Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger (Norfolk [Va.])
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,751 issues from 1804 to 1816, published in Norfolk, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
John Cowper’s life before becoming the proprietor of the Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger shaped the newspaper he would later create for the thriving port town he called home. As a young man, he was a shipmaster in his father’s merchant fleet, oversaw the family business, was instrumental in forming Norfolk’s chamber of commerce, and served as the town’s mayor in 1801. When Cowper started the Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger in 1804, he hoped to provide a newspaper for Norfolk merchants with the ultimate goal of shaping political policies that would be favorable to that audience. At the time of the Norfolk Gazette’s creation, the town had only one other newspaper, the Norfolk Herald, a Republican triweekly issued by Charles Willet and James O’Connor, which had been published in various iterations since 1795.
Having the will but not the experience to produce a newspaper, Cowper hired the capable Federalist editor George L. Gray, formerly with Baltimore’s Republican or Anti-Democrat, with which Gray had hoped to “expose the glaring falsehoods of the democratic party.” The Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger’s introductory issue, dated July 17, 1804, explained in a letter addressed to the public that its “chief objects should be, the promotion of the Commercial interests of the Borough, by collecting and publishing mercantile information.” The Norfolk Gazette was published Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays and cost subscribers $5 per annum. Advertisements were 50 cents…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Norfolk, 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