Re: Lynchester

[denlinge@sas.upenn.edu (Scott B. Denlinger, U. of Penn.)]

Lynchester as a variant of Lancaster, Pa. is probably not correct. 
B"otte's and Tannhof's _First Century of German Language Printing in the
U.S.A._ lists no 1766 imprint in the U.S. for a printer named Martin
Messner, and only 1 imprint from Lancaster County for 1766:  an Ephrata
imprint from the Ephrata Cloister community.  Also, I am not aware that
many variant spellings of Lancaster were ever used by printers printing in
German, and an 18th century German American printer would probably not
have attempted to Germanicize Lancaster as "Lynchester," a word even
farther removed from German orthographic conventions than "Lancaster." 

So I suspect that the work is European in origin, and Lynchester may be a
fictitious imprint.  Weller's _Die falschen und fingierten Druckorte_ may
prove helpful here, but I do not have access to a copy. 

Scott Denlinger
-- 
Scott B. Denlinger, Catalog Librarian, German Library Project
German Society of Pennsylvania / University of Pennsylvania
611 Spring Garden St., Philadelphia, PA  19123   215-627-9240
denlinge@sas.upenn.edu   http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~denlinge/