Virginia Gazettte Index

A comprehensive index to known issues of the Virginia Gazette was produced in 1950 by Lester J. Cappon and Stella F. Duff of the Institute of Early American History and Culture (now the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture).

The index is available in printed form at the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and at Swem Library at the College of William and Mary. The index was digitized in 1999 and linked to the online images at PastPortal.org, Colonial Williamsburg's original digital library. The electronic index provides the search terms in the same general format as the printed index (although the abbreviations described in the Front Matter below have been dispensed with), and provides direct hyperlinks to the appropriate images.

For general context, the front matter from the printed index is provided below. As noted, if you are using the online version of the index, you can disregard the descriptions of the abbreviations used. The index is copyrighted by the Omohundro Institute; all rights reserved.

Front Matter from the Printed Index

INTRODUCTION

The historical value of the Virginia Gazette of Williamsburg, second oldest newspaper in the southern colonies, and of its successors and competitors, has long been recognized. While no one person can be credited with the idea of compiling a detailed index to these papers, the present project was recommended by the Advisory Committee of Historians of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., and its inception in the fall of 1942 was made possible by a generous grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. By the summer of 1950, when the compilation was completed and published, this grant plus two supplementary subventions by the Rockefeller Foundation, had been matched almost dollar for dollar by Colonial Williamsburg, with some final financial support from the Institute of Early American History and Culture under whose imprint the work is published.

The compilers have envisioned the Index to be a historical work of reference rather than an alphabetical list of names and places with some obvious subject headings thrown in for good measure. Nor have they confined the scope of their analysis to Virginia history and thereby narrowed unduly the service to be rendered. Although it is hoped that many a scholar will read the files of the Virginia Gazette for more effective research on his particular subject, the peculiar nature of the newspaper as a historical source offers a wealth of detail on countless subjects, persons, and localities which in many instances are “lost” in the files because the time required for search is scarcely justified by the probable results. The Index will serve to estimate those results with considerable accuracy. It will also provide unexpected information on related subjects and a cursory scanning of its pages may suggest new subjects for research initiated through the colonial newspaper. Beside these services the Index will of course furnish direct answers to myriad specific questions of fact asked by a wide variety of investigators.

The various printers of the competing Virginia Gazettes are given below in chronological order:

William Parks, 1736-50
William Hunter, 1751-61
Joseph Royle, 1761-65
Alexander Purdie & Co., 1765-66
Alex. Purdie & John Dixon, 1766-75
Dixon & William Hunter (Jr.), 1775-78
Dixon & Thomas Nicolson, 1779-Apr., 1780
William Rind, 1766-73
Clementina Rind, 1773-74
John Pinkney, 1774-76
Alex. Purdie, 1775-79
John Clarkson & Augustine Davis, 1779- Dec., 1780

The newspapers indexed begin with the earliest known issue of William Parks' Virginia Gazette, no. 6, September 11, 1736, and terminate with the last issue of Clarkson & Davis printed in Williamsburg. When the capital of Virginia was moved to Richmond in 1780, printers were inclined to transfer their business to the new seat of government. Both Dixon & Nicolson and Clarkson & Davis resumed their papers in Richmond.

The material in the colonial newspaper may be classified roughly under two heads, news and advertisements; the editorial or anything comparable to it is seldom found. Since the ads in the Virginia Gazette are local in character and the source of much unique information especially on tidewater Virginia, they have been indexed in full by person, institution, place, and subject. Thus, for example, all items of merchandise listed for sale are included; but books for sale are indexed by list and by author, not by title and subject, because titles given are often inaccurate and do not indicate the actual subjects. The Virginia Gazette contains little local news. The printers derived some news of other colonies and countries from travelers and their letters but more was copied from other newspapers. This portion of the text is indexed for its value as “news,” especially of other colonies and the mother country, however belated and rumored, because some of it may not be found elsewhere and because what Virginians read from week to week is important in evaluating their actions and reactions. Therefore all personal names pertaining to the British colonies and the Empire have been indexed along with a wealth of subject matter. Subjects have been given precedence over geographical places as main headings, except in the case of activities or functions of official agencies of governments, which, we believe, will be most readily available under the geographical designation. Cross references from the name of the place to the subject will meet the needs of users with a geographical approach. Local news from Great Britain is indexed in less detail than imperial and colonial, and news from the rest of the world with most selectivity.

