Horace Carr print samples and negatives

Horace Eleazer Carr was born September 13, 1868, in Hayfield, Pennsylvania to Mary and Harvey Carr. He lived in Arkansas until the death of his father, when he moved to Erie, Pennsylvania to live with relatives. In 1891 he married Nettie B. Stringfellow, who shared Carr’s interests in books and printing, and worked alongside her husband. They had one child, Dorothy, born in 1896. She died at the age of 2 in 1898. As a child Carr made wooden block prints, and he learned printing while working at a newspaper in Erie, Pennsylvania as an apprentice. In 1893 he was working at Union Gospel News in Cleveland, when he lost his job. Some sources claim he was fired for reading anarchist and atheist books, while other sources claim he lost his job as a result of the Panic of 1893, when two million Americans suddenly found themselves out of work. Carr was said to have been outspoken about his “anarchist” opinions, but nevertheless prospered in business due to his high-quality work. In 1893 he bought an old press. His first job was to print 20,000 counter slips for a grocery store, for which he received groceries as payment. He gained more work until he eventually was able to open his own press, “The Printing Press.” By 1904 he opened his shop in the Caxton building in Cleveland. His work included designing programs for the Cleveland Orchestra and the theaters at Playhouse Square. He is noted as one of the first printers to use Caslon typeface. Horace Carr died April 14, 1941 at the age of 72.