Why three Colonial-era newspapers in Williamsburg called themselves The Virginia Gazette — and even published at the same time

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William Parks learned how to operate a press as a print-shop apprentice in England. After immigrating to the American colonies in 1726, he started a publishing business, including a newspaper, in Maryland. But it wasn’t as lucrative as he had hoped. So Parks cast his gaze south to a more populous colony — Virginia.

At the time, Virginia’s government had banned publishing as a threat to its autocratic leadership. Consequently, and inconveniently, all of the colony’s laws and other documents had to be sent to England for printing. Parks persuaded the Virginia House of Burgesses to appoint him as its official publisher — a role he already served in Maryland.

Parks subsequently moved to Williamsburg, then Virginia’s capital, and looked for print jobs to supplement his income. On Aug. 6, 1736, he published the colony’s first newspaper , calling it The Virginia Gazette, with the motto “Containing the freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick.”

That was the start of one of the most influential chapters in American journalism, featuring front pages showcasing Thomas Paine’s “ Common Sense ,” an eyewitness account of the Battle of Bunker Hill , construction of the first paper mill south of Pennsylvania and a female printer who published Thomas Jefferson’s revolution-inspiring list of grievances against the British king and Parliament.

It was also one of the most confusing chapters in the annals of journalism: After Parks launched his Virginia Gazette, two competing newspapers with the same name cropped up in Williamsburg. They had different publishers and mottos but similar mastheads proclaiming to be The Virginia Gazette. Over a 15-year period, two or even all three of the Gazettes were published at the same time .

The gaggle of Gazettes, unique in the American colonies, complicates the history of Virginia’s first newspapers. In tracing that history, the Library of Congress and other repositories struggle to specify which Gazette gets credit for particular deeds — offering a flurry of “ Not to be confused with ” footnotes:

• Which publisher teamed up with Benjamin Franklin and opened a paper mill and a bookstore in Williamsburg? That would be Parks.
• Which newspaper was published by a woman? That would be the second Gazette when Clementina Rind took over after her husband died.
• Which Virginia paper broke the news about the signing of the Declaration of Independence? That would be Gazette No. 3 under Alexander Purdie, who earlier had been a publisher of Parks’ newspaper.

The Colonial-era Gazettes were trendsetters: Through modern times, the Library of Virginia counts 46 newspapers with “Virginia Gazette” in their title (one, which also included “Or Norfolk Intelligencer” in its name, circulated in Tidewater in 1774-75 until the royal governor seized its printing press ), and the Library of Congress says there were even more . They include the semiweekly Virginia Gazette still produced in Williamsburg under the auspices of the Daily Press of Newport News and the Tribune Publishing Co .

Cardinal 250 podcast: Jeff South talks about the press in Colonial Virginia and publisher Clementina Rind.

There’s a simple reason, besides lax trademark law, for the proliferation of papers calling themselves The Virginia Gazette in the 1700s. In England, the word gazette meant an official public journal, and Virginia’s Colonial government decreed that official proclamations and resolutions, as well as certain advertisements, had to “be published in the Virginia Gazette.”

“The gimmick was that you could compete for the publication of the laws as long as you called yourself the Gazette,” said Bill O’Donovan, who started as a reporter at Williamsburg’s contemporary newspaper in 1971 and served as publisher from 1986 to 2012.

“A printer calling his paper, say, The Williamsburg Bugle, was automatically eliminating himself from any government income.”

David Copeland , a media historian at Elon University, said that “no printer wanted to miss out on the chance to obtain the [Colonial government’s printing] contract — hence the three Virginia Gazettes.”

The existence of multiple newspapers with the same title “wouldn’t have been confusing to people in Virginia” because each issue prominently displayed the publisher’s name and motto, Copeland added.

But Jordan Taylor , a historian at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, noted, “It is certainly a source of confusion and annoyance for historians — especially when someone cites the Virginia Gazette without identifying the publisher!”

A fraught time for freedom of the press

Under British rule, printers needed a government license . They could be charged with seditious libel for criticizing the government or public officials — even if what they published was true. In fact, truth made the offense worse: “The greater the truth, the greater the libel.”

That climate of censorship began to abate when John Peter Zenger, publisher of The New-York Weekly Journal, was charged with libel for printing a report accusing the royal governor of rigging elections and other corruption. In 1735, a jury acquitted Zenger and laid the foundation for the principle that truth is a defense against libel.

The nascent patriot movement agitated for a free press, which George Mason called “ one of the great bulwarks of liberty ” — a principle later enshrined in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

But when the first Gazettes came on the scene, freedom of the press was still a work in progress.

What colonial newspapers were like

The Gazettes spawned under those circumstances shared some commonalities: They typically came out once a week with four pages of dense text, including advertisements, on tabloid-size paper. The content was an eclectic mix (not unlike a blog) of letters, often from abroad; speeches and proclamations from public officials; poetry and literature; and news and information culled from ships arriving at Yorktown and other ports.

Copyright being a novel concept, publishers didn’t hesitate to rip and reprint stories from other newspapers.

