Elsewhere on the Silver City Vault can be found digital images of all 4 pages of no. 96 of the Aberdeen Intelligencer newspaper covering 30th July 1754 to 6th August 1754. This is the only known surviving copy of the newspaper.
The paper, which operated from 3rd October 1752 to 22nd February 1757, was published by Francis Douglas and William Murray.
Although the Library's copy of the Intelligencer shows his name as Duglass, it is more usually spelt as Douglas.
Francis Douglas was born in Logie Coldstone on Deeside in 1719 and was apprenticed as a baker in Aberdeen before moving to London for a period. On his return he opened a bakery in the Netherkirkgate in 1743 and joined St Paul's Episcopal Church. As one of the Jacobite sympathisers in Aberdeen, he suffered when the Duke of Cumberland arrived in Aberdeen.
In 1748, he began to trade as a bookseller in addition to his bakery business which he eventually gave up a few years later. He then set up his printing house in the Broadgate thus breaking the monopoly of printing in the city which was then held by the Chalmers family.
William Murray was a druggist and seems to have been a sleeping partner in the printing enterprise and, when the Intelligencer ceased, it appears that his partnership with Douglas was dissolved.
In addition to his newspaper, Douglas also ventured into printing or reprinting books and pamphlets on a variety of subjects including history, travel, religion, poetry and farming in which he was extremely interested. Examples of some of his printed works, including some authored by Douglas, are held in our Local Collections at Aberdeen City Libraries.
During 1761, Douglas also tried publishing a monthly periodical called The Aberdeen Magazine but only 12 issues were produced.
After this lack of success, Douglas appears to have given up printing and he moved to a farm at Drum. However, he became involved in the celebrated Douglas peerage case whose court proceedings lasted for ten years after the death of the Duke of Douglas in 1761. Francis supported the claims of Archibald Stewart Douglas who finally succeeded.
Douglas later received the life-rent of the farm of Abbot's Inch, Paisley on the Duke's property. Here he wrote A General Description of the East Coast of Scotland from Edinburgh to Cullen, published in Paisley in 1782, of which about half describes his native Aberdeen area. It is still one of the best authorities for its contemporary description of the general conditions of the area in the late eighteenth century.
Douglas died in 1786 and was buried in Paisley Abbey Churchyard. However, according to an article written by G.M. Fraser in 1916, there is no record of Francis Douglas in any existing burial registers or any memorial to mark his grave.
