Long-time Albany residents and readers of this page are probably familiar with some of the old newspaper names of Albany: Times, Knickerbocker News, Albany Gazette, Albany Argus. The Post, the Herald, the Evening Journal. But the very first newspaper in Albany? The Post-Boy.
Yes, that was an unusual name even then, and it’s not clear how many editions carried that name. It appears the paper was also known as the Albany Gazette. Isaiah Thomas, in his 1874 History of Printing in America, wrote that “I have applied to several gentlemen in Albany, for particular information relative to this paper; but have not succeeded in procuring it. At this period, very little intelligence respecting it can be obtained. I am, however, told that it was called, The Albany Post-Boy.”
Thomas believed that this paper was begun in November 1771, making Albany the second city in the State of New York into which printing was introduced. “The earliest copy that has been discovered after a search of many years, is No. 8, dated Jan 20, 1772, and there are a few copies of about that date preserved in the collection of the Albany Institute. In one of these the publisher, “from motives of gratitude and duty,” apologized to the public for the omission of one week’s publication, and hoped that the irregularity of the mail from New York, since the first great fall of snow, and the severe cold preceding Christmas, which froze the paper prepared for the press, so as to put a stop to its operation, would sufficiently account for it.”
The Post-Boy, possibly also the Gazette, was published by Alexander and James Robertson, Scots and Loyalists. At least one of them removed to Norwich, Connecticut in 1773, but publication continued until 1776, when the remaining Robertson removed to the relative safety of British-controlled New York.
Thomas also tells us more about the next newspaper, which would be printed by Mr. Webster of the Old Elm Tree Corner:
The next paper here was the New York Gazetteer and Northern Intelligencer, which was first published in May, 1782, by Balentine & Webster. It was printed on a sheet of short demy, with pica and long primer types, at 18s. ($1.62-1/2) a year. Advertisements of subscribers were to be inserted three weeks gratis. Balentine was addicted to intemperance, and Webster separated from him at the end of a year. The former then enlarged the size of his paper, but abandoned it after one year, when Webster returned from New York, and began the publication of the Albany Gazette, which was continued until 1845. The only works printed by Balentine & Webster, that have come to light, are a pamphlet, by the Rev. Thomas Clarke, of Cambridge, Washington county, entitled Plain Reasons, being a dissuasive from the use of Watts’s version of the Psalms, in worship, and an Almanac for 1783. The only work of Balentine’s press, is an Almanac of 1784. Mr. Webster began an Almanac in 1784, for the year following, entitled Webster’s Calendar, or the Albany Almanac, which is still published, and is the oldest almanac extant in the United States.
