Letters Tell the News (Not ‘Fit to Print’?) About the Kentucky Frontier

NOTES

• Only 92 items about Kentucky appeared in all extant issues of all Virginia newspapers during the 16 years. The research described in the first paragraph is reported in Hazel Dicken Garcia, “Communication in the Migration to Kentucky, 1769–1792,” unpublished dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1977.
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• The Boonesborough settlement in April, 1775, has usually been called the first because it consisted of families and remained continuously. However, James Harrod and a group of men built cabins at present Harrodsburg, Ky., in 1774. They abandoned their efforts to join Lord Dunmore's War and did not return until after the Boonesborough settlement began. Kathryn Harrod Mason, James Harrod of Kentucky (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951); Thomas Hanson, “Extract of a Journal Kept on the River Ohio in the Year 1774,”Reuben T. Durrett Manuscript Collection, University of Chicago Library (hereafter referred to as Durrett), Codex 37.
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• Lucien Beckner, “Eskippakithiki: The Last Indian Town in Kentucky,” Filson Club History Quarterly, 7 (October, 1932), pp. 355–82; James W. Hagy, “The First Attempt to Settle Kentucky: Boone in Virginia,” Filson Club History Quarterly, 44 (July, 1970), pp. 227–33; James W. Hagy, “The Frontier at Castle's Woods, 1769–1786,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 75 (October, 1967), pp. 410–28; Ruby Addison Henry, The First West (Nashville: Aurora Publishers, 1972), p. 10.
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• Virginia Gazette (Clementina Rind, printer), Williamsburg, Dec. 23, 1773, p. 3. Original grammar, spelling and punctuation have been preserved throughout this article.
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• L.C. Draper Collection, Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison (hereafter referred to as Draper), Mss. 6C14. Campbell lived on the Virginia frontier in what later became Washington County. The news appeared nine days earlier in the South Carolina Gazette (Dec. 14), in Charleston. That item, dated Wilmington, N.C., Dec. 1, 1773, suggests a source other than Campbell's letter. Draper Mss. 6C5.
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• Virginia Gazette (Alexander Purdie and John Dixon, printers) Williamsburg, Sept. 8, 1774, p. 2; Virginia Gazette (John Pinckney, printer), Williamsburg, Jan. 26, 1775, p. 3.
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• Draper Mss. 6C15; Virginia Gazette (William Rind, printer) Williamsburg, Jan. 31, 1771, p. 2; Purdie's Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, June 7, 1776, p. 3, identify Stuart as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern District.
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• Draper Mss. 6C16.
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• “The Autobiography of Col. Daniel Boon,” in John Filson, The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke (N.Y.: Corinth Books, Inc., 1962; first published in 1784); Thomas D. Clark, A History of Kentucky (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1937), pp. 46, ff.; Robert L. Kincaid, The Wilderness Road (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrili Co., 1947), pp. 78, ff.; Draper Mss. 2B194; Hagy, op. cit.; Henry, op. cit.
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• Purdie and Dixon's Virginia Gazette. 1771: Oct. 4, p. 2; Dec. 5, p. 3; 1772: May 21, p. 1; Oct. 8, p. 2; Nov. 12, p. 1; 1773: March 18, p. 2; June 10, p. 1; July 29, p. 3; Rind's Virginia Gazette. 1773: Jan. 14, p. 3; March 25, p. 2; July 5, p. 3; Aug. 12, p. 2; Sept. 2, p. 2; 1774: March 10, p. 1.
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• John Caruso, The Appalachian Frontier (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1959), pp. 78, ff. W.H. Perrin, J.H. Battle, G.C. Kniffin, Kentucky. A History of the State (Louisville and Chicago: F.A. Battey and Co., 1887); republished by The Rev. Silas Emmett Lucas Jr., Southern Historical Press, Easley, S.C., 1979, p. 126.
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• Caruso, pp. 143; ff.; Kincaid, pp. 97, ff.; John Bakeless, Daniel Boone (New York: W. Morrow & Co., 1939), pp. 47, ff.
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• Purdie's Virginia Gazette, March 10, 1775, p. 2.
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• Pinckney's Virginia Gazette, Sept. 30, 1775, p. 3.
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• Dixon and Hunter's Virginia Gazette, Sept. 30, 1775, p. 3.
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• Some letters had been exchanged about surveying in Kentucky in 1774. A published portion of one gave the first Virginia newspaper mention of the word “Kentucky.” The account told of an Indian attack on the surveyors and gave their names. The letters and item are not included here, since they did not concern the first settlement. Purdie and Dixon's Virginia Gazette, Sept. 8, 1774, p. 2.
