{"id":2304,"date":"2012-11-20T16:23:09","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T16:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=2304"},"modified":"2012-11-20T16:28:05","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T16:28:05","slug":"a-mystery-from-the-first-handwritten-newspaper-published-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/a-mystery-from-the-first-handwritten-newspaper-published-in-america.html","title":{"rendered":"A Mystery from the First Handwritten Newspaper Published in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the oldest newspapers<\/a>\u00a0published in America was the Boston News-Letter<\/em>. The origins of this historical newspaper were detailed, handwritten reports by John Campbell.<\/p>\n

In 1702, John Campbell became the Postmaster in Boston. \u201cAs part of his job, Campbell had the official task of writing letters of important information to the main office.\u201d \u00a0(Sloan, William David and Julie Hedgepath Williams. \u201cThe Early American Press, 1690-1783.\u201d Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. 233p. Quoted material is from page 18.)<\/p>\n

As ships arrived in America carrying incoming mail and newspapers from England and the continent, along with the passengers and crew, Campbell was in a good position to learn the latest overseas news.<\/p>\n

As people came to his office to receive or send their mail he was able to learn the latest local news as well. It was Campbell\u2019s responsibility to write detailed reports in the form of letters filled with descriptions of every ship that arrived or left America\u2019s ports and the cargo they were carrying, along with the latest news he had learned.<\/p>\n

He copied these letters by hand and circulated them to \u201cpostal officials, merchants and other affluent colonists\u2026many subscribers shared them with nonsubscribers and some letters ended up posted in taverns and other public places.\u201d (Sloan, page 18.)<\/p>\n

Campbell could not create enough copies of the letters to keep up with the demand. Realizing there was a market for his \u201cnewsletters,\u201d he launched one of America\u2019s oldest newspapers, the Boston News-Letter<\/a><\/em>, on 24 April 1704.<\/p>\n

So, what do we make of this handwritten notation added to a shipping notice published in the Boston News-Letter<\/em> in 1706?<\/p>\n

\"handwritten<\/a>
Boston News-Letter (Boston, Massachusetts), 18-25 November 1706, page 4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Was this note added by the editor on every copy of the newspaper?<\/p>\n

Was this a throwback to the previous handwritten news format or simply a notation made by a person who had purchased a copy of that week\u2019s newspaper?<\/p>\n

It might take a handwriting expert to determine who wrote this in the old newspaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the oldest newspapers\u00a0published in America was the Boston News-Letter. The origins of this historical newspaper were detailed, handwritten reports by John Campbell. In 1702, John Campbell became the Postmaster in Boston. \u201cAs part of his job, Campbell had the official task of writing letters of important information to the main office.\u201d \u00a0(Sloan, William […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[1059,2696,5286,465,2697,443,1067,5366,2700,2020,27,5370,2699,2698,5458],"class_list":["post-2304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-boston","tag-boston-news-letter","tag-campbell","tag-historical-newspapers","tag-john-campbell","tag-ma","tag-massachusetts","tag-news","tag-newsletters","tag-newspaper-archives","tag-newspapers","tag-people","tag-ship-lists","tag-shipping-news","tag-williams"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}