The front page of the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser on Wednesday, January 7, 1852, tells a story about what Maitland had become by that time.
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It was still to all intents and purposes the only town of any note north of Sydney, and the Mercury was the only newspaper operating in the huge territory of northern New South Wales.
Through the Mercury, Maitland served this massive area from which the paper derived news and advertisements.
The evidence of this orientation towards the far-flung regions of NSW is clear from the Mercury edition of that January 7. It carried a list of the paper's "agents", whose locations provide an indicator of the "trade area" or "hinterland" of Maitland in 1852.
The agents would have been business connections and correspondents contributing stories to the Mercury. Many on the list were operating from Hunter Valley locations including Cassilis, Murrurundi, Merriwa, Muswellbrook, Scone, Wollombi, Singleton and Jerrys Plains.
Some were closer to Maitland, including Hinton, Raymond Terrace, Paterson, Clarence Town, Stroud and Newcastle, the last of which in the early 1850s had barely a quarter of the population of West Maitland, East Maitland and Morpeth combined.
Taken together, the Maitlands and Morpeth were the "hub of the Hunter" and the centre of the region's economy.
Then there were agents from across the Great Dividing Range. These were listed in Tamworth, Armidale, Coolah, Coonabarabran, Carroll, Mudgee, Tenterfield and Tabulam and on the inland rivers the Barwon and the Namoi, the Gwydir (the Moree area) and the Macintyre (which would soon become part of the border with Queensland).
Closer to the coast there were agents on the Manning (Taree), the Macleay (Kempsey), the Hastings (Port Macquarie) and the Clarence (Grafton).
There were also agents well into what in 1859 became the separate colony of Queensland on the Darling Downs (the Toowoomba area), in Ipswich, in Warwick and as far north as Gayndah, more than 300 kilometres north of Brisbane.
There were also agents well into what in 1859 became the separate colony of Queensland on the Darling Downs (the Toowoomba area), in Ipswich, in Warwick and as far north as Gayndah, more than 300 kilometres north of Brisbane.
News items came several of these places and their vicinities.
On the front page of January 7 alone there were items emanating from Dungowan (near Tamworth) and near Glen Innes: they were about horses which had been stolen or had strayed.
Their owners wanted them back, and advertising in the Mercury was a means of achieving that aim.
Nearer Maitland, there were advertisements from Tocal and West Maitland for horses, cows and bullocks.
The advertisements for retail items in that first edition also showed how strongly Maitland was tied to Sydney.
Sydney firms advertised a range of wares from cordials and liqueurs to summer hats and black and linseed oils.
But the longest list of items was from RM Robey, of George St, Sydney: it took up more than a fifth of the front page and amounted to the full repertoire of a department store of the time.
Included were dozens of items of ironmongery, earthenware and glass along with drugs, chemicals, tools, wine and sherry.
All these things could be shipped from Sydney to Morpeth, after which they wound up in the shops of West Maitland. Many items would then be transported by cart to the far-flung corners of Maitland's enormous hinterland.
Chas Keys is a member of the Maitland and District Historical Society.