In the alphabetizing, a word takes precedence over a single letter (e.g. New York precedes Newcastle), except for certain personal names with variants; and in each entry alphabetizing begins anew after the comma. In some instances lead words are repeated in the main heading to allow for the maximum number of two sub-headings. Where the same word designates a person, a place, and another subject, they are entered in that order. In the case of persons, titles without first names precede first names. Extensive use has been made of lower case in order to keep capitalization to a minimum.

The early files of the Virginia Gazette use Old Style dates during January, February, and March but they have been indexed New Style. These issues also carry a double date for the beginning and end of each week; only the latter date has been used in indexing. Thus the issue dated Jan. 5 to Jan. 12, 1738 is rendered as Jan. 12, 1739; the issue dated Mar. 14, 1750-1 as Mar. 14, 1751.

The following abbreviations are used in the references:

Names of printers          

C          Clarkson & Davis
D          Dixon & Hunter, Dixon & Nicolson          
P          Purdie, 1775-79
PD        Purdie, 1766, succeeded by Purdie & Dixon
Pi         Pinkney
R          Rind

Names of months, etc.

Ja         January
F          February
Mr        March
Ap        April
My        May
Je         June
Jl          July
Ag        August
S          September
Oc        October
N          November
D          December
b          broadside
p          postscript
s          supplement

Since the Virginia Gazette printed before 1766 had no competitor, symbols for printers' names are not used in references prior to that year. A typical reference is translated as follows: PDl50c72: 23 is Purdie & Dixon's Virginia Gazette, October 15, 1772, page 2, column 3. After 1765, identical ads in two or three papers are indicated by references connected by the hyphen, but only the first printing of the ad in each paper is indexed. Where the hyphen connects a reference to one paper with two references to another paper, two separate items are referred to, printed in the same column in one paper but in two different columns in the other paper.

This Index was compiled from all known copies of the newspapers reproduced by photostat. Assembling the photostat file was greatly facilitated by the existence of the bound photostat set prepared many years ago by the Massachusetts Historical Society. This set was supplemented by almost 200 issues discovered more recently, copies of which were secured through the cooperation of the following institutions: American Antiquarian Society, Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., Cornell University, Duke University, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, Henry E. Huntington Library, Library of Congress, Massachusetts Historical Society, New-York Historical Society, Public Record Office, London, Eng., University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia, Virginia Historical Society, Virginia State Library, College of William and Mary and Yale University. We are especially indebted to the Library of the College of William and Mary for many favors throughout the project.

The Index was begun under the supervision of the late Hunter D. Farish, director of research of Colonial Williamsburg. He was assisted in its early stages by Winifred Gregory Gerould, and then by Genevieve Yost Scheer whose system of chronological “tracings” for each entry proved invaluable to the very end of the proofreading. Some months after Dr. Farish's death in 1945 Lester J. Cappon became director of the Index and Stella F. Duff assumed the responsibility of senior indexer in February, 1946. She was assisted by the following junior indexers whose efforts helped to glimpse the end of what seemed an endless undertaking: Elizabeth Ann Baxter, Elizabeth M. Bacon, Arline C. Blau, Fanona Knox, Ruth Heffner McAllister, and Dorothy Bell Schwarz. The meticulous work of typing and filing was carried on mostly by Jane Girten and Shirlee Spencer Sanderlin with the help during three summers of Marjorie lone Browning. Final editing was done with the aid of Miss Schwarz and Dorothy Wollon. Composing, proofreading and layout were done under the effective supervision of Jeanette Alban, Will Long and Edwin Flachs. We gratefully acknowledge the indispensable assistance of all our co-workers.

Location of scattered issues of the Virginia Gazette was facilitated by Clarence S. Brigham's monumental History and Bibliography of American Newspapers. To Julian P. Boyd, librarian of Princeton University, we are deeply indebted for sound advice on numerous occasions; to Arthur Pierce Middleton of Colonial Williamsburg for information especially on maritime matters; and to Carl Bridenbaugh, director of the Institute, for his scholarly help and encouragement.

A microfilm file of the Virginia Gazettes of Williamsburg has been prepared from some of the photostat copies and from a larger number of original issues, along with a checklist of the papers. Thus for the first time the text of all known issues will be widely available.

Williamsburg, Virginia    
30 June 1950

L.J.C.
S.F.D.