The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a three-year project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. You can sign up to receive a free monthly newsletter with updates. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal News 250 page.
When she was 11 years old, Emma Cross began volunteering at Colonial Williamsburg, where streets and buildings have been restored to how they looked when the town served as Virginia’s capital in the 18th century.
She started as a “junior interpreter” in 2002 — portraying the daughter of the royal governor, among other roles. As a girl, Cross recalls reading a children’s book about the family of Clementina Rind, who succeeded her deceased husband as a printer and newspaper publisher in Williamsburg in 1773.
In 2017, when the self-styled “largest U.S. history museum in the world” sought someone to dress and act as Rind for visitors, it was fitting that Cross would land the part.
“She was an extraordinary woman,” Cross said, noting that the newspapers and pamphlets Rind printed boosted the push by American patriots to free themselves from Great Britain. “Looking back at her from the 21st century, I am just so impressed with her.”
Cross portrayed Rind from March 2018 to September 2021 as part of the nonprofit Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Nation Builders series, which highlights “real historic figures associated with 18th-century Williamsburg who made significant contributions to the American story.”
Rind made her contributions after her husband, William, died of an illness and she took over his printing business. She introduced herself to readers of the Rinds’ Virginia Gazette in the Sept. 2, 1773, issue — her first week as a widow. With a flourish of humility, Rind reminded advertisers and subscribers to pay their bills on time:
“Being now unhappily forced to enter upon business on my own account, I flatter myself those gentlemen who shall continue to oblige me with their custom will not be offended at my requesting them, in future, to be punctual in sending cash with advertisements, &c.”
Cardinal 250 podcast: Jeff South talks about the press in Colonial Virginia and publisher Clementina Rind.
Rind needed the money. She had at least four children (it is unclear whether a fifth child — a son who died at a young age — was living at that point). And debts left by her husband sent the family to the edge of bankruptcy.
While neighbors purchased the family’s household possessions at auction, Clementina Rind borrowed money and bought the printing press and other equipment.
“I think that makes a pretty bold statement about what her intentions were from the beginning, and that she felt at least that her household was capable of continuing the newspaper,” Cross said.
The Rinds had moved from Maryland to Williamsburg when residents of the American colonies were protesting the Stamp Act — the British government’s tax on paper goods, including newspapers. “They started their newspaper during a very tumultuous time,” Cross said. (See separate story on the role of the press in Colonial Virginia.)
Though recruited by Virginians who favored independence from England, the Rinds insisted on publishing all points of view, including material from the loyalists. Their newspaper’s motto, printed at the top of Page One, declared: “Open to All Parties, but Influenced by None.”
“They presented both sides of a lot of arguments,” Cross said. She said that was a risky proposition because the Rinds depended on newspaper subscriptions from the patriot-minded officials and on a government printing contract: In 1766, the House of Burgesses designated William Rind as its official printer, responsible for publishing the colony’s laws and other documents.
Cross is currently portraying a leather breeches maker at Colonial Williamsburg. At 33, she is about the same age Clementina Rind was when her husband died.
As the actor-interpreter for Rind, Cross wore bonnets and dresses typical of women in Williamsburg in the mid-1700s. She channeled Rind’s life story on the streets of the Colonial downtown and in front of the Ludwell-Paradise house, where the family lived and worked — the first house bought by the Rockefeller family as the restoration of Williamsburg got underway a century ago.
Cross said she was drawn to Rind’s character because she faced personal challenges as a mother and widow and because she was a tradeswoman and publisher “at the brink of something that ends up becoming revolutionary.”
Cross prepared for the role by reading every newspaper printed by the Rinds. She also read references to the Rinds in the other Williamsburg newspapers and in the journals of the House of Burgesses.
The best way to understand historical characters, Cross said, is through their own words — usually letters they have written. Clementina Rind didn’t leave a trove of letters that historians know of.
“What I had from her was her newspapers — and my goodness, the sheer amount of information that can come from newspapers is astounding,” Cross said.
“She was incredibly smart, and she’s very well educated. We can tell that from the times that she inserts herself into her newspaper, which she does very specifically when she puts her own name in the paper.”
Cross said Rind “was committed to printing everything, whether it was flattering or not — which in the 18th-century newspaper world wasn’t always happening. She trusts her audience to take the information that she’s giving them and weigh it and make decisions for themselves.”
Rind not only ran more content submitted by and of interest to women, but she also won the trust of powerful men.
In 1774, competing against the other publishers in Williamsburg, Clementina Rind petitioned the House of Burgesses to succeed her late husband as the colony’s official printer. The burgesses voted for her overwhelmingly, making Rind “most likely the first woman elected to public office in Virginia,” Cross said.
“I think if we asked her, she’d be like, ‘Great. It’s a Tuesday. I’ve got stuff I have to do.’ But it is pretty remarkable that through everything, the men of the House of Burgesses — names that we recognize: [Patrick] Henry and [Thomas] Jefferson and [George] Washington and [Richard Henry] Lee — were like, ‘Yep, we trust this woman to continue printing our political documents that are getting pretty radical.’”
Although ostensibly nonpartisan, Clementina Rind published information that lit “a fuse for a lot of people in Virginia to start thinking very differently about their conflict with Great Britain,” Cross said.
For example, she printed numerous letters sympathetic to the patriot cause as well as the House of Burgesses’ call for Virginians to fast and pray in solidarity with the people of Boston after the British closed the port there in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party.
Rind also changed the masthead of her Gazette to signal support for the patriots. Until July 28, 1774, the masthead featured the Virginia colony’s royal seal. But with the next week’s issue, the emblem became an image of ships sailing through an archway — an allusion, Cross believes, to the free flow of trade through the port of Boston.
“I think that is a pretty powerful statement from this woman without really ever saying it in words — to alter the front of her newspaper in such a dramatic way,” Cross said.
Rind never explained why she changed the masthead. “Sadly, we don’t get to know because she passes away very shortly thereafter,” Cross said. Clementina Rind died of an undisclosed illness on Sept. 25, 1774.
“I wish she had lived longer,” Cross said, “because I would have been fascinated to see what she would have done in the beginning years of the war.”
