THE CHRISTIAN VISITANT, "By A Layman", Albany, New York, Feb. 10, 1816  Very little can be found about this title as it is not in either Brigham's 'History & Bibliography of American Newspapers', nor Mott's 'A History of American Magazines'. The American Antiquarian database seems to indicated it lasted for just one year from 1815 - 1816. It was published by Solomon Southwick.
This is the first of title we have ever offered, having come from our private collection. It is volume 1, number 37. Eight pages, 10 by 13 inches, never bound nor trimmed with very wide margins and it folds out to one large sheet. Very nice condition.

Background: This exceptionally rare single issue of The Christian Visitant (Vol. 1, No. 37, February 10, 1816) represents a fleeting but significant chapter in early American religious journalism, evading major bibliographies like Brigham’s and Mott’s because it straddled the line between a weekly moral tract and a formal periodical during its definitive one-year run from June 1815 to June 1816. Published under the pseudonym "By A Layman" (officially cataloged as Sabin 88640), the 8-page miscellany was written by Solomon Southwick (1773–1839)—a formerly powerful, hyper-partisan State Printer and editor of the Albany Register who established the publication as a direct result of a profound personal, financial, and religious crisis. Its historical significance lies in this editorial pivot, capturing a prominent New York political figure discarding partisan warfare to preach non-sectarian piety, temperance, and civic morality to the early Republic. Because the publication folded after just 52 issues and was distributed to a localized, regional subscriber base, surviving copies are extraordinarily scarce; while a handful of institutional archives hold bound full-year volumes, the survival of an ephemeral, unbound weekly issue from a private collection is a remarkable rarity for early 19th-century American print ephemera collectors.