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Business
Founded
The
birth of the business is not found on or around the first issue
of The Orcadian was printed, but more than 50 years before
in 1798.
It
was then that Magnus Anderson, a catechist or religious teacher,
began binding bibles at a house in Victoria Street in Kirkwall.
Not much is known about Magnus other than he lived at one time in
St Andrews and was twice married.
He
was an extremely religious man and instructed on the Bible on a
voluntary basis but sometime in the late 1790s he travelled to Edinburgh
and appealed to the Secession Church to employ him as a catechist
if they found him suitable qualified.
The
church agreed and Magnus was paid the handsome salary of £20
per year for a job he had previously done for nothing.
According
to the well known book "Kirkwall in the Orkneys", Magnus
bought a practical bookbinder from Edinburgh which he used to set
up his binding shop. He purchases Bibles and Psalm books in sheet
form, bound them up, and "got a very free sale for them at
the Lammas Fair."
Magnus
had a family of four and in 1799, a year after he started his binding
business, his wife gave birth to a second son, James Urquhart Anderson.
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