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David Ruggles, the Go-To Conductor on the Underground Railroad

David Ruggles helped 600 enslaved people to freedom during the 1830s despite attempts to kill him, kidnap him and burn down his business. A free black man born in Connecticut, he ultimately paid for his courage. He suffered ill-health, character assassination and a shortened life.

David Ruggles,

David Ruggles wrote fiery articles on the evils of slavery, antagonizing moderate abolitionists as well as slaveholders and advocates. He opened the first bookstore and published the first periodical by a black American. He printed, published, worked as an agent and sold copies of abolitionist newspapers.

Though he mentored such activists as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, David Ruggles has received far less attention, perhaps because of his early death.

He defended his radical views by writing that no one could be neutral on the moral issue of slavery.

David Ruggles

Born to free African-American parents in Lyme, Conn., in 1810, David Ruggles eventually had seven younger brothers and sisters

His family moved to the elite Bean Hill section of Norwich when David was very young. David Ruggles, Sr., his father, worked as a woodcutter and a blacksmith, and his mother a celebrated cook who made fancy cakes. His devout Methodist parents had him educated at the Sabbath School for the Poor in Norwich, a religious charity school.

He was so bright as a young boy that white Bean Hill residents paid for a tutor from Yale to teach him Latin.

At 16 he moved to New York, where he worked as a mariner, a common occupation for black men. Then he opened a grocery store in an African-American enclave in Lower Manhattan. At first he sold liquor, but then he realized the damage it did to the black community. So he stopped selling it.

In New York City, he began to connect with abolitionists of all kinds — black, white, male, female, rich and poor.

And so David Ruggles became active in the temperance and abolitionist movements.

Radical Abolitionist

David Ruggles believed the printed word was an essential tool against slavery. His grocery store at 1 Cortlandt St. started to sell books, pamphlets and periodicals, until a white mob destroyed it.

He began writing for radical abolitionist newspapers and for his own pamphlets against slavery. He enraged moderate abolitionists by attacking the American Colonization Society, which aimed to relocate African-Americans to Africa.

Then in 1835 he began his most dangerous work against slavery. He and several other young black men formed the New York Committee of Vigilance, an interracial group. They put their lives on the line to free kidnapped blacks. They also attacked slavers and helped escaped slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad.

Slave catchers patrolled the streets of Manhattan then, trying to kidnap fugitive slaves or free blacks and then to send them into bondage. David Ruggles and the other members of the Committee of Vigilance confronted the slavers on the streets.

Narrow Escape

In 1836, David Ruggles heard that a Portuguese sea captain held five kidnapped Africans in his ship, planning to sell them in the South. At that time slave trading was illegal but practiced clandestinely. Ruggles obtained a writ of habeas corpus and demanded the authorities take the captives to a local jail until they had a hearing on their status.

He also got the captain arrested on charges of slave trading. Then one night the captain, free on bail, and a slave catcher knocked on David Ruggles’ door and demanded to speak to him. When he refused they tried to break down his door. David Ruggles escaped, returned with a watchman and revealed the two planned to grab him and sell him into slavery.

At that time in New York, any slave brought to the state was free after nine months. Ruggles would go to private homes to tell people they were free.

Frederick Douglass

In 1838, Frederick Douglass escaped bondage in the South, arriving in New York friendless and broke.

“I had been in New York but a few days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets,” wrote Douglass. He noted David Ruggles was ‘watched and hemmed in on almost every side,’ but ‘he seemed to be more than a match for his enemies.’

Frederick Douglass

David Ruggles put up Frederick Douglass for a few days and helped him bring his fiancée to New York so they could marry. They wed in his parlor.

The Darg Affair

When Douglass showed up in New York, David Ruggles was enmeshed in a furious controversy involving a slave owner along with two other radical abolitionists, Barney Corse and Isaac T. Hopper. Virginia slaveholder John P. Darg had arrived in New York City with his slave, Thomas Hughes. Hughes came to Hopper’s house asking for help, but Hopper said no. The next day, the New York Sun reported that Hughes stole about $7,000 from Darg.

Corse and Ruggles urged Hughes to return the money, but insisted he should remain free. But Hughes had given or gambled away some of the cash. He returned what he had left to Darg, who then had Corse and Ruggles arrested for grand larceny. Though Ruggles only spent two days in jail, the press trashed him. A cartoon appeared, called ‘The Disappointed Abolitionists,’ suggesting the three had only wanted the reward money.

