Primary sourceNewspaper article1748–1749

The Independent Advertiser

Samuel Adams · 1748–1749

A Boston newspaper co-founded by a 26-year-old Samuel Adams in 1748, showing his early political thinking decades before the Revolution.

Adams co-founded this newspaper at age 26, revealing his political thought well before the Revolution.

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Scanned front page of The Independent Advertiser, Boston, May 22, 1749, Numb. 73. Masthead has a woodcut of a seated figure. Two dense columns of small print recap European affairs in 1748. — The Independent Advertiser, Boston, May 22, 1749.

About this source

What it is

The Independent Advertiser was a weekly newspaper founded in January 1748 in Boston by Samuel Adams, then 26 years old, and published by Gamaliel Rogers and Daniel Fowle. It mainly contained essays by a group of local writers on New England politics, and it stopped publishing in December 1749.

Why it matters

The paper shows Adams putting his political and religious ideas about republicanism, liberty, and independence into print long before the Revolution began. It also shows the fragile finances behind early colonial journalism: the paper folded partly because of family debts after Adams's father died and a land bank scheme failed.

Look closer

What does starting a newspaper at age 26 suggest about Adams's early ambitions?
Why might money troubles, not just lack of readers, end a newspaper?
What topics in the paper might hint at ideas Adams would use again decades later?

This newspaper article is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Samuel Adams on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.