Local news was sparse except for obituaries like : “On Sunday the 16th the Revd. James Pasteur, rector of St. Bride’s parish, Norfolk, was taken suddenly ill at the altar, where he was performing the duties of his sacred office. His own house being at a considerable distance, he was conveyed to the nearest in that neighborhood, where he died on the Tuesday following. His wife and a numerous family are left to mourn the irreparable loss …”

Publishing was a laborious process in Colonial times.

Metal molds of each letter had to be arranged by hand to form lines of text. The letter in each mold was backward (Ǝ instead of E, for example), and the type was set right to left because it would appear reversed on the printed page. For typesetters, letters could be easily confused — which might have given birth to the phrase “ mind your p’s and q’s .”

It took about 25 hours to set the type for each newspaper page. A galley, or wooden case, holding the type then was locked in place on a flatbed press.

Two workers were needed to operate the press. One, called a beater, would spread ink evenly over the galley. The other, called a puller, would place a sheet of paper on the press, pull a lever to lower a plate against the paper, then raise the plate and extract the printed page. The puller had to apply about 200 pounds of pressure for around 15 seconds to get a sharp impression.

An efficient team could produce about 200 printed sheets of paper an hour. After the ink dried, the beater and puller printed the other side of the sheet.

Because printing required so much work, and paper (then made from rags , not wood pulp) was expensive, colonial newspapers weren’t cheap: In the 1770s, the competing publishers of The Virginia Gazette each charged 12 shillings and 6 pence — the equivalent of six days’ wages for a skilled tradesman — for an annual subscription.

Newspapers were delivered to subscribers by the postal service or courier. In that regard, and to stay on top of incoming news, it helped that Parks, Purdie and other printers also served as postmasters .

Historians don’t have circulation numbers for the 18th-century Virginia Gazettes. But Williamsburg, which became the colony’s capital in 1699 after the statehouse in Jamestown burned down , was considered a boomtown then.

By the 1760s, the city’s population grew to about 1,500 white residents (served by some 21 taverns) and an estimated 1,000 enslaved Black people. And that didn’t include the influx of folks for legislative sessions or to attend the College of William and Mary (founded in 1693), or the residents of the surrounding area or Tidewater.

Copeland, who has written a dozen books, including “ The Media’s Role in Defining the Nation ,” said 18th-century Virginians “had a thirst for information” — even if they couldn’t read.

“Papers would have been read aloud in taverns, coffeehouses, homes, even on the streets,” he said.

It was against that backdrop that the three Virginia Gazette newspapers competed for readers.

Gazette No. 1: Parks branches out

In 1726, Parks answered the Maryland General Assembly’s call for a printer to publish its laws and promptly opened an office in Annapolis. The following year, he founded The Maryland Gazette , that colony’s first newspaper.

After expanding to Williamsburg, Parks started shifting his business activities to Virginia. He closed The Maryland Gazette in 1734; three years later, he relinquished his post as Maryland’s official printer after authorities there accused him of neglecting his work.

By then, Parks was heavily invested in his Virginia operations. He ingratiated himself to the local gentry by publishing, for example, a book of poems praising the royal governor. Parks also printed the Virginia Almanack , a perennial bestseller forecasting the weather, as well as the first cookbook and first medical manual printed in the British colonies.

Parks’ Gazette was no rabble rouser. It generally eschewed criticizing the Crown and local authorities. Virginians who chafed at British control complained about the first Gazette. “Nothing disagreeable to the governor could be got into it,” Jefferson wrote .

That was true of the Gazette not only under Parks (who fell ill and died in 1750 during a trip back to England) but also under the men who succeeded him as publisher: William Hunter (1751-1761), Joseph Royle (1761-1765), Alexander Purdie and John Dixon (1766-1775), Dixon and Hunter (1775-1778), and Dixon and Thomas Nicolson (1779-1780).

Royle, for instance, refused to publish the Stamp Act Resolves , the resolutions adopted by the House of Burgesses in 1765 challenging the British Parliament’s authority to levy taxes in Virginia.

Gazette No. 2: The Rinds move to Williamsburg

Disgruntlement with the monopoly newspaper prompted patriot-minded Virginians to invite William Rind, who had helped revive The Maryland Gazette, to start a “ free paper ” in Williamsburg.

After Rind and his family moved from Annapolis, he published the first issue of his Virginia Gazette on May 16, 1766, under the motto “Open to All Parties, but Influenced by None.” The House of Burgesses also made Rind its public printer.

In 1773, Rind died of a “ tedious and painful illness ,” possibly malaria, at age 39 — leaving debts that threatened to impoverish his widow, Clementina, and their children. But when the family’s possessions were auctioned off, Mrs. Rind bought the presses on credit and took over the newspaper and printing business.

Clementina Rind made sure to get out the newspaper even on the day her husband died . She was listed as printer for the first time when the following week’s edition carried William Rind’s obituary on Aug. 26, 1773. ( See separate story on Clementina Rind .)

On the verge of the revolution, Mrs. Rind’s Virginia Gazette, though neutral in tone, published reports favoring the patriot cause — about the Boston Tea Party, for example, and other “ unhappy disputes between Great Britain and her American colonies.”

