The Knoxville Gazette

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Published in Rogersville, Tennessee in 1791.

The Knoxville Gazette was the first newspaper published in the American State of Tennessee. It was published by George Roulstone, 1767-1804, on November 5, 1791 in Rogersville, Tennessee.

1 First newspaper
2 George Roulstone
3 Cessation of publication
4 See also

[edit] First newspaper

Roulstone, along with the new governor of the Southwest Territory, William Blount, stayed in Rogersville for eleven months before moving the newspaper permanently to Knoxville in the fall of 1792.

[edit] George Roulstone

Roulstone was a native of Boston and was a former North Carolina newspaper man. He was also Knoxville's first postmaster, one of the new city's first commissioners, the first public printer in Tennessee, and clerk to the Senate of the initial Tennessee General Assembly.

This political patronage came courtesy of Territorial Governor William Blount, who had encouraged the paper from its beginning in order to have a way of distributing news about the territory.

[edit] Cessation of publication

After Roulstone's death in 1804, control of the paper passed to his wife, Elizabeth Gilliam Roulstone, who continued publishing the newspaper for several years. The Knoxville Gazette ceased publication in 1818.