Neville B. Craig

Neville Burgoyne Craig (29 March 1787 – 3 March 1863) was a journalist, politician, historian and lawyer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He edited the Pittsburgh Gazette newspaper from 1829 to 1841 and served a term in the state legislature. Family and early life Craig was born in 1787 in Pittsburgh's Fort Pitt Blockhouse, where resided his father Isaac Craig and mother Amelia Neville Craig, daughter of General John Neville. He attended the Pittsburgh Academy, now known as the University of Pittsburgh, and then Princeton, from which he was expelled for participating in a student riot. He went on to study law under Judge Alexander Addison and was admitted to the bar in 1810. After marrying Jane Ann Fulton, he took leave of the legal profession, taking charge of a store at New Lisbon, Ohio, where he remained for three or four years. In the 1820s, back in Pittsburgh, he worked in local government as Deputy Attorney General for Allegheny County, Solicitor of the City of Pittsburgh, and the city's Clerk of Select Council. Journalism Taking an interest in political discourse, Craig began to write for the Pittsburgh Gazette. In 1829 he purchased the paper, serving as proprietor until 1840 and editor until 1841. He oversaw a boom in circulation and introduced a daily edition, the city's first. In an era rife with the exchange of verbal abuse between rival newspapermen, Craig's vitriolic pen showed no mercy to his journalistic opponents, which were many, including at one time or another almost every newspaper editor in Pittsburgh. Politically, Craig led the Gazette in support of the Anti-Masonic Party. The prolonged life of that party in Allegheny County may have owed something to his persistent advocacy. Craig sympathized strongly with the antislavery and temperance movements. He set a lasting precedent for the Gazette in refusing to print runaway slave notices. Politics In 1842, the year following his departure from the Gazette, Craig was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on an "Anti-Masonic–Whig" fusion ticket. He served a one-year term in 1843. In an 1843 election for US Representative, the sides of the faltering Anti-Masonic–Whig alliance fielded separate candidates: the Anti-Mason Craig and the Whig Henry Marie Brackenridge. Although Craig outpolled Brackenridge, both lost badly to Democrat William Wilkins.