Stagecoaches
Philadelphia, PA, February 9, 1789
Philadelphia Newspaper Reports Reduction in Stage Travel to Baltimore
Newspaper

[STAGECOACHES.] The Independent Gazetteer; or, the Chronicle of Freedom, February 9, 1789. Philadelphia: Eleazar Oswald. 4 pp., 9.5" x 11.5". Some toning; a few stains; very good.

This early American newspaper includes a notice about the difficulty of stage travel between Philadelphia and Baltimore because of ?the badness of the roads.?

Excerpts
?The Proprietors of the Philadelphia and Baltimore Line of Stages, Find it impracticable, from the badness of the roads, to run three trips in each week?Their Stages will therefore perform two trips in each week between Philadelphia and Baltimore.... The price for each passenger will be One Guinea, and the same for one hundred and fifty weight of baggage?with an allowance of fourteen pounds to each passenger. Kerlins & Co.? (p1/c1)

Historical Background
Throughout the colonial period, water transportation had been dominant for both passengers and cargo. The earliest land routes connected existing sea routes?from Boston to the Narragansett Bay, from New York across New Jersey to Philadelphia; and from Philadelphia across the Delaware Peninsula to Annapolis and later Baltimore on the Chesapeake Bay. There were no stage lines before the Revolutionary War south of Baltimore and Annapolis.

After the Revolutionary War, several entrepreneurial war veterans?like Nathaniel Twining, Gabriel Peterson Van Horne, and Gershom Johnson?began setting up stage lines on the road between Philadelphia and Baltimore. The service began running twice a week, increased to three times a week in 1782, and increased again to five times a week in 1783. Among the early stagecoach proprietors in Pennsylvania were Gabriel Van Horne and Matthias Kerlin, who operated the Philadelphia to Baltimore route and also carried mail for the federal post office.

By May 1789, a group consisting of John Mersereau, Charles Bessonett, Matthias Kerlin, Joseph Lyon, and Joseph Mercerau were announcing lines of stages leaving Philadelphia for both New York and Baltimore. A ?water line? of stages would leave Philadelphia three days per week and proceed to Charlestown, Maryland, where passengers could board the packet boats operated by Howell and Thomas to reach Baltimore. Kerlins and Company announced that, on the other three days, mail stagecoaches would start from Philadelphia for Baltimore, meaning that a stage would leave Philadelphia for Baltimore every day of the week (except Sunday), ?so that the public will be accommodated.?

Additional Content
This issue also includes foreign news, reports of the English and French fisheries of the coast of Newfoundland for 1788 (p1/c3-p2/c1); notice of the replacement of John Langdon, who had been elected to the U.S. Senate, by John Pickering as governor of New Hampshire (p2/c2); a false report of the death of King George III received at Boston (p2/c2); a report of the death by the intense cold of a free African-American couple who lived in rural Pennsylvania (p2/c3); news of balloting for electors for president and vice president in Reading, Pennsylvania (p3/c1); a list of eight ?federal lies? published by friends of the Constitution in Boston: ?Observing in your last a list of anti-federal lies, extracted from a Baltimore paper, brings to mind the many notorious falsehoods, circulated by the wizards and near-sighted mushrooms of the federal party in Boston, by which a majority of 19 was obtained in the convention, for the constitution.? (p3/c1-2); a proclamation by the President and Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania giving the names of the presidential electors that had received the highest number of votes (p4/c3); and a variety of notices and advertisements, including one notice in which James H. Stewart, having demanded satisfaction of Federal Gazette printer Andrew Brown and being declined, proclaimed Brown a ?COWARD? (p3/c2).

The Independent Gazetteer; or, the Chronicle of Freedom (1782-1790) was founded by Eleazar Oswald (1750-1795), an Englishman who came to America in 1770. He had been an apprentice to John Hold, the publisher of the New-York Journal, and in 1772 married Holt?s daughter. Oswald served in the Continental Army from 1775 to 1779 and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He published the Baltimore Maryland Journal with William Goddard from 1779 to 1781. Oswald then moved to Philadelphia and established the daily Independent Gazetteer in 1782 in partnership with David Humphreys (1752-1818). He also operated the London Coffee House, which became a meeting place for leaders of Pennsylvania?s Republican Party. Sensitive to questions of honor, Oswald was frequently involved in conflicts, several of which ended in duels. In the summer of 1787, the Independent Gazetteer praised the Constitutional Convention and initially printed both Federalist and Anti-federalist essays in the autumn of 1787. By early November, Oswald became an ardent Anti-federalist, and the Independent Gazetteer was one of only twelve newspapers in the nation regularly to publish essays that opposed ratification. In 1788, the headmaster of a local girls? school sued Oswald for libel for an article he had printed. While the case was pending, Oswald published a broadside about the case, served a month in jail, and paid a fine for contempt of court. In January 1790, the Independent Gazetteer became the weekly Independent Gazetteer, and Agricultural Repository, until January 1794, when it became the semiweekly Independent Gazetteer. While helping to publish his father-in-law?s Independent Gazette, or New York Journal Revived, Oswald criticized Alexander Hamilton in print, and the two narrowly averted a duel. In 1792, Oswald went to France and joined the French Revolution as colonel of an artillery unit. He returned to New York in 1795 and died in an outbreak of yellow fever. Joseph Gales (1761-1841) purchased the newspaper from Oswald?s widow in September 1796 and continued operating it for a year.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

WE PROVIDE IN-HOUSE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE.
9.5" x 11.5"