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• Draper Mss. 4QQ1.
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• William Preston papers, Manuscript Division, Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington, Ky. (hereafter referred to as UK).
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• UK, George Mason Papers.
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• Draper Mss. 4QQ7.
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• Draper Mss. 4QQ9.
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• Draper Mss. 4C9.
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• UK, Preston Papers.
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• Durrett, Codex 89; Draper Mss. 4C9.
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• Draper Mss. 4C9.
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• Durrett, Codex 89.
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• Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 260 Years: 1690–1950 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950), especially pp. 51–52, 196–97, 243–44; but see also pp. 101–2, 312 and 443. Mott, The News in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 34, ff.; Sidney Kobre, Development of American Journalism (Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown Co., Publishers, 1969), pp. 18–19, 29, 37. Emery and Emery do not make this point explicitly; they do, in instances, cite relative proportions of local versus foreign news. But perhaps more importantly, they deal with the substance of the early news — perhaps more than any other historians. See Edwin Emery and Michael Emery, The Press and America: An Interpretative History of the Mass Media, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1978), especially, p. 25; but also 22, 59–60 and 120–26. See also Willard G. Bleyer, Main Currents in the History of American Journalism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927), pp. 46, ff.
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• It is intriguing to think that local news might have been omitted to prevent knowledge of some colonial events from reaching England.
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• Carl H. Scheele, A Short History of the Mail Service (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1970), p. 45; William Smith, The History of the Post Office in British North America, 1639–1870 (Cambridge University Press, 1920), pp. 4–5; Wesley E. Rich, History of the United States Post Office to the year 1820 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924), pp. 24, ff.
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• For some time after 1664, English-colonial trade was minimal. In 1692, Lord Cornbury of New York told the Lords of Trade that so few ships passed between England and New York that he had to send correspondence through Boston and Philadelphia. In 1708, he pleaded for mail service between England and America, complaining that his last letter from England came 15 months before. At that time, only two safe ways allowed letters to England: the Virginia fleet (unreachable from New York for lack of a post), and the New England fleet. A New York post connected with the latter once a week in summer, and once in two weeks in winter.
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• A letter from William Preston to Patrick Henry, Oct. 31, 1774, described the battle of Point Pleasant, and ended, “If you please may give Mr. Purdie [the printer] a copy of the enclosed papers & any thing else you think worth the notice of the public.” Durrett, Miscellaneous Papers, Box 1, 10/31/1774.
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• Pinckney's Virginia Gazette, Dec. 22, 1774, p. 3.
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• Purdie and Dixon's Virginia Gazette, March 18, 1773, p. 3.
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• James Hayes' Virginia Gazette, Feb. 7, p. 3; Feb. 14; Feb. 21, 1784. By 1784, Virginia's capital had moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.
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• It is known that two members of Virginia's revolutionary convention supported Henderson; perhaps by September, 1775 that attitude was already widespread. Perrin, et al., p. 133.
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• For information on newsletters and early printing, see Matthaias Shaaber, Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England, 1476–1622 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1929); Victor von Klarwill, ed., The Fugger News Letters, 1568–1605 (London: John Lane, 1924); Stanley Morison, The English Newspaper (1622–1932) (Cambridge University Press, 1932); and the following Journalism Quarterly articles: E.W. Allen, “International Origins of the Newspaper,” 7 (December 1930); W.G. Bleyer, “The Beginnings of English Journalism,” 8 (September 1931).
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• A Pittsburgh Gazette item, Nov. 4, 1798, p.3, col. 1, reported: “According to an estimate lately made by a gentleman in… New York, Chiefly from actual accounts received by the several printers,… the Number of Newspapers printed in the U.S. weekly, is 76,438; annually, 3,974,776, which at 4 cents each, amounts to 158,991 dollars and 4 cents.”
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• Domestic manufacture of equipment spread in the 1780s. The Virginia Gazette, Aug. 2, 1787, p. 3, col. 1, reported: “It is with pleasure we inform the fraternity of printers, throughout the United States, that on the 4th instant, Mr. John Baine, sen. and Mr. John Baine, jun. Letterfounders, arrived at New York, from Edinburgh, in Scotland, and that they intend there to establish their Type-foundry. We also learn that they will vend their types much cheaper than can be imported, should they be encouraged by the printers in this country, which it is believed they will by patriotic as well as convenient motives.”
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