[1][2] Benjamin Day founded the first penny newspaper in the United States, The New York Sun, in 1833.

However, the exact origins of the publication are a bit more complex, as Rufus Wilmot Griswold and Park Benjamin, Sr., who started the Evening Tattler in 1839, started publishing Brother Jonathan in folio format[5] in July 1839, and it appears that Day and Wilson soon took over those publications.

In May 1843, Ann S. Stephens and her husband purchased the paper and invited critic and activist John Neal to become chief editor.

[11] The History of Woman Suffrage remembered that "Mr. Neal's lecture, published in The Brother Jonathan, was extensively copied, and ... had a wide, silent influence, preparing the way for action.

[13] Day kept the annual subscription price at $1 throughout the publication's existence, but stopped publishing in 1862 as paper prices rose, returning subscription fees with a note that he "would not publish a paper that could not be circulated for $1 a year.