JOHN FENNO

Background

John Fenno was born in Boston, probably the son of Ephraim Fenno, leather-dresser and alehouse keeper, and Mary Chapman.

Education

His first employment, as an usher in Samuel Holbrook’s Writing School, indicates that he had received some education.

Career

The orderly books which Fenno kept while secretary to General Artemas Ward, covering the period from April 20 to September 16, I751 are examples of his excellent penmanship and evidence of his war service.

Trying his hand at trade, he imported largely and unwisely at the close of the Revolution, eventually compounded with his creditors, and went to New York to retrieve his fortunes in “a printing way” in 1789. He had “in some sort been an adjutantgeneral to [Benjamin] Russell” of the Massachusetts Centinel {Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 5 ser. , Ill, 1877, p. 123), where his literary achievements were so “very handsome” that his plan for a newspaper “for the purpose of disseminating favorable sentiments of the federal Constitution and the Administration” was not ignored by the Federalists (King, post, I, 357)- Fenno’s Gazette of the United States was established in New York, April 11, 1789, but was published in Philadelphia beginning April 14, 1790.

It was the editor’s ardent hope that his little three-column folio, printed on a sheet seventeen by twenty-one inches, would become the dignified journal of a dignified court; but Jefferson and his colleagues, discovering Fenno’s attempt “to make way for a king, lords, and Commons” (Ford, post, V, 361), matched press with press, and between the Aurora of Benjamin F. Bache and the National Gazette of Philip Freneau Hamilton’s protege was forced into undignified controversies. In the one personal encounter between the editors, Bachc’s use of his cane proved decisive. Yet the tone of the Gazette of the United States was somewhat above the average of its contemporaries, and the Federalists were well served through its columns. The circulation never exceeded 1, 400, a quarter of which was gratis. The Gazette had the aid of prominent Federalists.

Alexander Hamilton was especially active, contributing articles under various pseudonyms and rescuing the editor from bankruptcy in 1793 by raising $2, 000 to dispose of pressing creditors (King, post, I, 501). Fenno died in Philadelphia during the yellow- fever epidemic of 1798 “with all his blooming virtues'thick upon him” (Russell’s Gazette, Boston, Sept. 24, 1798). His son, John Ward Fenno, carried on the paper until 1800, when he sold it.

Achievements

• His Gazette of the United States played a major role in shaping the beginnings of party politics in the United States in the 1790s.

Connections

He was married to Mary Curtiss on May 8, 1777.

Father:

Ephraim Fenno

Mother:

Mary Chapman

Wife:

Mary Curtiss