The Ephrata Cloister: .....the First Font on the First U.S. Type-Specimen Broadside

Above: Letters M and S, from the 1748 Märtyrer Spiegel (Martyrs' Mirror). (I used some red Photoshop ink to jazz up these letters.)

Peter Miller, of the Ephrata Cloister, used this display font in his 1748 Martyrs' Mirror, the largest book printed in Colonial United States.

This font is hugely important to the history of American printing, because it also appears as the first font on the first type specimen printed in Colonial United States: the ca. 1740 broadside printed by Christopher Saur in Germantown (near Philadelphia) to advertise his printing services.

Today, one of those Saur broadsides is in Philadelphia, in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 

These ornate letters M and S appear throught the Martyrs' Mirror, a book about Christian martyrs.

Saur identifies these large letters as "Sabon."  They were designed by an anonymous typographer in Germany, at the Luthersche type foundry in Frankfurt.

...so that makes this the First Photoshopped edition of the First font of the First U.S. type specimen.  (I'm riding this font as far as I can take it.)

Above: Alle Menschen sind Erde (All Man is Earth) 

Detail of the first type-specimen advertisement printed in Colonial United States.  It is a broadside printed by Christopher Saur in Germantown, near Philadelphia, ca. 1740.  Peter Miller used this same "Sabon" font in his 1748 Märtyrer Spiegel (Martyrs' Mirror).