Jane Aitken

Aitken was involved with her father's Philadelphia publishing business located at his two-story brick house, which consisted of a print shop and bindery sideline at 22 Market Street.[1][3] Her handwritten bookkeeping shows the print shop printed a newspaper, journals, books, and stationery.[3] She inherited the printing business from her father's estate after his death in 1802 when she was thirty-eight years old.[1][2] The property itself had been sold in 1800 by her father, but the business continued until his death.[4]

The printing and publications were thereafter in her own name as Printed by Jane Aitken from her print shop and bindery, which she ran at North Third Street in Philadelphia.[5] Her first location on the street shows in a 1803 newspaper notice as being at number 20, which was 500 feet (150 m) away from her father's house. At that time, with her sister Mary Ann Campbell, she was an administratrix to settle her brother-in-law's estate.[6] Another 1803 newspaper report five months later shows her at being at number 20 North Third Street.[7] Miss Jane Aitken's Bookstore shows her address at number 62 in an 1807 advertisement selling tickets to a lecture.[8] The following year her print shop was advertising a book on agriculture and A statistical account of the Schuylkill Permanent Bridge, with her bookstore being located at number 71 North Third Street.[9]

Aitken's father's estate came with a heavy debt that was incurred from mortgage notes he had signed for when he borrowed money and used his business as security.[10] The debt was $3,000 (equivalent to $57,000 in 2021).[11] Her brother, Robert Aitken Jr., who was a year younger than she and had been disowned by their father, was financially incapable to assist in this debt.[10] Aitken, being the oldest child, assumed the responsibility of caring for her two younger sisters, as her mother had previously died.[11] She never married and was always known as Miss Jane Aitken.[1]

Aitken's bookbinding business gave more support to the family than the printing part of the business.[11] She bound dozens of the volumes she printed up for the Athenaeum of Philadelphia and about 400 volumes for the American Philosophical Society.[3] Historian Carol M. Spawn says that the binding work of 1802 to 1812 shows similarity to her binding work from when she was younger working from her father's shop.[12] She advertised for an assistant journeyman bookbinder in October and November 1812 to help her at the 71 North Third Street location.[13]

John Vaughan, a friend of Aitken and a librarian from the American Philosophical Society, gave her much work and even some financial assistance, but her business failed in 1813 and her equipment was sold.[2] Vaughan bought the equipment at a sheriff's sale and rented it back to her at under the going market rate, however after she failed again in 1814, she was put into debtors' prison at the Norristown Jail, 20 miles (32 km) outside Philadelphia.[14] She retired from the printing business in 1815.[15]

There are few historical records from then other than the "late printer" when her death record of 1832 appears in an obituary in Germantown, Pennsylvania. The obituary shows she had a long and agonizing illness before dying on August 29, 1832.[1][16] Her burial place is assumed to be in the destroyed cemetery of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, of which she was a member.[14]