[3] The Mercury was published regularly up to the time the British Army occupied Newport in December 1776, when the press and types were buried.

The Courant has long identified itself as the longest "continuously published" newspaper in the United States and most scholarly articles attribute it as such.

In 1727, Franklin and his wife, Anne (1696–1763), joined his brother John (1690–1756), already established as a soap maker, in Newport, Rhode Island.

[2] George Parker Winship wrote of the transition; "there is nothing in the appearance of the books which bear her name to show that her husband was seriously missed in the conduct of the establishment.

[4] In 1768, Hall sold the printing press to Solomon Southwick, who ran the newspaper in Newport until the British occupied Aquidneck Island in 1776.

According to publisher Isaiah Thomas, "Southwick continued the Mercury on the respectable ground on which it was placed by Hall; and, during the contest for the independence of our country, he conducted it with firmness and patriotic zeal.

[4] By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Colony of Rhode Island, and the city of Newport within it, had secured their role as the predominant carrier of enslaved Africans to the shores of what would become the United States.

Now, we can now use them as a vital resource to learn more about the enslaved population of Newport, Rhode Island, and New England at large, information that other historical records often leave out.

Very specifically, these ads reveal the persistence of Black people to resist their captivity in the North, and their drive to change their situations for something better for themselves.

Historian Stephanie Camp cites “family responsibilities” as a reason why enslaved women were often hesitant to flee plantations in the South.

[13] However, a 1792 runaway ad in the Mercury described “a Negro Woman, named Kate Grealy … aged about 22 years” who had fled with her “young Child 3 Weeks old,” revealing how these responsibilities could also lead to flight, rather than prevent it.

[15][16] It continued as a subscription weekly published by the Newport Daily News until March 2005, when it was relaunched as a free alternative newsweekly under the editorship of Janine Weisman.