CHAPTER V

73

Under the latter title it continued to appear until November 10, 1783, when he ceased its publication. In 1753 he incurred the displeasure of the Assembly on account of publishing an inaccurate report of their proceedings, and was summoned to the bar of the House, where, upon his apologizing, he was reprimanded by the Speaker and released.

When the Stamp Act came in force in November, 1765, Gaine, like many other American publishers, suspended the regular issue of his paper. In place of it he put forth a sheet sometimes headed “A Patriotic Advertisement,” and at others “No Stamped Paper to be had.” One other incident in Gaine’s career in connection with his newspaper must be mentioned. It is, I believe, without a parallel in the annals of journalism. At the outbreak of the Revolution Gaine, after a slight leaning toward

74

the American cause, assumed and maintained a strict neutrality; but when it became likely that the British would occupy New York in September, 1776, he sent one of his presses to Newark, and on the 28th of that month began to issue there a quarto newspaper bearing the name and imprint of “The New-York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, Printed by Hugh Gaine, at Newark, in East-New-Jersey,” devoted to the Whig cause, at the same time continuing to issue his neutral paper of the same name, from his sign of “the Bible and Crown,” in Hanover Square. The Newark edition was issued two days earlier than the New York one, but, besides bearing the same name, was numbered in sequence with the earliest issued. This was continued until November 2, making duplicate numbers and two papers of different politics from No. 1301 to 1307. After the battle of Long Island

75

Gaine concluded the American to be the losing side, withdrew from Newark, and gave his paper a British tone, which it preserved until its termination. The Lenox Library possesses the only known file of this curious example of the same newspaper published simultaneously on two sides of a question then at the arbitration of the sword.

In the early part of his career Gaine was concerned in two other periodicals. In August, 1754, he began the publication of a short-lived weekly, called “The Plebeian,” of which I have not seen a copy; and later in the same year he was prevailed upon by William Livingston and Rev. Aaron Burr to revive their suppressed “Independent Reflector” under the title of “The Watch Tower.” The latter was not only issued separately, but was published weekly in the “Mercury,” and was continued for about a year.

76

Game’s press was the most prolific of its time in New York. Among the more important and interesting of his publications are: Addison’s “Cato,” 1753; Blair’s “The Grave,” 1753; “A Brief Vindication of the Proceedings of the Trustees Relating to The College [of New York],” 1754; “Psalmodia Gernanica, or the German Psalmody translated from the High Dutch,” 1754, an octavo of about 260 pages; a reprint of Makemie’s “Narrative,” 1755; Thomson’s “Discourse on Inoculation” (first printed in Philadelphia, 1750), 1756; “A Memorial containing A Summary View of Facts” (of which Parker & Weyman also published an edition, as already noted), 1757; “The Trial of Admiral Byng,” 1757; the first “Catalogue of the Books belonging to the New York Society’s Library,” 1758, which he again printed in 1773; a translation of Frederick the Great’s poem on War, 1758; what would now be a

77

highly interesting and curious volume, “The New American Mock Bird,” a collection of the best songs on different subjects, 1761. In 1762 he reprinted Hopkinson’s poem on Science without the author’s consent, and published a quaintly worded card of excuse, alleging that he had done so, not from “any lucrative view, but only to promote the circulation of so excellent a piece.”

In 1765 he issued (as did nearly every printer then in America) an edition of “An Act for granting certain stamp duties in the British Colonies in America,” the odious “Stamp Act,” and in 1766 he completed his magnum opus, “Journal of the Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly Of the Colony of New-York, 1691-1765,” in two folio volumes of nearly nine hundred pages each, the first of which was issued in 1764. In 1768 he became printer to

78

the Government, and from that year until the Revolution printed the votes and acts of Assembly, and the other public documents of the colony. In 1769 he printed, “A Treatise on Courts Martial,” the first work of its kind in English for Stephen Payne Adye, a lieutenant of the Royal Artillery; “Middleton’s Discourse on the opening of the [first] Medical School in the City of New York”; and completed the edition of the “Mohawk Prayer Book,” begun by Weyman in 1764. In 1770 he printed the “Rules for the St. Andrew’s Society,” and in the following year the “Charter for establishing an Hospital in the city of New York,” and the third issue of “The Charter of the City of Albany.”

Among his publications in 1773 were Porteus’s “Life of Archbishop Seeker,” with an appendix by the Rev. T. B. Chandler, which contains much valuable matter relating to the Episcopal

79

Church in America, and “A State of the Right of the Colony of New-York, with respect To it’s Eastern Boundary on Connecticut River, So far as concerns the late Encroachments under The Government of New-Hampshire,” a copy of which sold for $190 at the second Brinley sale. In 1774 he issued Van Schaack’s edition of the Laws of the Province, a folio volume of nearly 850 pages; “The Charter” and “Laws, Statutes, Ordinances and Constitutions” of the City of New York; the first catalogue of the alumni of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton); “A Collection of Statutes” relating to the Post Office; and an edition of the “Journal of the Proceedings of the Congress, Held at Philadelphia,” first printed in Philadelphia. In 1775 and 1776 Gaine’s publications were ephemeral pamphlets, of which only the “Rules and Articles for the better Government of the Troops of the

80

Twelve United Colonies” need be mentioned.

