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Documentary History of the State of New York, Vol. III

O'Callaghan, E.B., ed. The Documentary History of the State of New York, Vol. III. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co., 1850. 320 words

It is uncertain liow long this paper was continued; but it is supposed that the publication of it ceased before 1776, as in that year the printers are known to have joined the royalists in New York. On t]ie evacuation of that city by the British, they took refuge with many others at Port Roseway, Nova Scotia, where Alexander died 1784, aged 42. James died in London, many years later. The account given of them in Thomas's History of Printing is erroneous in many respects. •>

MISCELLANY. 1197

A bookstore was kept before the revolution by Stuart Wilson in a Dutch house which stood on the elm tree corner of State and Pearl streets, and is tlie earliest of which anything is known.

In 1782, Messrs. Solomon Balentine & Charles R. Webster established a printing office in Albany, and in May of that year published the first number of the JYew York Gazetteer and JVorthern Intelligencer. It was printed on a sheet of short demy, with pica and long primer type.

First papers in Herkimer Co. -- It is supposed that the first paper was printed at Herkimer, about 1802 by Benjamin Cory, and was called the Telescope. Tliis establishment was purchased of Mr. Cory, by David Holt and J. B. Robbins, who went from Hudson in January, 1805, to take charge of it. The Telescope was discontinued, and a new paper called the Farmers^ Monitor was issued by Holt & Bobbins. Mr. Holt thinks the size of the paper was a spaail royal, but a copy of it in possession of Hon. John Mahon, dated April 28, 1807, measures 12 by 15 inches. The printers of those days were compelled frequently, by the scarcity of stock, to vary the size of their papers, and tliis may have been the case with the copy in question, which is the more probable from the fact that it has no column rules.