granted by the British government). It was the only paper printed in Boston during the siege, and ceased to appear when the British troops were compelled to evacuate the city.
The Boston Gazette, founded in 1719, had James Franklin, elder brother of the celebrated Benjamin Franklin, as its first printer. It lasted until the end of 1754, its editorship usually changing with the change of the postmasters. On the 17th August 1721 James Franklin started the New England Courant, the publication of which ceased in 1727; and two years later Benjamin Franklin purchased the Pennsylvania Gazette, which he continued weekly until 1765.
To the Boston Gazette and the Courant succeeded the New England Weekly Journal (20th March 1727; incorporated with the Boston Gazette in 1741), and the Weekly Rehearsal (27th September 1731), which became the Boston Evening Post (August 1735), and under that title was for a time the most popular of the Boston newspapers. It aimed at neutrality in politics, and therefore did not survive the exciting events of the spring of 1775. Several minor papers followed, which may be passed over without notice. A new Boston Gazette, which began in April 1755 (merged in 1836 in the Centinel), is of more interest. For a long time it was the main organ of the popular party against England, and expounded their policy with great ability, and in a dignified temper. Otis, John Adams, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren were amongst its writers. It was strongly Republican after the adoption of the constitution, especially opposing its old contributor John Adams.
The Massachusetts Spy (1770), under the indefatigable editorship of the American historian of printing, Isaiah Thomas, did yeoman’s service in this struggle, although of a different kind from that of the Boston Gazette. The latter spoke chiefly to the thinkers and natural leaders of the people. The Spy was a light and active skirmisher who engaged his antagonists wherever he met them, and frequently carried the war into the enemy’s country. In July 1774, during the operation of the Boston Port Act, and soon after the landing of four British regiments, it adopted Franklin’s odd device, representing Great Britain as a dragon, and the colonies as a snake divided into nine parts with the motto, “join or die.” But Boston grew too hot for the patriotic printer, and he had to remove to Worcester on the day of the battle of Lexington. Here the paper continued to be published (as the Worcester Spy) until 1786,—the lack of the stirring revolutionary matter being occasionally supplied by the republication in its columns of entire books, such as Robertson’s America and Gordon’s History of the Revolution. This journal, like so many more, was for a time killed by a tax. The stamp duty imposed in March 1786, though amounting to but two-thirds of a penny, and very speedily repealed, led to its suspension until April 1788, when the weekly Massachusetts Spy was revived, lasting till 1848. A morning edition, the Worcester Spy, was started in 1845 and continued to be published till May 1904.
The Boston Centinel was another memorable newspaper. It was founded in 1784 as the Massachusetts Centinel and the Republican Journal, a semi-weekly; in 1790 becoming the Columbian Centinel. For many years it was edited by Major B. Russell (1761–1845), a man who combined real ability with moderation of temper and singular modesty and disinterestedness. He printed the Acts of Congress for a very long time without charge, but the government eventually gave him £1400 in recognition of his work. The Centinel had good foreign news, and Russell was intimate with Louis Philippe and Talleyrand when they were in Boston. In 1830 it absorbed the Palladium (founded in 1793 as the Massachusetts Mercury, and renamed in 1801 the Massachusetts Mercury and New England Palladium), and in 1836 the Boston Gazette, but in 1840 was merged in the Boston Advertiser. The Boston Daily Advertiser was founded in 1813, and in 1832 absorbed the Patriot, which in 1819 was started out of a nucleus chiefly composed of the New England Chronicle (1776).
William Lloyd Garrison’s once well-known Liberator was founded at Boston on New Year’s Day 1831. For a time its editor was also writer, compositor and pressman. In December of that year the legislature of Georgia offered a reward of 5000 dollars to any one who would cause him to be apprehended and brought to trial. He continued the paper till 1865 and lived to witness the abolition of negro slavery. In 1827 Garrison also edited in Boston the National Philanthropist, the first American total abstinence paper.
