Virginia Gazette stock certificate 1935 (Williamsburg VA) 

Colonial VA history! Nice standard eagle vignette with harbor town in the background. Issued and cancelled with stub attached. Vertical folds from mailing. Dated 1935. Measures approximately 11 x 8 inches, without stub. Signed by JA Osborne as president and Martha Osborne as secretary. Issued to Marguerite Osborne.

The Virginia Gazette is the local newspaper of Williamsburg, Virginia. Established in 1930, it is named for the historical Virginia Gazette published between 1736 and 1780.

There were three papers published in Williamsburg under the name The Virginia Gazette between 1736 and 1780. The original Virginia Gazette, the first newspaper ever published in Virginia, was established by William Parks, who printed the first edition on August 6, 1736. Its motto was "Containing the freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick."

Parks built a paper mill in Williamsburg; he purchased the raw material to create newsprint from Benjamin Franklin. The paper was published, successively, by William Parks (1736–1750), William Hunter (1751–1761), Joseph Royle (1761–1765), Alexander Purdie and John Dixon (1766-1775), Dixon and Hunter (1775-1778), and Dixon and Thomas Nicolson (1779–1780). The last issue was published on April 8, 1780, after which point the paper relocated to Richmond, Virginia's new capital.

In 1766 William Rind founded a competing newspaper also called The Virginia Gazette. Its last issue was printed on February 3, 1776. On February 3, 1775, Alexander Purdie, previously a publisher of the original Gazette, started a third paper of the same name. It was published by Purdie until his death in 1779; it was then published by John Clarkson and Augustine Davis until December 9, 1780,

In 1893 W. C. Johnston brought the name Virginia Gazette back to Williamsburg in newspaper form. As editor of the Virginia Gazette, Johnston campaigned to attract industry to the region.Robert P. Scott became owner and publisher of the Gazette in 1917, with Johnston still serving as editor.

By 1922, the paper ceased publication. Another Virginia Gazette appeared in 1925, associated with the William Parks School of Journalism at the College of William and Mary, but it lasted only through 1927. In 1930, W. A. R. Goodwin, pastor of the local Bruton Parish Church and a co-founder of Colonial Williamsburg, made a push for a paper to return to Williamsburg under the banner of The Virginia Gazette. In 1961 the Osborne family sold the paper to John O. W. Gravely III. The Gravely family sold the paper in 1986 to the Chesapeake Publishing Corp.. Later in 2001 Chesapeake sold the paper to the Daily Press, a Tribune Co. daily in Newport News, Virginia.

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