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I think it was a 18th century British fad that spread to America - for example, look at the date on this London newspaper from 1734:
It didn't make it into legal documents / laws, which still used the more traditional format like: "That from and after the Tenth Day of April, One thousand seven hundred and ten ...". However, the American Revolution effectively froze many British fashions from that point-in-time in place (as another example, see speaking English without the trap/bath split, which was a subsequent trend in the commonwealth).
The fad eventually died out and most of the world went back to the more traditional format, but it persisted in the USA.
Great find.
I checked a few other historic front pages on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_newspapers The Oxford Gazette from 1665 used the same month-day format. The first edition from The Guardian from 1821 also used it. Some British news papers like The Times never stopped using it, while The Guardian is now using day-month. So it was the British after all.