Rural Magazine or, Vermont Repository ( Rutland: January 1795 - December 1796)

This collection was, the title page avowed, “devoted to Literary, Moral, Historical, and Political Improvement,” and editor Samuel Williams set out in particular to address the interests of the citizens of Vermont by “collecting and preserving such papers and proceedings” and such original “historical and political documents, literary, civil or ecclesiastical” as would “exhibit to the public a general account and view of the state and progress of society, in this part of the Federal Union (Preface to Number One, Volume One). The analysis of the magazine by Pitcher shows that Williams seems to have set out to model his magazine after Mathew Carey’s American Museum (Philadelphia 1787-92), especially in its divisions into several departments and interest in history and politics, and he used it as a source when he needed to fill his own columns. Williams gave substantial attention to American subjects, important archival materials of Vermont in particular, and, as befitted a “Rural Magazine,” he paid due regard to agricultural, medical, botanical and zoological matters (and subjects touching material culture in other areas).