imagination. He conceived the idea of bringing the scattered
tribes of Israel to an American settlement; he also believed that
the Indians were descendants of the lost tribes and proposed that
a certain part of the land should be set aside for them. He had
other idiosyncracies of which it is no editorial fib to say that
they were too numerous to mention. One of them, however, de-
serves special notice : he seemed to want to edit as many papers
as possible. He began his newspaper career hi 1810 by editing
The City Gazette in Charleston, South Carolina. When Tam-
many Hall, quite a different organization from the present one
of that name, repudiated its organ and established another, The
National Advocate secured Noah as the second editor of that
paper. In 1826, after a quarrel with the publishers, Noah started
another paper with the same name. Prevented by legal steps
in this attempt to have two papers of the same name, he called
his paper Noah's New York National Advocate. Again getting
into legal difficulties, he made another change and called the
sheet The New York Enquirer. When this paper was merged
in 1829 with The Morning Courier, Noah still kept up an edi-
torial connection with the union as its associate editor. In 1834
he established The New York Evening Star, a Whig organ to
support William Henry Harrison. When The Star united with
The Commercial Advertiser, Noah became editor of The Morn-
ing Star. In 1842 Noah edited a Tyler organ in New York called
The Union. It lasted about a year, and then he commenced in
1843 Noah's Weekly Messenger which after a short time united
with The Sunday Times. He remained editor of this paper until
his death in 1851.
FIKST STAR REPORTER
Henry Ingraham Blake, the Father of American Reporting, belonged to this period. Connected with The New England Pal- ladium, a Boston paper started on January 1, 1793, as The Massachusetts Mercury, but later, in January, 1801, changed to The Mercury and New England Palladium, he was the first to go after news without waiting for items to come to the news- paper office. Though he occasionally reported local matters in and around the city, he made his reputation as a gatherer of ship
