16S 



oi' the College, Stoughton Hall. The title was then etilarged 

 to " The New England Chronicle or Essex Gazette." This 

 removal was made "at the Desire of many respectable Gentle- 

 men of the Honorable Provincial Congress" — with whom Mr. 

 Hall was in high ftivor. The paper was continiied in Cambridge 

 until the Evacuation of Boston bj the British, when it was 

 removed thither, and at the Same time the title of "Essex 

 Gazette" Was dropped. 



Before Messrs. Hall left Salem, their printing office was 

 burnt out by the great fire of October, 1T74, which destroyed a 

 meeting house, custom house, eight dwellings, fourteen stores, 

 and several barns and out buildings. * The office was subse- 

 quently located in the brick building recently incorporated into 

 Dr. Fisk's brick block near the depot. 



2. The Salem Gazette and Newbury a^b Kewbury- 

 PORT Advertiser. Before Mr. Hall left town another news- 

 paper was commenced, Julyl, 1774, with the foregoing elabo- 

 rate title. It was published by Ezekiel Bussell, from Boston, 

 an unsuccessful printer, who had been an unsuccessful auction- 

 eer also. His antecedents were those of a tory. In 1771 he 

 had published in Boston a small paper called " The Censor," 

 which was in the interest of the loyal party, and soon expired. 

 He had also been known in 1773 as the printer of a handbill 

 entitled " The Tradesmen's Protest against the proceedings of 

 the Merchants relative to the new Importation of Tea." This 

 handbill excited so much feeling among the patriotic merchants 

 and tradesmen, that at a large town meeting in Faneuil Hall the 

 printer and the authors of it were pronounced as " detestable," 

 and the protest itself as "false, scandalous and base." Mr. Rus- 

 sell's office in Salem was "in Ruck street, near the State Housef " 

 — somewhere on Washington street, near the depot, we presume. 

 The headline ofthe paper announced that it was "x\. Weekly, Po- 

 litical, Commercial and Entertaining Paper — Influenced neither 

 by Court or Country." But the country decided that it was in- 

 fluenced by the Court. The editor was suspected of a bias in 

 favor of the British, probably on account of his previous course 

 in Boston, and the paper accordingly terminated in a few 

 months an unpopular career. 



*The meeting house destroyed was Rev. Dr. Whitaker's, which stood 

 on King street, where Dr. Treadwell's building now is. The Custom 

 House was just above. fSee Note on page 158. 



