Pennsylvania Chronicle

The Pennsylvania Chronicle and Universal Advertiser was an American colonial newspaper founded in 1767 that was published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, prior to the American Revolution. It was founded by William Goddard and his silent business partners Joseph Galloway and Thomas Wharton. Benjamin Franklin, an associate of Galloway, was also a partner with the Chronicle.^[1]

The newspaper was established to challenge the power of the Penn family and ultimately the Crown authorities who at that time were placing laws and taxes on the colonists without fair representation in the British Parliament.

The Chronicle was published once a week on a Monday, the first issue being released on January 6, 1767, and was printed from a new Bourgeois type set by Goddard's printing company in Philadelphia, The New Printing Office, on Market Street, near the post office. The annual subscription rate was ten shillings.^[2] The publication maintained operations from January 6, 1767, until February 8, 1774.^[3]

In 1768, William's sister, Mary Katherine Goddard, who later became the first woman to be a postmaster in Maryland, joined and managed her brother's printing office in Philadelphia.^[4]

By 1770 the Pennsylvania Chronicle had a circulation of about twenty-five hundred, making it one of the most successful colonial newspapers.^[5]

In the middle of the 18th century most of the printing presses that were in use in the American colonies were imported from England. Isaac Doolittle, a New-Haven watch and clock-maker, built the mahogany printing press for Goddard's Pennsylvania Chronicle in Philadelphia. It was the first printing press built in the American colonies.^[6][7]

Goddard's newspaper was not without its competition. A rival Philadelphia printer, William Bradford III, founder of The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser in 1742 conducted a newspaper war against Goddard that digressed into personal attacks.

During this time Galloway and Wharton had sold their shares of the Chronicle to a Robert Towne, who in turn made many attempts to persuade Goddard to sell his newspaper to him. After Goddard publicly criticized Galloway and Wharton he subsequently found himself jailed for debt in September 1771, no doubt at the prompting of the influential Galloway.