The Essex Gazette was a weekly newspaper established in 1768 by Samuel Hall in Salem, Massachusetts, as the city's first newspaper and the first published in Massachusetts outside Boston, the colony's capital. it was the third newspaper to appear in Massachusetts. From its start, the newspaper was a strong proponent of American independence. The Gazette was relocated to Cambridge in 1775 following the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In early 1776, after the British army was driven from Boston, Hall moved the Gazette to the city, changing its name to The New England Chronicle.

Samuel Hall (1740-1807), was an Early American publisher and printer, newspaper editor, and an ardent colonial American patriot from Bedford, Massachusetts who was active in this capacity before and during the American Revolution, often printing newspapers and pamphlets in support of American independence. Hall was the founder of The Essex Gazette, the first newspaper published in Salem, Massachusetts in 1768. He often employed his newspaper as a voice supporting colonial grievances over taxation and other actions by the British Parliament that were considered oppressive, and ultimately in support of American independence.