General Lafayette, then on a visit to the United States, heard his story, and not only procured influence for him, but advanced $400 to Carey, who immediately started the Pennsylvania Herald, the first number of which publication appeared January 25, 1785.
The young printer, publisher, and editor attracted immediate attention and patronage by giving the best reports of the Assembly yet published. The Herald was in fact the first newspaper in America which gave full and accurate reports of legislative proceedings.
Matthew Carey was most aggressive with his pen, and burning with hate to England, he at once became one of the most notable of the foreign-born editors in America.
But the spirited temper of the enterprising young Irishman aroused collisions, one of which with Colonel Oswald, had serious result. Eleazer Oswald had been a colonel in the Continental army during the war, in which he appears to have served with credit; he was a kinsman of Elizabeth Holt, wife of John Holt, and aided her in conducting the Journal after the death of her husband, in 1785 and 1786. They sold the Journal in 1787 to Thomas Greenleaf.
Oswald had an “unpleasantness” with Francis Child, of the New York Advertiser, and then succeeded in getting himself into a political dispute with Matthew Carey.
This latter quarrel terminated in a duel, in which Carey was shot above the knee, a wound that confined him to the house for nearly sixteen months.
During the interval, Carey seems to have been able to continue his editorial labors, and, in 1786, with several partners, he started the Columbian Magazine, but withdrew from this enterprise the following December, and founded the American Museum, a monthly eclectic magazine, which he edited with marked ability for six years.
After abandoning the Museum Carey entered into business as a bookseller and publisher, and among other works issued a quarto edition of the Bible, called the standing edition—as it was kept in type.
He took an active part in charitable enterprises, and every fortnight dispensed food and other necessaries of life to hundreds of poor widows. He was particularly active in works of benevolence during the prevalence of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793, and wrote and published a history of that epidemic.
In 1793 Carey founded the Hibernian Society and undertook with Hugh Gaine a system of annual book fairs, resembling the present trade sales.