The New Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth [N.H.])

• 1793–1847
• Newspaper

Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.

2,750 issues from 1793 to 1847, published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, digitised for Chronicling America.

At its inception on October 7, 1756, the New Hampshire Gazette was the first newspaper printed in the British colony of New Hampshire, and it served as the colony’s only paper throughout the Revolutionary period. Printed weekly, the Gazette was established by Daniel Fowle (ca. 1715-1787), a Massachusetts-born entrepreneur. Fowle had built a publishing career in Boston, but he moved north to New Hampshire after he was briefly imprisoned for selling pamphlets critical of the Massachusetts provincial government. Setting up shop in Portsmouth, a mercantile city along New Hampshire’s seacoast, Fowle promised in his first issue “to furnish my Readers with the most material News which can be collected from every part of the World.” From 1756 until the early 1790s, Fowle was aided in his efforts by Primus, an enslaved Black man and skilled press operator. Primus was vital to Fowle’s business success, leaving his mark on thousands of newspapers, books, broadsides, and other materials. Upon his death in 1791, the Gazette’s May 26 issue eulogized Primus as “a hearty friend, and did possess a grateful mind, though oft borne down with pain.”

The paper’s title changed in 1763 to the New-Hampshire Gazette and Historical Chronicle, and it played an increasingly essential role in the political discourse of the Revolutionary Era. It was the first colonial newspaper to print the words of Samuel Adams, and in 1765, it protested the Stamp Act by publishing the October 31, 1765 issue surrounded…

Genres

News

Published in

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States

Language

English

Collection

Chronicling America

Licence or status

None stated by the archive

Rights

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.

Credit

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities

Who can read it

Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)

Archive

Library of Congress