Shepard Kollock

1750-1839

I was a soldier who started an influential newspaper supporting the Patriot cause.

I was born in Lewiston, Delaware in September 1750. When the Revolution broke out, I joined the Continental Army in the summer of 1776, as a lieutenant in Colonel Richard Humpton’s Pennsylvania regiment, and served until after the Battle of Trenton. On January 1, 1777, I switched to Captain Clark’s company of Colonel John Lamb’s artillery regiment. Later, while serving in Captain Bliss’ company under General Gates, I was almost in an action that would have put me in deadly conflict with my brother, Captain Simon Kollock, who was a Loyalist.

In May 1778, I asked to resign, and General Knox encouraged me to return to my profession of printing and publish a newspaper that George Washington wanted. I developed it, with the title New Jersey Journal, and started publishing it in February 1779. It was filled with articles to stir up Patriot readers, and it angered the British who called me “the rebel printer” and tried to keep me from publishing it.

But I kept it up. I published the newspaper throughout the war, and up until 1818, first in New York and then later in Elizabethtown. I died in 1839, but the New Jersey Journal outlived me by another 153 years, ending its run in 1992.

Learn More
Image Shepard Kollock