Imitators of The Hagerstown Almanack Part 5
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With the 1894 editions, the Robertson and Swingley almanacs became identical in contents. A year earlier, Swingley had adopted an enlarged title and new cover design for his own almanac, now entitled The National Union Hagers-Town Almanack. He was, in fact, beginning to make his almanac look more like Gruber’s. On Swingley’s new cover, Hagers-Town had now been hyphenated, and k had been added to Almanack. The cover had a border with vegetation, the top woodcut featured a shield with the American flag, and the bottom woodcut was large, filling about the same space as that on Gruber’s. On first glance, it was easy to confuse the two.sers would read the title as The Original Hagerstown Almanac.
With Robertson’s 1902 edition, Otho Swingley seemed to have lost completely whatever tenuous grasp he had had on reality: He blatantly used Gruber’s famous cover design. The 1903 Robertson’s went back to its previous cover; it may be that Gruber Almanack Co. approached Swingley directly and strongly enough to keep him from repeating the infringement immediately.
Swingley, however, did not remain quiet. The 1905 Robertson’s returned to the Gruber cover and added Town and Country to the title. The 1906 edition went even further: The cover is identical to the Gruber’s, except that instead of J. Gruber’s, it has J. & C. Gruber’s, and it states below the large woodcut: "FORMERLY PUBLISHED BY JOHN GRUBER AND HIS WIFE CATHARINE GRUBER.” The inside back cover reprints Caroline Robertson’s 1874 "Hagerstown Almanack in a Nut Shell,” and on the title page Swingley published a long, semi-coherent diatribe, claiming that his almanac was the only legal continuation of John Gruber’s original publication. He concluded the statement with:
Mr. T. G. Robertson, his heirs and assignes [sic], were then in 1854 and are now in 1906, morally and legally, the first, last and only successors ever authorized to publish the Gruber Hagerstown Town and Country Almanack; therefore, statistics [sic] inform us further, that Miss F. C. Gruber and W. L. May were the first victims of a conspiricy [sic] to violate their own contract, instigated by a dentist of Hagerstown . . . in defiance of the law and rights of others; consequently Dr. M. A. Berry and the Gruber Almanac Company are amenable [sic; answerable?] to all whom it may concern. Swingley had forgotten—or conveniently disregarded—the 1878–79 lawsuit in which he, Berry, and the Gruber heirs successfully sued Thomas G. Robertson’s widow.
The Grubers had finally had enough. In September 1905, the Gruber Almanack Co. obtained a court injunction ordering Otho Swingley to stop publishing his J. & C. Gruber’s Hagers-Town Town and Country Almanack or any other imitation of the Gruber almanac. But Swingley wasn’t through yet. The Grubers learned shortly that Swingley had not stopped: Despite the injunction, he was still distributing his almanac with the Gruber cover design, but now entitled T. G. Robertson’s Improved Edition [of the] Hagers-Town Town and Country Almanack.
Both sides headed to the court again, and then to the Maryland Court of Appeals, which ruled that Swingley had indeed violated the Gruber Almanack Co.’s copyright and trademarks and forbade him from publishing J. & C. Gruber’s Hagers-Town Town and Country Almanack "or any other colorable imitation” of the original. At long last, Otho Swingley was out of business. During his later years, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he was a few lunar cycles short of a full almanac.
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