It operated as part of the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board's 18th century museum village, San Agustín Antiguo, demonstrating the colonial printmaking process.

William Charles Wells was born in 1757 in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of a Tory printer, publisher, and bookseller.

When the British left Charleston in 1782, William and his brother John moved to St. Augustine where they established a print shop.

After the 1783 Treaty of Paris returned Florida to the Spanish, William Wells went to England and practiced medicine for the rest of his life.

The press was operated daily to demonstrate the printing process to visitors, but the Preservation Board also used it to make reproductions of historic St. Augustine maps and replicas of the East Florida Gazette, which were sold as souvenirs.