Meet the Ancestors: Anne Catherine Hoof Green

Photo taken in the Maryland State House.

Anne Catherine Hoof Green

Anne Catherine Hoof Green was born around 1720, probably in the Netherlands, and moved to America as a child. She grew up in Philadelphia and married Jonas Green, who was a printer in the shop of Ben Franklin and Andrew Bradford, in 1738. They moved to Annapolis so that he could become the printer to the province of Maryland. Jonas and Anne began issuing the Maryland Gazette in 1745. When Jonas died in 1767, Catherine became one of the first women publishers in the American colonies as she continued to print the newspaper without interruption. With the help of her son William, Anne Catherine continued to print for public and private clients including the General Assembly. In 1768 she was formally appointed as the provincial printer, responsible for printing almanacs, pamphlets and books. The Maryland Gazette was the principal source of news for the province during the leadup to the American Revolution. Early on she was paid by the province in tobacco, which was the local currency, but in 1770 she was commissioned to print $318,000 in paper money and was paid with paper from then on.

When the Greens first moved to Annapolis, they rented a small two-story house with a kitchen and two bedrooms. Catherine was known as a good businesswoman who paid off her husband’s debts after Jonas’s death and was able to buy the house that they had rented for so long. The house was kept in the family until just recently. Being proud of her accomplishments, she commissioned Charles Wilson Peale to paint her portrait in 1769. A copy of the painting adorns the building on Westgate Circle today. Catherine died in 1775 and was buried at Church Circle. It is believed that her remains were removed to St. Anne’s Cemetery in the early 1790’s when the church was being expanded and the “new” cemetery was just beginning. There is no record of where she is now, although it is likely that she is among the remains that were reburied in the mound at the top of the hill in our cemetery