Prospectus for the Hobb's Hole Advertiser.

• imprint_number: 1787.016
• title: Proposals for printing by subscription, a weekly newspaper, intituled the Virginia Gazette, and Hobb's Hole Advertiser; provided sufficient Encouragement will be given the subscriber. … Subscriptions for this paper are received ... by the subscriber in the city of Richmond.
• sequence_number: 16
• year: 1787
• place_issued: Richmond
• issuing_press: Henry Willcocks
• author: Willcocks, Henry.
• notes: Imprint is signed: "Henry Willcocks. January 1, 1787." Hobb's Hole was the colloquial name for the Rappahannock River port of Tappahannock; this prospectus did not draw the needed subscriptions to initiate publication of this paper, apparently the result of competition from a concurrent effort to start the long-lived Virginia Herald in nearby Fredericksburg.
  This broadside issued in Richmond, where the Pennsylvania-born Willcocks was an itinerant journeyman working in one of the three press offices there serving that winter's session of Assembly. Willcocks did start publishing a similarly-named weekly in July 1787 – The Virginia Gazette, and Winchester Advertiser – after a stint working for publisher Matthias Bartgis in Frederick, Maryland, that spring; that similarity has prompted some authorities to conflate the two newspapers, despite the distance between the towns, and so erroneously report that this title was issued in Winchester in advance of the founding of that second venture.
  
  
• Related Bios:
  • Henry Willcocks

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.