The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Dennie, Joseph
1768–1812, American Federalist journalist, b. Boston. As editor, he made the Farmer’s Weekly Museum at Walpole, N.H., an influential paper, particularly because of the “Lay Preacher” essays he wrote and printed in it. In Philadelphia he founded the Port Folio, which became a leading literary weekly, and edited it under the pseudonym Oliver Oldschool, Esq., from 1801 to 1812. In the Port Folio Dennie attacked Jefferson so violently that he was tried for seditious libel in 1805 but was acquitted. Dennie’s “Lay Preacher” essays were published in two collections (1796–1817); both editions were published in one volume by H. M. Ellis in 1943.