Moderate abolitionists, fed up with Ruggles’ radicalism, drove him out of the movement. He had written a story in an abolitionist newspaper that a black innkeeper was helping slavers. The infuriated innkeeper sued the newspaper for libel and won a judgment of $600.

The newspaper owner, nearly bankrupted by the fine, began a print campaign against Ruggles. He demanded an accounting of the Committee of Vigilance’s books. When an audit showed $400 missing, David Ruggles had to resign his position with the committee.

Abolitionist Utopia

At just 28 years old, David Ruggles’ crusade against slavery took a heavy toll on his health. He had nearly gone blind and suffered severe bowel problems. A prominent white abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child, invited him to join an abolitionist utopia in Florence, Mass.

The Northampton Association of Education and Industry centered on a community-owned and operated silk mill. Its members sought to create a society in which ‘the rights of all are equal without distinction of sex, color or condition, sect or religion.’

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth belonged, and Frederick Douglass often visited.

David Ruggles moved to the Florence utopia in 1842. Within 18 months he recovered some of his health through the then-popular water cure, or hydrotherapy. He began studying hydrotherapy, then practiced it on wealthy members of the utopia as well as on William Lloyd Garrison.

The utopia disbanded by 1846, but David Ruggles stayed in Florence running his own hydrotherapy hospital. His health, however, declined rapidly in late 1849. He died on Dec. 18, 1849, not yet 40 years old.

This story was updated in 2022.

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New Hampshire’s Jonathan Daniels Martyred in Alabama in 1965

Jonathan Daniels smoked cigarettes. He liked to drive fast. He liked a good argument. And when he saw something wrong, he tried to stop it.

Jonathan Daniels with children of the West family. (Source: Episcopal Church archives)

In 1965, Daniels had graduated from the Virginia Military Institute as class valedictorian. A native of Keene, N.H., he’d returned to New England to study at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass. He intended to join the priesthood.

The Fight for Civil Rights

On Sunday, March 7 of that year, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a march of civil rights activists from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery,. the state capital, 54 miles away. They marched to protest Jim Crow laws that prevented African Americans from voting. Alabama police beat demonstrators as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Two days after the day known as “Bloody Sunday”

Two days after “Bloody Sunday,” protesters tried to cross the bridge again. Jonathan Daniels took a bus from New England to join them. A court had ordered them not to cross the bridge, and King had secretly agreed to turn around at the Pettus bridge.

Police turning around protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Turnaround Tuesday.”

When the buses that brought him to the town rolled back north, Daniels and a small group of other protesters stayed behind. They felt a need for a greater commitment to eliminating racial segregation than just dropping in for a rally. So Daniels wrote to his college and received permission to remain in Alabama. He could take his exams in June and still continue his studies toward the priesthood.

Daniels spent the next few months living with the West family in Alabama and working to register black voters. Congress was striking down many of the voter registration laws that had historically suppressed the black vote.

Jonathan Daniels Goes To Church

On Sundays, Daniels and a group of fellow protesters attended services at the all-white St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Selma. They hoped to integrate the congregation. While they were tolerated at the service, their small group of black and white integration supporters were not welcomed.

Jonathan traveled to New England to take his exams in late spring, and returned to Alabama in July. The trip home would be his last. Friends recalled he had no reservations about returning to Alabama because he felt a strong obligation to bear witness to racial segregation there. He wanted to do his part to change it.

Lowndes County

Lowndes County in Alabama was probably more dangerous than most places to try to change people’s racist attitudes, even by Alabama standards. Viola Liuzzo, an activist from Michigan, was shot and killed in the area while shuttling protesters from the Selma march. Members of the Ku Klux Klan killed her.

Many lynchings had taken place in Lowndes County in the century after the Civil War, and it had a long history of suppressing the black vote.

On August 14, Daniels and his fellow activists traveled to Fort Deposit to picket several stores that wouldn’t sell to black customers. The protesters, 27 in all, were arrested. Most went to jail in nearby Hayneville on charges of disturbing the peace and parading without a permit. Their bail was set at $100 each. The group agreed that they would all stay in jail until they all got bailed out.

