Sign up for Genealogy Pointers »

This volume consists of abstracts of genealogical data from four of New York's earliest newspapers--the New-York Gazette (1726-1744) and the New-York Weekly Journal (1733-1751), the two earliest city papers, and the New-York Mercury and the Weekly Mercury (1752-1783). These newspapers were originally produced as weeklies and usually consisted of four pages, with occasional supplementary issues. Their subject matter encompassed essays, treatises, parliamentary proceedings, governors' messages, European and West Indian news, shipping news, incidents culled from other newspapers, and many advertisements. In this volume of abstracts may be found items yielding information concerning marriage, birth, death, age, status, place of residence, and place of origin, covering, in all, the years 1726 through most of 1783. Treatment is not confined to New York, for among individuals mentioned are those from all the other colonies, especially New Jersey (which had no newspaper in the colonial period), New England, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Clearfield's reprint edition, which appeared serially in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record between 1964 and 1976, has been reprinted by kind permission of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, with the addition of an introduction and an index containing the names of some 10,000 persons.