Of Gaine’s publications in 1777 two are worth noticing here; the first American edition of “Robinson Crusoe” is one which requires no note to emphasize its importance. The other was a volume curious in itself, interesting from the portrait of Lord Percy, engraved in New York, which was prefixed as a frontispiece, and the long list of the officers of the British forces in America who subscribed for it, but infamous for the note on page 190 which is scissored out of all but one known copy, and is here for the first time reprinted. The title of the book, which was published by subscription, was “Military Collections and Remarks.” The author, according to the prospectus, was “a late General Officer of distinguished abilities,” and the editor was Robert Donkin, then a major in the British army, sometime

81

82

commandant of the Garrison Battalion in New York City, and finally full general in His Britannic Majesty’s service. The note, which Donkin appended to a chapter on bows and arrows, reads thus:

“Dip arrows in matter of small pox, and twang them at the American rebels, in order to inoculate them; This would sooner disband these stubborn, ignorant, enthusiastic savages, than any other compulsive measures. Such is their dread and fear of that disorder!

In 1778 he printed in the “Gazette,” and as a pamphlet, a “Narrative or Journal of Capt. John Ferdinand Dalziel Smith, of the Queen’s Rangers, taken Prisoner by the Rebels in 1775.” This was one of the two or three contemporaneously published accounts of the treatment of loyalist prisoners by the Continental authorities, which, with the letters of Colonel, afterward

83

General, Sir Archibald Campbell describing his treatment by the government of Massachusetts, give grounds to assert that the subsequent horrors of the British Prison Ships in New York Bay and the brutality of Cunningham had their forerunners among the “Patriots of ’76.” The author, by the way, as J. F. D. Smyth, afterward published a couple of volumes of his travels in the United States, and later on claimed to be the representative of the Stuarts, in support of which he published in London, in 1808, under the name of Ferdinand Smyth Stuart, what he called “an historical poem,” entitled “Destiny and Fortitude,” illustrated with nicely engraved portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots, and himself.

Gaine printed Galloway’s “Letters of Papinian” in 1779; a poem on the burning of New York in September, 1776, in 1780; the “Charter of the Marine Society,”

84

on paper in part made from wood, in 1781; “Rules to be observed by the Hand-in-Hand Fire Company,” on the only known copy of which a former owner has written, “preserved merely to shew that there is a Fire Company without Fire Buckets.” After the Revolution and the suspension of the “Gazette” Gaine was more of a bookseller than a printer, but he issued a number of works which are worthy of mention. In 1784 he printed the last of the folio edition of the “Laws, Statutes, Ordinances and Constitutions, Ordained and Established by the Mayor, Aldermen and Commonalty of the City of New York,” and in 1789 Jones and Varick’s edition of the “Laws of the State of New-York.” The copy of this work which was specially bound and presented to General Washington, was sold at auction in Philadelphia in November, 1876, with other volumes from Washington’s

85

library. It is in two volumes, and is a remarkable specimen of American bookbinding of its day, but it sold for no more than $9 a volume. Its purchaser found in one of the volumes a survey of Mount Vernon drawn in Washington’s own hand. Taking this out, he sold the volumes for $30 apiece to Mr. C. W. Frederickson, at whose sale they were bought by Dr. George H. Moore for $104 a volume. Dr. Moore disposed of them to the writer at the comfortable advance of $750 for the two, and they now repose in the Tower Collection of American Colonial Laws in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Gaine printed a duodecimo edition of the Bible in 1792, a duodecimo edition of the Book of Common Prayer in 1793, and a folio edition of the same in 1795. In 1790 he published the first New York edition of the New Testament.

86

To the half-dozen almanacs—Hutchins’s and Moore’s, pocket and sheet, English and Dutch—which he issued for many years, Gaine added in 1774 another in his “Universal Register,” which in its subsequent issues became of the greatest historical value by the addition to its regular lists of the civil officers of government in America of a list of the officers of the British army serving here during the Revolution, embracing not only those of the line, artillery, and engineers of the regular army, but of the German mercenaries and loyalist regiments embodied during the war. In another field—books for the amusing instruction of children—Gaine was a pioneer. Instead of the New England or the duller New York Primer he from time to time offered a variety of educational works couched in terms meant to be attractive to juvenile minds. Concerning the inevitable and innumerable

87

editions of Watts’s Psalms and Hymns I have not gone into details, but he did his share in adding to their number, and no doubt reaped his proportion of profit thereby.

In the half century of his active business career Gaine acquired a handsome fortune, and at the same time, by the rectitude of his conduct, won the respect of his fellow-citizens. The former he lost toward the close of his life through an unfortunate partnership in a lottery scheme, but the latter he retained unimpaired until his death. He was twice married: first in 1759 to Sarah Robins, by whom he had an only son, John R., who died in 1787 at the age of twenty-six, and two daughters. His second marriage, which took place about ten years later, in 1769, was contracted with a widow named Cornelia Wallace, by whom he had several daughters. He has numerous descendants at the present day, one of whom

88

owns the original portrait from which our etching is made, and is to-day a successful and enterprising publisher. Gaine took an active part in social and religious matters, if not in politics. He was treasurer and vice-president of the St. Patrick Society, and for many years a vestryman of Trinity Church. He died in New York on April 25, 1807, in the 81st year of his age, and was buried in his vault in Trinity churchyard.