Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/146

 128

��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��ing the article, she makes Daniel Fowle the institutor of the " first newspaper upon American soil."

Many are the just claims of the old Granite State for credit in the pioneer enterprises of those days, when the winds from the Atlantic swept over the heads of the white population of the land ; but she hardly lays claim to the publishing of the first cis-Atlantic news- paper. The little sheet of Daniel Fowle, the first printed within the limits of the then province of New Hamp- shire, was really the ninth in date of publication in the American colonies of the king ; two of these were sup- pressed by the authorities after one or two issues.

The first was printed in a little seven- by-nine office in Boston, on the 25th of September, 1690, by one Richard Pierce. It was designed to be pub- lished monthly, but its life was sudden- ly cut short by mandate of the power in rule, and but one copy is known to be in existence, and that in the Lon- don state paper office.

The Boston News Letter was the second newspaper title in America, but has the credit generally of being the first. It appeared April 24th, 1704, published by John Campbell, and con- tinued its weekly visitations until the eventful days of 1776, when its light went out. A copy from this " 1704"

��enterprise now lies before us, ancient and musty as the days of Cotton Mather. John Campbell, its publisher, was then postmaster of Boston, and the paper was said to be sold by " Nicholas Boone, at his shop near the old meet- ing-house."

In 1 721, the Franklins established the New England Courant, a weekly paper, published in Boston. Its pub- lication was forbidden by the then " powers that be," on account of its freedom of expression upon the public affairs of the day, and upon certain re- ligious controversies then interesting the churches. It was here and at this time that Benjamin Franklin com- menced his literary career as an ap- prentice in the office of the Courant, then owned by his brother James.

Benjamin afterward, in 1728, estab- lished the second newspaper in Phila- delphia, calling it the Pennsylvania Gazette,

But it was not a history of the Amer- ican newspaper that we set out to write, only to correct an evident error in the above published article, and will only add that before the enterpris- ing venture of Daniel Fowle, at Ports- mouth, in 1756. there were four news- papers published in Boston, two in New York, two in Philadelphia, and one at Williamsburg, Va.

��OBITUARY.

��The Hon. David Hanson Buffum died Friday, Dec. 29, 1882, at his res- idence in Great Falls, aged 62 years. The immediate cause of his death was softening of the brain, although he has been in poor health for some time. Mr. Bufrum's wile and three sons sur- vive him. Of the sons, Edgar S. Buf- fum, is agent of the Great Falls Wool- len Company ; Harry A. Buffum, is manager of the felt mills at Milton ; and David H. Buffum, is a student in Yale College.

��Rev. Royal Parkinson died in Wash- ington, D. C, very suddenly, Decem- ber 21. 1882, aged 67 years. He was born in Columbia, Coos county, in 181 5, his parents moving to New Bos- ton soon after. He prepared for col- lege at the school of the late David Crosby of Nashua, and graduated from Dartmouth in the year 1842. During the last years of the late war, he was chaplain in the army, and for the last ten years has held a clerkship in Washington.

�� �