Last March (2025), The Providence Journal stopped printing operations at its Fountain Street location in Rhode Island. Its owner, Gannett Co., Inc., the proprietor of several national newspapers, made the decision to end operations at their production facility and move the newspaper’s printing operation to New Jersey. As someone who has lived, worked, and completed schooling in Rhode Island, I was especially sad to hear this news. But this news hit harder for my extended family because my paternal grandparents worked, met, and eventually married during their careers at The Providence Journal.
In the 1920 United States Census, my grandfather, Leo Napoleon Dery (1901-1992) is listed as working as a printer at a Print Shop1 while living in Central Falls, Providence, Rhode Island. Growing up, my grandfather would bring up his special talent for reading frontwards and backwards, upside down and right side up, all while holding a large cigar. “How do you do that?” I would ask which would lead to a lengthy story about his job as a linotype operator for “ProJo”.
The first issue of The Providence Daily Journal was typeset by hand, pressed on one linen page at a time, through an iron hand press in 1829. By 1889, the first typesetting machines in New England were installed and by 1894, the presses were powered for the first time in Rhode Island by electricity from Narragansett Electric Lighting Co.2
Throughout my grandfather’s 40-year career as a printer, he would often be seen sitting at a large and loud typesetting system keyboard. With his cigar hanging out of his mouth, he would type out the letters, numbers, and spaces for a single composed line. Once a line was arranged, the machine would pour hot, liquid metal and release a mold of each letter, called matrices. After the mold and case were created, the operator would connect each matrices to become a line of text, also known as a slug.
These slugs were set to a pre-determined length and would allow for easy transition into placing newspaper columns. As the final step, the operator would take the matrices to the top of the machine and distribute them back into their place to create the newspaper page to be printed.
While my grandfather was instrumental in the printing results of newspapers at ProJo, my grandmother, Camilla Kenny (1912-1990), was a librarian in The Providence Journal archives. She was part of the research process for writers and assisted archivists with maintaining the newspaper collections. At the ages of 34 and 45 respectively, my grandmother and grandfather married on 18 June 1946, in Central Falls, Providence, Rhode Island at Holy Trinity Church. By 1947, my father was born and by 1949, my uncle was born. Growing up, my dad used to receive slugs of his name from the ProJo printing floor.
Major newspaper publishers retired linotype “hot metal” machines during the 1970s and 1980s, but today, you can see them in action at the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, Massachusetts.3
My grandfather was a member of the International Typographical Union for 62 years, along with the Central Falls Planning Board. And although my grandparents passed away when I was a child, they clearly left an imprint on my life. I am the Director of Research & Library Services at American Ancestors, completing genealogical work daily using newspapers.
Sources
[1] 1920; Census Place: Central Falls, Providence, Rhode Island; Roll: T625_1673; Page: 12A; Enumeration District: 80
[2] From horseback to internet: The Journal's evolving technology of news gathering, delivery by Paul Edward Parker [5 March 2025]. https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/local/2025/03/05/providence-journal-evolving-technologies-produce-news-over-two-centuries/78601146007/
[3] Museum of Printing, https://museumofprinting.org/