Ornamental Separator

The Second Virginia Gazette

Printers

  • William Rind (1766–1773)
  • Clementina Rind (1773–1774)
  • John Pinkney (1774–1776)


As the American Revolution stirred in the mid-1760s, some colonists grew frustrated that the Virginia Gazette published by Joseph Royle was too close to the British government. Later, Thomas Jefferson remembered “till the beginning of our revolutionary dispute we had but one press, & that having the whole business of the government & no competitor for public favor, nothing disagreeable to the governor could be got into it.” Governments sometimes used printing contracts to influence publishers’ editorial choices. A dissenting publisher might lose their juicy contracts to print government documents. 2

After her husband William died in 1773, Clementina Rind took over management of their Virginia Gazette. In this notice, she asks for the continued support of her customers and begs them to pay what they owe to her. Virginia Gazette (Rind), Sept. 2, 1773, p. 3. See in context.

The colony’s revolutionaries invited Maryland printer William Rind to come to Williamsburg.3 The revolutionary faction in the House of Burgesses awarded government printing contracts to Rind, which helped support the publication of a new Virginia Gazette—the city’s second. His newspaper directly supported the revolutionary cause. He printed the Gazette until his death in 1773 following a “tedious and painful illness.” 4

His widow Clementina Rind inherited the printing business. Since she had lived alongside and worked within the printing operation, she picked up her new role quickly. For thirteen months between her husband’s death and her own, Clementina Rind served as Virginia’s public printer and publisher of the Virginia Gazette. She did this while also raising five children and deftly navigating her husband’s crushing debts.5 After her death in 1774, her relative John Pinkney published this paper until it ended in 1776.

Learn More

The First Virginia Gazette

The Third Virginia Gazette

The Fourth Virginia Gazette

Virginia Gazettes

Sources

  1. Thomas Jefferson to William W. Hening, July 25, 1809, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-01-02-0305.
  2. Joseph Adelman, Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), 25.
  3. Jefferson to Hening, July 25, 1809;
  4. Williamsburg, Aug. 26, Virginia Gazette (Rind), Aug. 26, 1773, p. 2.
  5. Martha J. King, “Clementina Rind: Widowed Printer of Williamsburg,” in Cynthia A. Kierner and Sandra Gioia Treadway, Virginia Women: Their Lives and Times, vol. 1 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015), 75, 80–81.