The Essex Gazette was a weekly newspaper established in 1768 by Samuel Hall in Salem, Massachusetts, as the city's first newspaper and the first published in Massachusetts outside Boston, the colony's capital. it was the third newspaper to appear in Massachusetts. From its start, the newspaper was a strong proponent of American independence. The Gazette was relocated to Cambridge in 1775 following the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In early 1776, after the British army was driven from Boston, Hall moved the Gazette to the city, changing its name to The New England Chronicle.