Berkeley and Jefferson Intelligencer (Martinsburg, Va.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
273 issues from 1803 to 1808, published in Martinsburg, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
Located in the northeastern panhandle of current day West Virginia, the Berkeley and Jefferson Intelligencer provided residents of Martinsburg, Virginia with a range of news coverage, from local store openings to international correspondence regarding conflicts like the First Barbary War. In 1802, 24-year-old John Alburtis founded the paper in response to political differences with his former supervisor and colleague Nathanial Willis, Sr. at the Potomak Guardian. The Intelligencer reflected Alburtis’s Federalist political leanings, referring to Democrats as “deadly and unprincipled enemies” in its reporting (January 11, 1805). Born in Baltimore in 1778, Alburtis, his second wife, Nancy, and their four children lived most of their lives in Martinsburg and enslaved a number of people, including children. Upon his death, Alburtis’s will detailed that the people his family enslaved were to be manumitted upon turning twenty-eight years old; until that time, they were to continue to serve Nancy.
The weekly periodical circulated as the Berkely and Jefferson Intelligencer every Friday in Martinsburg until 1810 when Alburtis changed its title to the Martinsburgh Gazette. Typically four pages in length, each issue of the Intelligencer began with local updates on court cases, estate sales, dry goods shipments, and debtors notices. The paper’s next section often took up any international news its publisher deemed noteworthy, including the First Barbary War and the dramatic encounters…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Martinsburg, 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