 | |  |
II. Newspapers
Though the irresponsible attacks made on him, especially during the election campaigns of 1800 and 1804, soured Jefferson as to the usefulness or veracity of newspapers, he did preserve a considerable number of them in bound files. They are included in the 1815 Catalogue under American History (items 535-602), each item representing one or more volumes. Among them were journals published in fifteen American cities outside Virginia and in one foreign capital. But by far the largest number, approximately eighteen items,[19] are from Virginia.
Originally he owned many more. In a letter to John D. Burk of June 1, 1803, he mentions his collection of newspapers which Burk had asked to borrow. They dated
It is well that Burk used them profitably, for Jefferson never recovered his newspapers, and they have disappeared from view. A later letter (October 29, 1810) from Thomas to his kinsman George Jefferson mentions that the collection included "3 volumes of Virginia Gazette from 1741 to 1760." The writer adds the interesting information that he purchased these volumes from "Parson Wiley's executors before the revolution, and paid their original cost for them which I think was £30. for the whole collection down to his death" (Sowerby, I, 213).
The Library of Congress does not possess a single bound volume of newspapers from the 1815 library, at least in recognizable form. But the manuscript and printed catalogues indicate that he had twelve volumes folio and one volume quarto of "Virginia gazettes." These included in whole or part Parks' Virginia Gazette, 1741-1750; Hunter et al, Virginia Gazette, 1751-1778; Rind's Virginia Gazette, 1766-1776; Purdie et al, Virginia Gazette, 1775-1780; all Williamsburg; and Dixon and Nicolson's Virginia Gazette, 1779-1781, Williamsburg and Richmond. Another manuscript catalogue entry, "Gazettes. 1795-7, d° 1797" [or in the 1815 printed Catalogue: "Miscellaneous Gazettes, 1795-1800, 4 vols."] seems hopelessly obscure until one looks with Miss Sowerby at the 1831 Library of Congress catalogue, which breaks this down and lists in two places a number of out-of-state items but also the Political Mirror, 1800-1802, Staunton; the Genius of Liberty, 1798-1800, Fredericksburg; The Enquirer, 1809-1814, the Virginia Argus, 1797, the Virginia Argus and Virginia Enquirer, 1804-1808, 5 vols., the Virginia Argus and Virginia Examiner, 1797-1803, 1809-1813, 7 vols., the Virginia Gazette, June 1795, the Virginia Gazette and Richmond Chronicle, 1795, the Richmond Chronicle, 1795-1796, The Richmond and Manchester Advertiser, 1795-1796, all Richmond; the American Gazette, 1795-1796, Norfolk; and the Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg and Falmouth Advertiser, 1795-1796, Fredericksburg,[20] Not long
Although Jefferson may have overestimated the uniqueness of his collection of Virginia newspapers, much would be given today for his eighteenth and early nineteenth-century files. The Cappon and Duff microfilmed edition of the Virginia Gazette of Williamsburg, for example, might be far more complete than it is. In most cases today files of the other newspapers are incomplete or fragmentary.[21] Jefferson never made any claim for inclusiveness or completeness for his own collection, but quite obviously it was at least on a par with his printed laws in value as history.
| | |