The Gazette was founded in 1727 and published through 1734 by William Parks. The Gazette's second publisher was Jonas Green, a former protege of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. The Gazette's early masthead read as follows:

"Annapolis, printed by Jonas Green at his printing office on Charles Street, where all persons may be supplied with this Gazette at 12 shillings 6 pence a year and advertisements of moderate length are inserted for 5 shillings the first week and 1 shilling each time thereafter, and long ones in proportion."

as the Maryland Gazette, is one of the oldest newspapers in America.

When Green died in 1767, his jobs as editor and publisher were taken over by his wife, Ann Catherine Hoof Green, making her one of the first women to hold either of the top jobs at an American newspaper.

A strong supporter of Colonial rights, she continued her husband's policy of operating an independent newspaper under the nose of the royal governor in Annapolis. Ultimately, she published the newspaper for 8 years while raising 14 children.

The newspaper remained in the Green family for 94 years. Jonas Green, a born troublemaker, hated the Stamp Act, which among other things, directly taxed his newspaper. Refusing to pay, he published the Gazette with what was then a blaring headline, "The Maryland Gazette Expiring - In Uncertain Hopes of a Resurrection to Life Again"

Green wrote that because of the Stamp Act, "the newspaper will not any longer be published". In the bottom right hand corner of the page, where the tax stamp should have been placed, there appeared instead a skull and crossbones. Calmer heads persuaded Green to return to publishing as part of the struggle against tyranny, and he later resumed publication under this banner headline: "An Apparition of the Late Maryland Gazette, Which Is Not Dead, But Only Sleepeth"