What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
The advertisement called on “Members of the New York Whaling Company … to meet at the House of Josiah Pierson, in Newark,” on November 9, 1776. It ran in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury published by Hugh Gaine in Newark following the British occupation of New York. Gaine left the city, as did the New York Whaling Company, yet the printer did not remain in Newark for long. The November 2 edition that carried the New York Whaling Company’s notice happened to be the last one that Gaine printed in Newark before returning to New York to resume publication of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury in the occupied city. He published a total of seven issues in Newark from September 21 through November 2.
Meanwhile, according to Clarence S. Brigham, “Gaine’s New York office, under the inspection of the British authorities, had been used for the publication of a paper with the same title, and the same volume numbering, … but issued weekly” from September 30 to November 4.[1] Gaine’s name remained in the imprint in the first of those issues, but did not appear in subsequent ones. It returned with the November 11 issue.
In his History of Printing in America, Isaiah Thomas provided a brief overview of Gaine and his newspaper during the imperial crisis and the war. The New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury “appeared rather a neutral paper. Gaine seemed desirous to side with the successful party; but not knowing which would eventually prevail, he seems to have been unstable in his politics.” When the war began, Gaine “leaned toward the country,” but then left New York for Newark just before the occupation. He soon returned “and printed under the protection of the king’s army; and … devoted his paper to the royal cause.”[2] He apparently believed “that appearances were against the ultimate success of the United States,” but after the American victory Gaine petitioned the state legislature for leave to remain in the city, and having obtained permission, his press was employed in book printing.”[3] He discontinued the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury after the British left the city, having published it for thirty-one years.
Ironically, the first item on the first page of the last issue published in Newark was “An ACT to punish TRAITORS and disaffected PERSONS” passed by the state government in Princeton on October 4, 1776. Gaine would soon become one of those “disaffected PERSONS” when he returned to New York and resumed publication of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury there.
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[1] Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspaper, 1690-1820 (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 512-513.
[2] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 497-498.
[3] Thomas, History of Printing, 472-473.