What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“Many other articles, which will be sold low for cash, or a short credit.”
Levi Hollingsworth’s advertisement for a variety of goods available “at his Store, on Stamper’s wharf,” in Philadelphia in the July 27, 1774, edition of the Pennsylvania Journal appeared immediately below a masthead that featured a new image. Previously, the device had four components. In the center, a newspaper bearing the title “JOURNAL” sat on a pedestal above a cartouche that showed a ship at sea, those items testifying to information that the newspaper disseminated and the commerce that it facilitated. An indigenous American on the left and an angel representing Fame on the right flanked the newspaper and ship. The new device depicted a divided snake, each segment assigned to a colony, with the motto, “UNITE OR DIE.”
In recent weeks, at least two other American newspapers incorporated similar images into their mastheads. The New-York Journal, printed by John Holt, had done so on June 23. The images were so similar that William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, likely copied directly from Holt’s newspaper after they received it via exchange networks that linked printers throughout the colonies. On July 7, Isaiah Thomas adopted an even more elaborate image in the masthead of the Massachusetts Spy, one that showed a divided snake with a pointed tongue and a pointed tail facing off against a dragon that represented Great Britain. Its admonition demanded that readers “JOIN OR DIE.” Once the Bradfords updated their masthead, a newspaper published in three of the four largest American port cities circulated the divided snake political cartoon to subscribers and other readers every week. The Pennsylvania Journalcontinued doing so for fifteen months, returning to its previous device at the end of October 1775. By that time, the Revolutionary War had started.
In his History of Printing in America (1810), Isaiah Thomas stated that the Pennsylvania Journal “was devoted to the cause of the country.”[1] Each time that Hollingsworth or other advertisers placed notices in that newspaper they aided in underwriting a partisan press that advocated for the rights of colonizers as British subjects and, eventually, independence from Great Britain. Each time a reader perused those advertisements, they likely saw the political cartoon in the masthead, forced to engage with its message even if they did not read the news and editorials closely.
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[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 437.