed, that merger added additional books and 276 new shareholders to the Library Company, and it also added the Library Company’s first two women shareholders: Susanna Carmalt received share #190, and Sarah Emlen received share #212.

Although no further details were included after Dunlap’s name in the list of transferred Union Library Company shareholders, he is almost certainly the Philadelphia printer John Dunlap (1746-1812), who is best remembered for printing the very first copies of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Dunlap worked through the night of July 4 and into the morning of July 5, 1776, likely with John Adams anxiously hovering nearby, to print and circulate the radical assertion of universal rights and American independence.

Dunlap had emigrated from Ireland, and by the time he became a Library Company shareholder, he had his own printing business in Philadelphia. Two years after becoming a Library Company shareholder, Dunlap began publishing a newspaper, The Pennsylvania Packet and the General Advertiser.[i]

Image: This pamphlet printed by Dunlap was purchased for the Library Company in 1785, while Dunlap himself was a shareholder. John Adams, Thoughts on Government: Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies (Philadelphia, 1776).

Dunlap owned his Library Company share for the rest of his life.

Today, hundreds of items printed by Dunlap are part of the Library Company’s collections, including broadsides, newspapers, books, and much more. For example, Dunlap took over printing the Journals of the Continental Congress in 1777 from fellow Library Company shareholder Robert Aitken (1734-1802).[ii]

Dunlap gifted several of his publications to the Library Company, including copies of his own newspaper.[iii]

Image: The Directors’ minutes from February 2, 1792 include a note, “The following Presents were received . . . From John Dunlap.” February 2, 1792 minutes, Directors Minutes Volume 3, Volume 165, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270).

Unfortunately, Dunlap’s 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence is not to be found at the Library Company. (Historian Emily Sneff lists the locations of the twenty-five extant broadsides in this blog post.)

After Dunlap’s death, his executors Joseph Crukshank and George Fox sold the share to Samuel Bleight, “Doctor of Physick,” on July 14, 1813. (The transfer was noted in Library Company records the next month, on August 31, 1813.)

Share #195 has been owned by nine people total in its history.

Not yet a shareholder?

Share #195 is currently available. We work hard to match potential shareholders with historic shares that match their interests, and we would love to match you with John Dunlap’s share or another option.

You can become a Library Company shareholder with an initial gift of $500. To learn more, visit our website or reach out to our Development Office at [email protected].

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[i] For more on Dunlap, see Emily Sneff, “December Highlight: Dunlap,” Declaration Resources Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education, https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/december-dunlap (accessed June 24, 2026); Emily Sneff, When the Declaration of Independence Was News (Oxford University Press, 2026); and Jessica Peterson, “Printing and Type in the Revolutionary Era,” Common Press Makers Blog, Penn Libraries, https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/typography-independence/makers-blog/printing-and-type (accessed June 24, 2026).

[ii] Sneff, “December Highlight: Dunlap.”

[iii] For example, gifts from Dunlap are mentioned in the Library Company’s Directors minutes from February 2, 1792, February 7, 1793, February 6, 1794, and January 10, 1805. See Directors Minutes Volume 3, Volume 165, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270); and Directors Minutes Volume 4, Volume 166, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270).