“For the Common Good”
Forster and Caspar Wistar, first published on July 27, 1774 – predating the Gazette by almost three years. However, author Patrick Robertson found no recorded title and no evidence that copies of the earlier publication survive. According to the Book of Firsts, the ForsterWistar sheet was followed by The Gentleman’s Magazine, a half sheet published every
10 days, which expired after three issues. Robertson states that six more titles followed The Gentleman’s Magazine, the last of which was the Students Gazette. Not until 1822 was another school magazine or newspaper known to begin publishing, Robertson found, and Penn Charter was void of “so useful an institution” until the late 1880s, when a student publication titled Penn Charter
Magazine began publication. When Fox began publishing the Students Gazette – just 11 months after the Declaration of Independence was issued – anticipation over a British invasion was intense. Equipment and supplies would soon start being hauled out of the city (printing presses included) and the human exodus had already begun. Support for the American cause was
Of Mice and Militia
T
he Students Gazette brims with youthful bravado and humor, but overall it reflects a schoolboy life that mirrors an adult world where a nation is struggling, sometimes violently, to be born. It was, perhaps, too dangerous to comment directly on the grave matters happening just outside the school’s front door, but the Gazette editors used code words about happenings in “Latonia” that often eerily paralleled important events in 1776 through 1778 in Philadelphia, including the British occupation of the town. For instance, on Sept. 28, 1776, Pennsylvania adopted a state constitution. On July 23 of the next year, the Students Gazette reported that the boys of the Quaker-run Public Latin School, “by a noble principle and desirous to prevent the effects of intestine broils,” had established a constitution “founded on their own authority.” The Gazette’s report noted that an assembly would be chosen every month in the state of Latonia and “empowered to make such laws as they shall think necessary and useful.” But by Nov. 29, 1777, according to the newspaper, students had agreed to suspend elections until May “because of bad weather,” leaving business to a four-student skeleton council. “Bad weather” may have been a euphemism. Two months earlier, on Sept. 26, 1777, several companies of British and Hessian soldiers had marched into Philadelphia and seized the city. The week before their arrival, Congress and the Executive Council, Pennsylvania’s governing body, had evacuated to Lancaster. (Congress soon moved further into the interior, to York.) In November, student Thomas Lloyd, “the barrister of Latonia,” departed for Lancaster as well, the Gazette reported, possibly after his guardian gave up on getting back to Philadelphia anytime soon. The city was occupied for nine months. British officers demanded lodging in the finer homes, Quaker residences included, with servants and mistresses in tow. Soldiers parked artillery in the yard of Independence Hall, stabled horses in buildings, and milled about in Market and Chestnut Streets. They chopped down trees in William Penn’s “greene countrie towne” and left trash in their wake. At least one student was run over by a Hessian’s wagon but returned to school the next week, the Gazette reported. The tumult in the streets spilled into the Public Latin School, which was led at the time by the master John Thompson. The Gazette reported that on Dec. 19,
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1777, “inhabitants of Latonia” were “obliged to evacuate their state,” then on Fourth Street below Chestnut Street, to make room for two British companies. Most of the students’ valuables were moved to Carpenters’ Hall, according to the paper, but it’s unclear where the students went. Issues of the paper that followed the evacuation refer to “New Latonia” and the “Smith Territories.” It was in New Latonia that “a poor mouse was found hanging,” the paper reported. “Most people conjecture (for conjecture they will in such cases) that he was unfortunately taken and hanged as a spy.” The reporter added that “by what authority or upon what Samuel M. Fox occasion he was executed” was unknown. The hanging was reported in May 1778, but that same month, the Gazette hopefully noted the impending “departures of the subjects of Latonia from said territories. … No person who professes himself a subject to the state of Latonia will any longer be suffered to reside within the territories of the Smithites.” As of June 24, 1778, however, about a week after the British left town, the Gazette was still based in New Latonia, reporting that the Royal Artillery had evacuated the school but that it was in “such condition as not to admit … immediate return of its old inhabitants.” Finally, by late July 1778, the last issues of the Students Gazette carried brief items suggesting that order was being restored, at least to the business of Quaker education in Philadelphia. Publisher Samuel M. Fox signed off on Aug. 5, 1778, saying he had done all he could to make the Students Gazette “entertaining and instructing” – and leaving his mark on the history of William Penn Charter School.