What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

“*** The Votes and Proceedings of the Grand American Continental CONGRESS.”

Just over a week after William Bradford and Thomas Bradford first advertised their Philadelphia edition of Extracts from the Votes and Proceedings of the American Continental Congress in the Pennsylvania Journal, printers in Boston ran advertisements advising the public that they published and sold their own local editions.  Those notices first appeared in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and the Massachusetts Spy on November 10, 1774.  Readers could choose between two editions published in Boston.

Thomas Fleet and John Fleet, the printers of the Boston Evening-Post, and the Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the printers of the Boston-Gazette, partnered in publishing one of those editions.  Their advertisements in both the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and the Massachusetts Spy followed a familiar format for notices about books, pamphlets, almanacs, and other printed items.  A headline proclaimed, “This Day is Published,” followed by a secondary headline that listed the names of the printers.  The body of the advertisement consisted of the title of the pamphlet and a list of its contents.

Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks, the printers of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, worked with fellow printer John Boyle as well booksellers Edward Cox and Edward Berry to publish and sell another Boston edition of the Extracts of the First Continental Congress.  That meant that the printers of all five newspapers published in Boston in 1774 participated either in publishing or advertising that important political pamphlet that informed the public about the decisions made by the delegates in Philadelphia.

The advertisement for this edition in the Massachusetts Spy followed the same format as the notice about the other edition, though the secondary headline gave only the names of Mills and Hicks and Boyle.  The notice in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, on the other hand, looked more like a news update, especially since it appeared immediately to the left of a report that “Last Evening arrived in Town form the GRAND CONGRESS, the Hon. Thomas Cushing, Esq; John Adams, Esq; Mr. Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine, Esq; … on which Occasion, most of the Bells in Town were rung.”  With three asterisks to draw attention, the notice about the pamphlet started with the title, continued with the contents, and concluded with “sold by Cox and Berry, Mills and Hicks and John Boyle.”

Residents of Boston and nearby towns had ready access to the Extracts as soon as delegates returned from the meeting of the First Continental Congress.  They likely heard about the meetings through conversation and learned about it from reading newspapers, yet they could purchase an overview of the proceedings to examine in as much detail as often as they liked.