Knoxville Gazette

The first newspaper in Tennessee was the Knoxville Gazette, printed initially at Rogersville, Hawkins County, on November 5, 1791. Its editor, printer, and publisher was George Roulstone (1767-1804), who stayed in Rogersville for eleven months before moving the newspaper permanently to Knoxville in the fall of 1792. Roulstone, a native of Boston and former North Carolina newspaper man, was Knoxville’s first postmaster, one of the new city’s first commissioners, the first public printer in Tennessee, and clerk to the Senate of the initial Tennessee General Assembly. This political patronage came courtesy of Territorial Governor William Blount, who had encouraged the paper from its beginning in order to have a way of distributing news about the territory. After Roulstone’s death in 1804, control of the paper passed to his wife, Elizabeth Gilliam Roulstone, who continued publishing the newspaper for several years. The Knoxville Gazette ceased publication in 1818.