note: "We are very sorry that we cannot procure a sufficiency of paper to publish a whole sheet; but as there is now a paper- mill erecting in this town, we expect after a few weeks, to be supplied with such a quantity as to publish the Journal regu- larly on a uniform sized paper, and to be able to make ample amends for past deficiencies." In spite of its fairly long life the paper passed through the usual newspaper difficulties of the period. Some of the earliest issues were even smaller than that of the common letter paper.
Pretentious, at least in name, was The Norwich Packet and the Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island Weekly Advertiser, first brought out on September 30, 1773, by Alexander Robertson, James Robertson, and John Trumbull. Three years later Trumbull became the sole proprietor and the Robertsons began publishing papers elsewhere.
ATTEMPTS OF DAVIS IN NORTH CAROLINA In 1755 Benjamin Franklin, then Postmaster-General for the Colonies, appointed James Davis, who had emigrated from Virginia, to North Carolina, postmaster at Newbern. Follow- ing the example set by the colonial postmasters of Boston, the latter established the same year The North Carolina Gazette. It bore the following imprint: "Newbern: Printed by James Davis, at the Printing-office in Front Street; where all persons may be supplied with this paper at Sixteen Shillings per annum : And when Advertisements of a moderate length are inserted for Three Shillings the first Week and Two Shillings for every week after. And where also Book-Binding is done reasonably." Pub- lished on Thursdays, it usually appeared on a sheet pot size folio. Number 200 of this paper was dated October 18, 1759, and did not colonial editors frequently skip a week and often mix up their numbering it would be an easy matter to figure out by the help of old almanacs the Thursday in 1755 when this, the first paper in North Carolina, made its bow to Newbern. It was published about six years.
Davis madejiis second attempt to found a paper in 1764. He called the new venture The North Carolina Magazine, or Univer- sal Intelligencer. (Its name was somewhat misleading, as the
