Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1833. State's 'other daily' meets its demise

Did the Cornell-Avery case spell doom for The Daily Advertiser, the paper that beat The Journal by a day in becoming Providence's first daily?

Its publisher said so. But he may have been lying.

In the Jan. 14, 1833 issue, Daniel Mowry III announced that Feb. 1 would be the last issue of the daily paper.

"I have hinted that a Methodist clergyman is suspected of having committed an atrocious murder in Tiverton, in this State, and have displeased that church," Mowry wrote. "These papers I intend shall give the whole history of that most foul transaction, without fear or favor, and the subscription list then, in my opinion, will be of no value."

In his farewell column of Feb. 1, Mowry reaffirmed the reason for discontinuing publication and took some parting shots at the Methodist Church and their "camp meetings," the type of religious retreat at which Sarah Cornell said Ephraim Avery had forced himself on her and gotten her pregnant.

"I advise all mothers, to keep their daughters from going to 'Camp Meetings,' if they have any dread of their prostitution and murder," Mowry wrote. "It is of no use for me to contend single handed against priestcraft. . . . When a few more murders shall have taken place perhaps they may want the assistance of the press."

But Mowry kept publishing his weekly Microcosm, which continued the battle against Avery and the Methodists.

Mowry said in his Jan. 14 column in the Daily Advertiser that he was closing shop with no debts and "some money in my pocket," so economics may not have been the reason behind his decision.

Could it have been the Masons?

The fraternal organization was the subject of bitter controversy throughout the United States in the 1830s, and Mowry was decidedly anti-Masonic. He noted in a second column in the final issue that the Masons and their political allies had lined up against him. But he did not blame them for his demise; he even took delight at having published his daily long enough to see what he thought was the beginning of their downfall.

Or could Daniel Mowry have simply tired of producing a daily paper and preferred returning to the simpler life of a farmer?

In any event, less than four years after it began, the Daily Advertiser ceased publication after the issue of Feb. 1, 1833.