for the printing outside in the neighborhood of St. Stephens, where they began to print The Mobile Sentinel while under the protection of Fort Stoddert. Sixteen issues of this paper at least were brought out, but whether a single one of them was actually printed in Mobile is not known.
Mobile under Spanish rule surrendered to General James Wilkinson, April 13, 1813. On April 28, 1813, a Mobile Gazette with an account of the affair was published. Its editor and pub- lisher was George B. Cotton. Cotton, in selling out his interest, said in his farewell in the issue of June 23, 1819, that The Mo- bile Gazette was started under his management in the infancy of the town, and some have taken this assertion to mean that the paper was in existence while Mobile was under Spanish rule. This seems extremely doubtful.
The Commercial Register, the predecessor of the present Mo- bile Register, appeared on December 10, 1821. In 1823 The Register printed a brief note that it had purchased the title, interest, and property of The Mobile Gazette.
ORIGIN IN ILLINOIS
The year of 1814 saw the first newspaper in Illinois. It was called The Illinois Herald and was published at Kaskaskia by Matthew Duncan, Printer to the Territory and publisher of the Laws of the Union, 1815. Duncan was a native of Virginia and came to Illinois by way of Kentucky. The paper appeared on or near June 24, 1814, as Number 30 .of Volume I is dated De- cember 13, 1814. On April 24, 1816, the paper became The Western Intelligencer and was published by Robert Blackwell and Daniel P. Cook. On May 27, 1818, the paper became The Illinois Intelligencer and continued publication under that title until October 14, 1820, when it suspended, only to be revived on December 14 of that year at Vandalia which had become the Capital of the State.
The second paper, The Illinois Immigrant, appeared in Shaw- neetown on June 13, 1818, with Henry Eddy and Singleton H. Kimmel as editors. On September 25, 1819, it became The Il- linois Gazette.
Difficulties of printing the early papers in Illinois was illus-