Among modern Boston papers the most important are the Evening Transcript (1830), Herald (1836), Daily Advertiser (1813), Globe (1872), Boston American (1904) and Post (1831).
Of Massachusetts papers outside Boston the most important still in existence in 1910 was the morning Springfield Republican (weekly, 1824; daily, 1844), established by Samuel Bowles, father of Samuel Bowles (1826–1878), its most famous editor.
The Evening Salem Gazette, originally a weekly (1768), was a famous paper during the War of Independence and in the period immediately after. The Hampshire Gazette of Northampton, Massachusetts, founded in September 1786 in the interests of the Administration at the time of Shays’s Rebellion, started its daily edition in 1890. The weekly Gazette and Courier (1841), was a consolidation of the Greenfield Gazette (1792) and the Courier (1838). The Salem Register and Mercury continues the Salem Register (1800) and the Mercury, which was published in Salem as early as 1768, but not continuously. The Haverhill Evening Gazette dates from 1798. In Pittsfield is published the Berkshire County Eagle, a weekly established in 1789, with an evening edition, the Berkshire Evening Eagle (1892). The Newburyport Herald (evening 1880; morning 1892) continues the title of an earlier paper (1797) owned by Ephraim W. Allen and William S. Allen.
At the commencement of the struggle for independence in 1775 Massachusetts possessed 7 newspapers, New Hampshire 1 (the New Hampshire Gazette), Rhode Island 2, and Connecticut 3,—making 13 in all for the New England colonies. Pennsylvania had 8, of which the earliest in date was the American Weekly Mercury (No. 1, 22nd December 1719); and New York but 3, the oldest of them being the New York Gazette (1725). Up to that period (1725) Boston and Philadelphia were the only towns possessing newspaper throughout America. In the middle and southern colonies there were, in 1775, in the aggregate, 10 journals, of which Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina possessed each 2, South Carolina 3 and Georgia 1. The total number of the Anglo-American papers was 34, and all of them were of weekly publication.
New Hampshire.—The New Hampshire Gazette (1756; daily edition since 1852), published at Portsmouth, was the “father” of the New England press. The Cheshire Republican (1793) and New Hampshire Sentinel (1799; evening edition since 1890) are still published at Keene.
Vermont.—The earliest paper established in Vermont was the Green Mountain Postboy, first published in April 1781. The oldest important paper in Vermont is the Rutland Herald (established in 1794 as a weekly; daily edition since 1861). The Vermont Journal of Windsor, Vermont, was established in 1783.
Maine.—The first papers of any importance published in Maine were the Portland Advertiser (evening, 1785), of which James G. Blaine was editor in 1857–1860; and the Eastern Argus of Portland (September 1803). The latter was established by Nathaniel Willis (1780–1870), the father of N. P. Willis. Willis was converted in Portland by Edward Payson and about 1808 he left the paper. In 1816–1826 he established in Boston the Recorder, which is supposed to have been the first American religious paper. In 1827 Willis established the Youth’s Companion, the most popular American juvenile paper. The Eastern Argus was edited in 1820–1824 by Seba Smith (1813–1868), who established in 1829 the Portland Courier, which he edited until 1837 and to which he contributed the sketches republished in 1833 as Life and Letters of Major Jack Downing.
Connecticut.—The Connecticut Courant of Hartford was established in October 1764 as a weekly; in 1893 there appeared a semi-weekly issue, and its daily issue, the Hartford Courant, first appeared in 1837. The paper was a strong supporter of the administrations of Washington and Adams. Probably the best known of its editors is Joseph R. Hawley. Charles Dudley Warner was long a member of the staff. The Hartford Times (semi-weekly 1817; daily, 1841) has always been a prominent paper. Its principal early editors were Gideon Wells in 1826–1836 (in 1861–1869 he was United States secretary of the navy), and John Milton Niles (1787–1856), who was United States
