deterred from continuing your useful Paper by groundless Fear of the detestable Stamp-Act. However, should you at this critical time, shut up the Press, and basely desert us, depend upon it, your House, Person and Effects, will be in imminent Danger: We shall, therefore, expect your paper on Thursday as usual; if not, on Thursday Evening—take care. Signed in the Names and by the Order of a great Number of the Free-born Sons of New York.
"On the Turf, the 2nd of November, 1765."
It is interesting also to read his statement that offense had been given to many of the inhabitants of the city by the advertisement of a play at a time of public distress "when great numbers of poor people can scarce find means to subsist."[2] The play was produced, and the indignation of the public over the fact that people should go to a place of entertainment at a time when others were starving caused a mob to break in and gut the theater—"many lost their hats and other parts of dress."
Although not as virulent nor as able as the Boston Gazette, or the Massachusetts Spy, from this time on Holt gave the patriots a service that was second only to that of the New England papers. In 1774 he dropped the King's arms from the first page, substituting for it Franklin's serpent cut in pieces, with the motto "Unite or Die." When the British took possession of New York he moved to Esopus, now Kingston, and when that village was burned in 1777, he went to Poughkeepsie, and there stayed until the peace of 1783, when he came back to New York and continued his publication, the title of which was the Independent Gazette or the New York Journal Revived.
The heartiest response to the newspaper and patriotic activities of Boston naturally came from the New Eng-