The activists were released from jail on August 20. Most of the protesters began walking toward their homes. But six decided to stop at a market, Varner’s Cash Store, for cold soft drinks. They then planned to make their way back home. They had shopped at the store before, so they felt safe going in.

Varner’s Cash Store, 2013

Jonathan Daniels Not Welcome in Hayneville

However, this time when they entered the store, the civil rights activists were confronted by a man with a shotgun. He ordered them to leave and then pointed the gun at them. Jonathan Daniels shoved Ruby Sales, a fellow protester, down and out of the line of fire. But he left himself exposed. A shotgun blast to the chest killed him, making him the 26th civil rights worker killed in the South. As the remaining five scrambled for cover, the man shot Rev. Richard Morrisroe, Catholic priest from Chicago, in the back.

For the next several minutes, the remaining survivors of the attack tried to rally help, shouting and pounding on doors. But no one came outside.

“We looked back and this white guy who shot us was standing over Jon’s body with his gun like he was daring somebody to do something about it,” Ruby Sales would later recall.

Trial and Acquittal

The man who had killed Jonathan Daniels was Tom Coleman, a 52-year-old highway department worker and part-time deputy sheriff. Coleman was well known in town. His father was a local football hero, for whom the town named its football field. He was quickly arrested and charged with manslaughter.

The justice system in Lowndes County largely answered to itself. The local judge barred the state’s attorney general from stepping in to prosecute the case against Coleman. When the prosecutors asked for a continuance to let Richard Morrisroe recover from his gunshot wounds so he could testify, the court rejected the request.

Lowndes County Courthouse

The trial went ahead in October. Coleman claimed he had shot the two clerics in self-defense.

Coleman’s cousin testified that he had seen a knife in Daniels’ hand and the Morrisroe had something that looked like a pistol. Morrisroe would later confirm he had something in his hand. It was a dime. No knife was ever found.

Deputy Sheriff Joe Jackson testified that Daniels had drawn attention to himself by kissing one of the black women he had been imprisoned with when they were released from jail.

A Nation of Laws

The prosecutor sounded an alarm for the jury: “This is a nation of laws, not men,” he said. “If you decide to throw the law out, we are going to be in for far more trouble than we’ve ever seen.”

After more than an hour of deliberation, the jury, all white, declared Coleman not guilty.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black declined to intervene when activists appealed to the Supreme Court to shut down the courts in Lowndes County. They argued the court systematically excluded women and blacks from the juries.

Across the country, reaction to the jury decision was intense. President Lyndon Johnson promised a federal investigation. Alabama’s attorney general declared the judge’s decision shameful.

Jonathan Daniels, Saint

In Lowndes County, there was far less anger over Jonathan Daniel’s death. “If they had been tending to their own business, like I tend to mine, they’d be living and enjoying themselves today,” County Solicitor Roscoe Perdue told a newspaper.

Today Jonathan Daniels is well-remembered in his hometown of Keene, N.H. There is a school named after him and commemorative memorials throughout town. The Episcopal Church recognizes him as a martyr of the church and commemorates his life each August 14, the day of his arrest.

Ruby Sales, pushed out of the line of fire by Jonathan Daniels, went on to have a long career as a civil rights activist.

If you enjoyed this article, you might like: The Secret History of New England’s Sundown Towns. Image: Lowndes County Courthouse By Altairisfar – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17384557. Jonathan Daniels By unknown – Original publication: unknownImmediate source: http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/leadership/daniels.php, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45648799. Varners Cash Store By Richard apple – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24460714. This story was updated in 2022.

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Captain David Perry, 80, Recalls a Simple Revolutionary Soldier’s Life

In 1821, Revolutionary War captain David Perry approached a young Vermont publisher with a request. At age 79 he had little time left. He had written his a memoir to leave behind for posterity, but he had no money to print it. If the publisher would print it, he could have any proceeds from selling it.

Publisher Simeon Ide of Windsor, Vt. agreed and published the short book, Recollections of an Old Soldier, The Life of Captain David Perry.

Battle of Bunker Hill. E. Percy Moran, artist; Photomechanical print, c 1909, Library of Congress

Perry, the book notes, will not go down in history as a great leader of the revolutionary cause. But his book, reprinted many times, gives a glimpse into the thinking of the American citizen soldier of 1776.

