Schenectady's 18th and 19th Century Newspapers

The Western Spectator masthead, 1803. 

You may have seen coverage of the Daily Gazette’s 130th anniversary in November 2024, but you may not realize that Schenectady’s rich history of local journalism and newspaper publishing dates back to the 1790s. The Mohawk Mercury, a weekly newspaper published by Abraham Brockaw and Cornelius Wyckoff, is the earliest known periodical published in Schenectady. Only a few issues survived the centuries. They cover the period 1795 to 1798 and are never more than four pages long. The first two pages were reserved mostly for national and international news, with some state information. Pages three and four were almost exclusively local news and notices, generally in the form of business ads. Around 1798, John L. Stevenson bought the paper. It is unclear if Stevenson continued printing the Mercury, but in 1799 he was publishing a newspaper under the name Schenectady Gazette (no relation to the present-day Schenectady newspaper), so it’s possible that he simply changed the name of the original publication. In 1802, Stevenson changed the name of the Gazette to the Western Spectator and Schenectady Advertiser. The Western Spectator was discontinued in 1807. The surviving issues follow a similar format and focus as the Mohawk Mercury. 

While the first two pages are interesting in their own right for a glimpse into the important matters of post-Revolutionary America, the real treasure of these early newspapers are the second set of two pages in each issue. Given the ads and notices published, the Mohawk Mercury and the Western Spectator read like a Who’s-Who of turn-of-the-century Schenectady. These pages featured articles explaining local ordinances or addressing local issues, such as the founding of Union College. Notices and advertisements focus on local businesses, legal notices, mail service, and listings of property for sale. Slavery in our area is documented in the sale ads for enslaved people and the ‘runaway ads’ enslavers posted for enslaved people seeking freedom. Occasionally, a death notice of a local person or notices for delinquent wives and apprentices appear, while marriage announcements are extremely rare.

Ad announcing runaway apprentice published in the Mohawk Sentinel, 1824

For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Schenectady had at least two newspapers circulating at the same time. Some of these titles went in and out of publication over the decades, changing owners or editors and merging with other publications. The Schenectady Cabinet, for example, started in 1810 and continued through the 1830s, merging briefly with the Freedom Sentinel in the 1840s before reemerging as a separate title in the 1850s. The similarity and reuse of titles can be confusing. The Reflector and Schenectady Democrat ran from the late 1830s to the mid-1880s. However, within this range, the paper was published under the mastheads the Schenectady Reflector, the Schenectady Democrat, and the Schenectady Democrat and Reflector with a series of proprietors and editors. The dates and issue numbers on the surviving issues make it difficult to determine if all of these titles were indeed the same newspaper published continuously or if there were significant starts and stops or changes to the publication in this 50-year period.

Most of the nineteenth and early twentieth century newspapers were printed weekly, but a few were daily publications. In addition to the local news reports and announcements, these newspapers contain a wealth of information important to a variety of researchers including advertisements, death and marriage notices, political statements, editorials, poetry, essays, drawings, and cartoons. Most of these newspapers claim to be politically neutral or focused broadly on the news of the day and the interests of the common reader, but several publishers proclaimed their intent to represent the views of particular parties or affiliations. The Weekly Republican (1857-1863), for example, introduced itself as advocating and supporting the principles of the Republican party. This newspaper particularly focused on promoting and defending the party’s “doctrine of progress in all those inalienable, God-given rights, which ennoble and elevate the common humanity,” notably advocating for the abolition of slavery during the tumultuous years before and during the American Civil War.

Four men standing outside of Foster's Newsroom on State Street, circa 1890. One is selling newspapers.

Very few original paper copies of eighteenth and nineteenth century newspapers exist today, but the contents of these publications are available for research on microfilm at the Grems-Doolittle Library. Twenty-four newspapers, dating 1795 to 1884, are available and searchable online at the New York Historic Newspapers database, thanks to Regional Collections grants from the Capital District Library Council which allowed SCHS to digitize reels in our microfilm collection and make them fully available and searchable online through the New York Historic Newspapers Project. The New York Historic Newspapers project exists to digitize and make freely available for research significant runs of historic newspapers for every county in the state. The database is created and administered by the Northern New York Library Network in partnership with the Empire State Library Network.

The microfilm collection at the Grems-Doolittle Library is available for researchers by appointment. Contact the librarian to schedule an appointment and visit schenectadyhistorical.org/research to learn more about accessing our collections.