Owner 1803 - 1811

My Great Great Great Grandfather, John Thompson, was the reason for my starting my One Name Study and reference to a Northumberland and Durham Family History Society article which I wrote in 1995 gives some insight into my reasons why.

Family myth had it that he was John Thompson, Newcastle printer.

On his return from Barbados in 1802 at the age of 20 (I had a suspicion that he was born in the West Indies, the son of a small landowner there who also owned slaves, but this has not been borne out by enquiries to the Barbados Museum who have been very helpful), John Thompson, the printer, married Jane Dickenson, the daughter of a stationer in Hexham, about 20 miles to the west of Newcastle upon Tyne.

The next year he bought the Newcastle Advertiser with a partner, Charles Hutchinson, from the widow of Matthew Brown. Hutchinson died a year later and Thompson carried on the business until he sold it for 900 guineas in 1811, to Edward Humble. The Advertiser offices were in the Flesh Market opposite St Nicholas's church. This market has been replaced by the Cloth Market.

There is a mystery here, however, because I have found John Thompson, definitely my great great great grandfather, Low Row roper, marrying at Monkwearmouth in 1807 one Elizabeth Reed who was definitely my great great great grandmother. I believe that at the time that John Thompson the printer sold the Advertiser, he could have reverted to ropemaking in Monkwearmouth but I now believe that they were quite different people, discrediting the family myth which may have existed for a century.

To solve the mystery, I obtained copies of the two marriage records which in my opinion show the signatures of the two John Thompsons not to be identical.

Adam

Engraving of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from John Thompson's Bible printed in 1806

And now back to the Newcastle Advertiser.

The Advertiser was a weekly paper, published on Saturdays, carrying national and international news that had arrived during the week from London, local news, births, deaths and marriages, and other local information. It was priced at 6d [sixpence], 21/2p in modern currency.

As well as the publication of the Newcastle Advertiser, in common with his predecessors at the newspaper, John Thompson undertook more general printing and published also an Ostervald Edition of the Bible. To supplement his trade, again in common with his predecessors, he sold medicines which arrived from London, presumably on the same coach as the London newspapers which he copied.

I have extracted from the Newcastle Advertiser one or two anecdotes which John Thompson printed, often within the Births, Deaths and Marriages section, or under the local news section. Some are moral, some are downright amusing!