Mrs. Rind also published “ A Summary View of the Rights of British America ,” a pro-independence pamphlet that circulated throughout the Colonies. The only name on the tract was Clementina Rind as printer. The author, listed as “a Member of the House of Burgesses,” was later revealed to be Jefferson.

On Sept. 25, 1774, Mrs. Rind, then 34 years old, died , perhaps from the same disease that took her husband. She had been a newspaper publisher and editor for only 13 months but had a lasting impact on Virginia. She printed submissions by and about women as well as poetry and articles about education and science.

Mrs. Rind’s death prompted an outpouring of eulogies about her intellect, literary talent and critical judgment. The rival Gazette ran an obituary praising her as “a Lady of singular Merit, and universally esteemed,” and one of its editors served as guardian of the Rind children.

As a testament to her significance, Clementina Rind was among a dozen women selected to be depicted with statues at the Virginia Women’s Monument at the state Capitol.

After her death, John Pinkney, a relative who had been working in her print shop, continued to publish the newspaper “ for the benefit of Clementina Rind’s children .” Under Pinkney, the paper reported on the Yorktown Tea Party (a protest inspired by the Boston event) and the Continental Congress .

But in 1776, Pinkney shut down his Gazette — probably because of financial trouble — and moved to North Carolina, where he died the next year.

Gazette No. 3: Purdie stands ‘Always for Liberty’

In the runup to the American Revolution, newspapers became more partisan, said David Sloan , a professor emeritus at the University of Alabama and founder of the American Journalism Historians Association . Alexander Purdie’s epiphany was a prime example.

Purdie had been a co-publisher of the first Gazette, which leaned loyal to England. But he quit and, on Feb. 3, 1775, began publishing his own newspaper — a cheerleader for the patriot movement.

The motto for Purdie’s Virginia Gazette was “Always for Liberty, and the Publick Good.” As one scholar wrote , “No claims of objectivity, no pious paean to virtue, no classical imagery, just a blunt statement of his paper’s role in the emerging revolution.”

The masthead of Purdie’s paper evolved from a coat of arms, to a box stating “ Thirteen United Colonies. United, we stand — Divided, we fall ,” to the Gadsden flag (a coiled rattlesnake above the slogan “Don’t Tread on Me”).

So in 1775-76, Williamsburg had three newspapers all calling themselves The Virginia Gazette. What differentiated Purdie’s publication from the competition was its insurrectionary zeal, including satires of the royal governor.

On Feb. 2, 1776, his Gazette printed excerpts from “Common Sense” advocating independence from Britain. On July 19 of that year, Purdie was the first to report that the Continental Congress had approved the Declaration of Independence. The following week, as the lead story on Page One , he published the declaration in full.

Purdie, considered by the Journal of the American Revolution as one of the most influential publishers of that era, died in 1779. His nephew, John Clarkson, and Augustine Davis continued printing the third Gazette for another year.

Lessons for today’s journalists

In 1780, Virginia moved its capital from Williamsburg to Richmond — a city that was easier to defend from the British and had fewer residents loyal to England. Dixon and Nicolson, then publishers of the first Virginia Gazette, relocated their newspaper , too. But Clarkson and Davis couldn’t afford the move and stopped publishing.

Williamsburg went without a newspaper until 1825, when a publication called the Phoenix Gazette and Williamsburg Intelligencer arrived. It lasted four years. The next century saw sporadic attempts to publish a newspaper in Williamsburg — including one called The Virginia Gazette under the auspices of the journalism faculty at William and Mary.

In 1930, as financier and philanthropist John Davison Rockefeller Jr. was restoring Williamsburg to its Colonial character, newspaper publisher J.A. Osborne launched the current Virginia Gazette. It stayed in the Osborne family until 1986, when Chesapeake Publishing Corp. bought the paper. It was sold to Tribune in 2001.

The Colonial-era Gazettes weren’t paragons of journalism. O’Donovan, a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame , said he was appalled at the casual racism they reflected: All of the newspapers supported the slavery of Black people and ran advertisements offering rewards for runaway slaves — including an ad placed by Jefferson .

The early-day Gazette publishers themselves owned slaves. Indeed, Dick, a man enslaved by Clementina Rind , was instrumental in publishing her newspaper after her husband died. Because of Mrs. Rind’s involvement in slavery, some people opposed including her in the Virginia Women’s Monument.

But the 18th-century Gazettes also held lessons for today’s journalists.

They are a reminder to view politicians’ statements with healthy skepticism, O’Donovan said. His newspaper regularly ran glimpses of what the predecessor Gazettes had published two centuries ago. O’Donovan recalled George Washington’s “promising that the troops would be home for Christmas. Then as now, he was wrong.”

Moreover, the Gazettes produced in an age of hand-set metal type — when newspaper pages were printed one sheet at a time and “nobody got rich doing this” — can inspire journalists to work hard, O’Donovan said. He marveled at “the sheer labor that it took to put out the damn thing.”

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