The origin of New Mexico's first printing press is in dispute, and the only way to solve the mystery might be to find it and, if necessary, dig it up.

According to various accounts — Ray John de Aragon's 2006 translation of Recollections of the Life of the Priest Don Antonio José Martínez, written by Pedro Sanchez in 1903; Fray Angélico Chávez's 1981 But Time and Change: The Story of Padre Martínez of Taos, 1793-1867 and William Wroth's account on the Office of the State Historian's Web site — the press was brought from Mexico along El Camino Real.

But Tom Leech, director of the Museum of New Mexico's Palace of the Governors Press, insists that it came from the Eastern United States on the Santa Fe Trail. He said this is confirmed by a bill of lading as well as by merchant Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, published in 1844-45.

"The only printing press in the country is a small affair which was brought ... across the prairies from the United States, and is now employed occasionally in printing billets, primers and Catholic catechisms," Gregg wrote. "This literary negligence is to be attributed, not more to the limited number of reading people, than to those injudicious restrictions upon that freedom of the press, which is so essential to its prosperity. ... No wonder then that the people of Northern Mexico are so much behind their neighbors of the United States in intelligence, and that the pulse of national industry and liberty beats so low!"

Leech says contemporary accounts and other evidence confirm that Martínez's press was a Ramage — manufactured by the United States' foremost press maker of the early 19th century, Adam Ramage of Philadelphia.

The coffee-table-sized, wood-and-iron, hand-operated press was a "foolscap" size — capable of printing a 17-by-13 1/2-inch sheet of paper, the standard for manufactured paper in the 19th century.

None of Martínez's early books include tildes, accent marks or other grammatical symbols common to written Spanish, lending credibility to the contention that the press and its type were from the English-speaking Eastern United States. Leech said the type and the etchings used for illustrations — a moose appears on the title page of Martínez's speller — appear to be made in Boston.

In 1987, the Smithsonian loaned the Palace a Ramage Press from the early 1800s. It was returned recently before reconstruction began at the print shop in the rear of the Palace of the Governors.

"It was like saying the first car in New Mexico was a Ford," Leech said. "We don't know if it was a Model T or a Mustang, and I'm pretty sure that the Ramage we had was not Padre Martínez's Ramage."

Some believe Martínez's press is buried somewhere in Northern New Mexico.

After Martínez died in 1867, the press was sold to a printer in Cimarron who used it to publish a newspaper. During the Colfax County War of the 1870s, the newspaper so riled two locals that they broke into the printing shop, stole the press and its type, and tossed them into the Cimarron River.

"The story usually ends with two drunk cowboys throwing the press into the river," Leech said. "But the river is only knee-deep and as wide as your living room, and so if two drunk cowboys can throw it in, two sober ones can pull it out, even though there's no record about it."

Leech's curiosity was piqued a couple of years ago when a man reported that as a boy in Maxwell in the 1950s, his father complained that the local public school had thrown away the old Martínez press. Leech said he went to Maxwell, talked to several old-timers and studied pamphlets printed on the press when it was used to teach printing in Maxwell. He said the materials were compatible with what could have been printed on the Martínez press.

Leech said one Maxwell old-timer believes the old press might have been buried inside an old heating boiler beneath the Maxwell High School gymnasium. But without corroboration, he said, the story remains too speculative to start searching with metal detectors.

"I really want to set the record as straight as much as I can," Leech said. "But I'm just real reluctant to put out much about the fate of the press. ... I would love it if a photograph of the thing would come up. It just would require some more research."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.