Faithful Soldier

“Thousands, no doubt, of the Revolutionary Heroes, might have left a more brilliant specimen of talent and learning,” begins the foreward.

“Many have moved in a higher sphere of action, who have left no record of their toils and privations behind them,” it said. “But we venture to assert, that few have better earned the appellation of a faithful Soldier, than the subject of these memoirs.

“Though his name may not live on the annals of his country, yet his fellow-citizens should never forget, nor act unworthily of the sentiments of gratitude, which a recollection of this important truth should ever inspire, that, had it not been for the prowess and achievements – the fortitude, patience and perseverance of those who, like himself, in the humbler ranks of the common soldier, bared their breasts to the foe, upon the “tented field,” that country had never known a name and a rank among the nations.”

The Boy Soldier

Captain David Perry was born in Rehoboth, Mass. in 1741. His mother died, so he and his siblings scattered to relatives. Perry moved in with an uncle who helped find him training as a cobbler. But the local militia approached Perry at 15 about joining up. Small for his age, he worried that he might not “pass muster.” However, the service accepted him.

In all, Perry served in four campaigns of the French and Indian war from Massachusetts, 1758-1762, and in two campaigns of the American Revolution from Connecticut, 1775-1776.

His soldier’s life was sprinkled with the remarkable and brutal aspects of war. He tells of how one of his fellow soldiers executed an injured French priest by shooting him in the head at the orders of his British commander. How viciously British officers kept their men in line. And the arduous life of the soldiers during the siege of Quebec.

Civilian Life of Captain David Perry

Along the way Perry also sketches in some of the details of the personal life of a soldier. Perry spent his life in Rehoboth and Dighton, Mass., Killingly, Conn., Plainfield, N.H., and Chelsea and Ira, Vt.

He struggled in business, once going deep into debt after a failed partnership. He was in Roxbury during the Battle of Bunker Hill and played a role in the siege of Boston. But he declined an officer’s request to reenlist because of concern for his wife and five children. “I told him a soldier ought not to have any thing to think of at home,” he wrote. However, he later relented when the shortage of soldiers grew worse.

Of his own life, he tells that at the time his mother died he believed he saw her ghost. He had his own fearful near-death experience when, overcome with fever, he felt his soul leave his body.

“This transition (as I firmly believe) from life to death, and from death to life, which took place nearly sixty years ago, is as fresh in my mind now as it was then: and not many days have passed from that time to this, which have not brought the interesting scenes I then witnessed clearly to view in my mind. But I never dared to say any thing about it, for a great many years afterwards, for fear of being ridiculed,” he wrote.

He recalls discovering that he could actually see cannon fire passing through the air. And despite his own poverty, Perry once paid 20 pounds to enlist a soldier in the Revolutionary army.

A Final Thought

At the conclusion of his brief memoir, Perry offers a call for Americans to never forget the spirit upon which the country was founded.

He cautioned people against greed and self-indulgence. “If they are ambitious to ape the follies, extravagance, and luxury of European countries, their freedom can have but a short duration.”

“When we reflect back to our Revolutionary war, and see how much blood and treasure were spent to gain our independence, shall we, after so long an experience of the advantages arising from so good a government, be any more deceived by internal or foreign enemies? Shall we contrast the mildness of our government, and the civil and religious liberty that we enjoy under it, with the bigotry and tyranny which prevails under the monarchies of Europe, and say we are willing to exchange the former for the latter? I dare say not. Then let me conjure my posterity to stand by this government of our choice, and never be deceived by political or ecclesiastical demagogues.”

Captain David Perry died in 1826 at age 84.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Bostonians Practice Their Tea Party on Andrew Belcher in 1710

Sixty-three years before the Boston Tea Party, outraged men launched a nighttime attack on a ship belonging to Andrew Belcher in Boston Harbor. And in a preview of upcoming events, they intended to remove the ship’s cargo.

But it was bread, not tea that enraged the attackers.

Belcher had singlehandedly caused a bread shortage in 1710, and Bostonians decided to take justice into their own hands.

Boston Harbor around 1720

Andrew Belcher

Less than a century after the Puritans landed in a howling wilderness, Boston merchants engaged in international trade – with the West Indies, Newfoundland, Portugal, Spain, England and Ireland. Entrepreneurs sold whatever they could on the international market at the best prices they could, regardless of the welfare of their community.

