Phenix Gazette (Alexandria [D.C.])
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,584 issues from 1825 to 1833, published in Alexandria, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
In 1800, after achieving success as a newspaper printer in Baltimore, Matthew Brown (1774-1831), Philadelphia-trained printer, hoped to launch a Federalist newspaper in the Nation’s Capital. That summer, he joined forces with Samuel Snowden, a journeyman printer and collection agent in the Yundt & Brown office, in the hopes of producing the Washington Advertiser to be published daily during the Congressional sessions and triweekly during recesses.
The two men soon found, however, that they were not alone in their ambitions to start a Federalist newspaper in Washington D.C. In July, shortly after Brown and Snowden announced their undertaking, William Alexander Rind moved his Virginia Federalist from Richmond to Georgetown, introducing it as the Washington Federalist in September 1800. Undeterred by their competitor, Brown and Snowden printed a prospectus issue for the Washington Advertiser on November 20, while also collecting subscribers for the new venture.
In the weeks following, Brown and Snowden’s plans changed when they learned that William Fowler’s struggling Columbian Mirror and Alexandria Gazette was for sale. In late November 1800, they decided to buy Fowler’s Alexandria newspaper instead of competing with Rind on the other side of the Potomac. The two men became Alexandria’s sole Federalist printers, renaming the eight-year-old paper the Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer. Though the Alexandria Advertiser succeeded the Columbian Mirror, the two…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Alexandria, Virginia, 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