It is well known that during the American Revolution the French Navy printed a journal titled the Gazette Françoise. This was the first entirely foreign-language publication in Newport. What is less well known is that documents in other languages were printed in Newport prior to the Gazette Françoise. This broadside, recently re-discovered in the Newport Historical society’s collection, is one of the best examples of the earliest bilingual press in Newport and another remarkable document of the American Revolution.
During the Occupation of Newport by the British army between 1776 and 1779, Germans from Hessen-Kassel and Anspach-Bayreuth, known popularly as “Hessians,” made up more than half of the occupying army. The proportion of Germans in the occupying force must have encouraged the British to print documents, as well as important ads and announcements in the loyalist Newport Gazette, in German for the benefit of the more than 3,000 German-speaking soldiers. This broadside, establishing free access to the market by residents of Aquidneck and Conanicut Islands, was printed in two halves, in English and German. Most bilingual documents in Newport appeared this way, with English above and German below.
Newport did not have a large German population prior to the war and it is clear that the British printed German text using the same Latin letters used to print English. In Pennsylvania, which had an active German press, some printers used the traditional German Fraktur script. In Newport, the printers lacked the type to print an umlaut ( ¨ ) or an esset ( ß ), making the German somewhat crude, but undoubtedly legible.