Andrew Belcher, one such entrepreneur, was born in 1646 in Cambridge, Mass. He married the daughter of a rich Connecticut merchant and established his own successful trading business.

He lived in a mansion, rode around Boston in an elegant carriage and owned many slaves and ships. His son, Jonathan Belcher, would serve as royal governor.

Gov. Jonathan Belcher

In 1703, Massachusetts officials made Andrew Belcher commissary general, though his critics charged he sometimes sold spoiled food.

The working poor of Boston had no use for him either. He hoarded grain in his warehouses during food shortages and then shipped it off to the West Indies.

The 1710 Food Riot

By 1710. Queen Anne’s War had started. Food grew short and bread grew terribly expensive. Andrew Belcher bought up all the wheat in the countryside surrounding Boston. Then he held it until prices went up, and sold it to himself as commissary general for a very nice profit.

He singlehandedly caused a bread shortage in Boston.

One night one of his ships was about to sail away with 6,000 bushels of grain. Under cover of darkness a group of marauders approached the ship and sawed through the rudder, according to Judge Samuel Sewall’s diary.

Samuel Sewall

The next night 50 Bostonians commandeered the ship and tried to force the captain ashore, intending to loot the grain. Authorities arrested some of the attackers.

But their Grain Party was so popular a grand jury refused to indict them.

The incident revealed the transformation of Boston from a Puritanical city on a hill, with an emphasis on the common good, to an ethic of individualism. The Bostonians were “appalled that a leading townsman would put profits ahead of the welfare of the community,” wrote historian Gary Nash. They demanded food at prices they could afford, despite merchants’ insistence on the laws of supply and demand.

Authorities responded by banning the sale of grain abroad during times of shortages, regulating bread prices and establishing a public granary.

The 1713 Food Riot

Three years later, Andrew Belcher tried it again with a similar result. He hoarded grain in his warehouses while prices rose, then tried to sell it in Dutch Curacao in the Caribbean. Two hundred Bostonians attacked his warehouses and emptied them of flour. When the lieutenant governor tried to stop them, they shot him.

Andrew Belcher died Oct. 31, 1717.

If you enjoyed this story about Andrew Belcher, you may also want to read about the female food riots of the American Revolution in Boston here or the 1914 macaroni riots in Providence here.

With thanks to Red White & Black and The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution by Gary Nash.

This story last updated in 2023.

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The 1635 Perplexing Death of Maid Mary Sholy

In 1635, Mary Sholy had the tragic misfortune of meeting William Schooler. Schooler was not the sort of man the early settlers of Massachusetts wanted in their midst.

The Puritans who came to America were largely escaping intolerance. They wanted to establish a new country where they could practice their religion in peace. However, they also found America appealed to men and women who had other matters to escape. William Schooler was one of these

Schooler lived in London. He made his living selling wine and was married to an upstanding woman. But Schooler was a philanderer and a drunk. He would later admit his adultery. Schooler got into trouble in London when he wounded a man in a duel. He fled (likely to Holland) and from there made the journey to America.

In 1635, English colonists had small settlements under construction in Newbury, Mass. and Portsmouth, N.H. Schooler moved to the outskirts of Newbury and shared a house with another man. Their neighbors viewed them with a jaundiced eye because they lived as atheists.

Mary Sholy Goes Home

View of Ipswich from Castle Hill

Mary Sholy was a maid. She worked for a man in Portsmouth, and she had come to Newbury on personal business. The trip from Newbury to Portsmouth over land would have been a difficult one in 1635, roughly 30 miles on a narrow path, and a traveler would need to cross the Merrimack River.

Mary wanted to go home to Portsmouth, and William Schooler offered to guide her for a fee of 15 shillings. The pair departed Newbury, and it was the last time anyone would see Mary alive.

William returned to Newbury two days after he had left. Because of this unexpectedly quick return, the local authorities suspected something bad had occurred, and so they questioned William.

He told them he had crossed the Merrimack River with Mary, though not where he intended to, and guided Mary toward Portsmouth, then known as Pascataquack. However, she stopped part way and refused to accompany him any farther. He had then left her. He noted ominously that he had encountered a bear shortly after turning back.

Schooler’s neighbors noted that he had a scratch on his nose and blood on his clothing and hat. The blood, he explained, came from a pigeon he had killed to eat. The scratch was from a bramble. The magistrates at Ipswich thought the scratch was too large to be from a bramble. However, lacking any evidence of a crime they released Schooler.

William Schooler Can’t Keep Quiet

About one year later, Indians discovered Mary Sholy’s body in the woods, partially decomposed and undressed. She was about three miles from the Merrimack River.

William Schooler, meanwhile, had been conscripted to serve in the militia. He complained bitterly and loudly about this required service, and word of his complaining reached the governor who issued a warrant to arrest and question him.

When approached by court officers, however, Schooler assumed they planned to accuse him of murdering Mary Sholy, and he began loudly proclaiming his innocence. The protest renewed suspicions that Schooler had not told the truth about Mary Sholy, so he was again questioned.

Jailbreak and Back

This time the judges at Boston concluded he was guilty of a crime, and they sentenced him to death. While he was imprisoned on Powder Horn Hill awaiting execution, Schooler broke out of jail. But he returned and surrendered.

Some in the community, notably some ministers, protested the death sentence. The evidence against Schooler was purely circumstantial. They implored Schooler to confess to save his soul, but he refused. He had lied about certain details, but he had not murdered or harmed Mary Sholy in any way, he said.

John Winthrop

John Winthrop recorded the case in his journal. The clergy demanded that the court rescind the order of execution, but the court declined. Even if he had not actually murdered Mary Sholy, the court concluded, William Schooler had abandoned her in the woods and left her in great peril. And even when he suspected a bear endangered her, he did nothing. He was worthy of hanging for that behavior alone.

He was hanged on Sept. 28, 1637, protesting his innocence to the last.

If you enjoyed this article you might like Divorce, Murder and Madness: The Puritan Tuttles of the New Haven Colony. This story was updated in 2022.

Photo Credit: by John Phelan [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

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The Oldest Newspaper in Each New England State

Those quarrelsome publishers just love to argue over the honor of being the oldest newspaper in the United States. But which one deserves the title?

The Hartford Courant, founded in 1764, says it’s nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper. The Courant, though, lost its independence when purchased by the Times Mirror chain. Then the Tribune Corporation bought Times-Mirror.

The Rutland Herald started 30 years later than the Courant, but managed to stay independent. So now it can claim the distinction as the oldest newspaper owned by the same family in continuous operation, published under the same name in the same city, in the United States.

The New Hampshire Gazette also claims to be the oldest newspaper. However, since its founding in 1756 it has changed owners about 25 times, disappeared and merged with other publications.

The Newport Mercury, founded in 1759, was identified as the nation’s oldest newspaper during one of the New Hampshire Gazette‘s lulls. It didn’t quite disappear, having been published by The Newport Daily News as a weekly with reprinted daily stories for out-of-town subscribers. In 2018 it became Mercury Magazine.

Hartford Courant 1764

Thomas Green started the Connecticut Courant as a weekly on Oct. 29, 1764. It claims the title ‘America’s oldest continuously published newspaper’ and the slogan, ‘Older than the nation.’

Hartford printer Ebenezer Watson then took over the Connecticut Courant. Watson died suddenly of smallpox in late 1777, creating a dilemma for American patriots.

The British had shut down all the newspapers in Boston. Plus, New York’s Loyalist newspapers printed nothing but pro-British news. The Courant, as the only paper large enough to provide reliable (that is, pro-patriot) news, was viewed as crucial to maintaining popular support for the Revolution in New England.

Patriots approached Watson’s widow, Hannah Bunce Watson, and asked her to continue publishing the newspaper. She knew little about printing, but went ahead publishing the Courant to support the war effort. She made 20-year-old George Goodwin a business partner, as he had already worked for the newspaper for 12 years.

In 1779, she married Barzillai Hudson, and he took control of the newspaper. In 1837 the Connecticut Courant became the Hartford Courant, now the largest daily newspaper in Connecticut.

Bangor Daily News 1889

Richard J. Warren founded the Bangor Daily News on June 18, 1889, making it the oldest newspaper in Maine. In 1900 it merged it with the Bangor Whig and Courier. Today Warren’s great-grandson publishes the newspaper and his sister, Carolyn J. Mowers, serves as chairman of the board.

Though not as old as the Rutland Herald, the Bangor Daily News is a rarity in the newspaper business: a newspaper under the ownership of a single family. Today it’s the only newspaper in Maine owned independently. The BDN is also Maine’s largest, covering a readership area larger than Connecticut.

It did fail to publish once in its history: on Dec. 30, 1962, when a blizzard dumped five feet of snow on Bangor.

Daily Hampshire Gazette 1786

Massachusetts claims the oldest newspaper in the United States, the Boston News-Letter, but the Loyalist rag didn’t survive the Revolution. Founded in 1704 , it ceased publication when the British withdrew from Boston in 1776.

That leaves the Daily Hampshire Gazette, founded in 1786 in Northampton, Mass., as the oldest newspaper in the Bay State. In the first edition of the Hampshire Gazette, its 22-year-old publisher, William Butler, reported the news of Shay’s Rebellion. For more than a century the paper was published every week, but in 1890 it became a daily.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette went through a series of owners until its business manager, Harriet Williams DeRose, bought it in 1929. When she died in 1960, her son Charles Nathan DeRose took over. Charles died 10 years later and his two sons took over. By 2005, there were no more DeRoses interested in running the newspaper. That year Newspapers of New England, a chain based in Concord, N.H., bought the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

New Hampshire Gazette 1756

The New Hampshire Gazette has trademarked its claim as ‘The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper,’ but not without dispute. The sassy alternative, published every two weeks, has appeared only intermittently on the journalism scene.

Daniel Fowle, the first man to print the words of Samuel Adams, founded the New Hampshire Gazette in Portsmouth in 1756. After he died in 1787, the Gazette continued publishing. In 1839, the Maryland Gazette went under and the Portsmouth Gazette was recognized as the nation’s oldest newspaper.

In the 1890s, the Portsmouth Herald began publishing the Gazette as a weekend supplement, changing its name to the Herald Weekend Edition in 1960. However, Daniel Fowle’s descendant Peter Fowle discovered in 1989 that the ‘Gazette’ name was no longer under trademark. He took the rights to the name and in 1999 began publishing the New Hampshire Gazette ‘episodically, in a very small format.’

Today it includes ‘The Fortnightly Rant,’ film reviews, two pages of history, stories from the New Hampshire Indymedia Collective, vintage news from the 19^th century and ‘Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide.’

Newport Mercury 1759

In 1759, Ann Smith Franklin and her son started the Newport Mercury in Newport, R.I., with the ‘freshest advices.’ She was Benjamin Franklin’s sister-in-law, the widow of his brother James (the one Ben didn’t get along with). Ann Smith Franklin and her son published the newspaper until she died in 1763.

Solomon Southwick, a patriot, took over the paper, but buried the press and type when the British landed in Newport. After the Revolution, he resumed publishing the newspaper.

The Newport Mercury has the distinction of first publishing an African-American woman, Phyllis Wheatley, in a newspaper.

Edward A. Sherman, owner of the Newport Daily News, bought the Newport Mercury in 1928 and published it as a paid weekly. In 2005, the News turned the Mercury into an alternative weekly, covering entertainment, food and the arts.

Mirroring the newspaper industry’s struggles, the Mercury became a once-monthly insert into the Newport Daily News in 2018.

Rutland Herald 1794

On Dec. 8, 1794, the Rev Samuel Williams and his distant cousin Judge Samuel Williams, both Federalists, founded the Rutland Herald. Three years later, William Fay bought the newspaper and for four decades devoted it to biblical parables, poems and homilies.

The newspaper’s readers got a welcome relief when abolitionist George Beaman bought it in 1844. From 1856 to 1882, the father-and-son team of George and Albert Tuttle turned the Rutland Herald into a daily and covered the Civil War. .

Rutland native Percival W. Clement bought the Herald in 1882, having bought the Rutland Railroad, the Clement National Bank, New York real estate and a brokerage house. He used the newspaper to promote his political ambitions, succeeding in 1918 by winning the race for Vermont governor.

In 1927, P.W. Clements died and his son-in-law, William H. Field, moved back to Rutland to run the newspaper. Field, a co-founder of the New York Daily News, markedly improved the Herald. His son ran it until Robert W. Mitchell became owner-publisher in 1948. Mitchell’s son, R. John Mitchell, succeeded his father when he died in 1993.

Images: Bangor Daily News By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22888057; Shays Rebellion By Shockabrah – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58001789

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