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

“Names of those Gentlemen who are now indebted to the Library Company should be inserted … in the Providence Gazette.”

The Providence Library Company, a private subscription library, conducted some of its business in the public prints in the eighteenth century.  Early in the fall of 1774, Theodore Foster, the librarian, ran an advertisement in the Providence Gazette, requesting that “All Persons … who have any Books belonging to the Library … return the same immediately” so they could be “examined and numbered.”  In addition to conducting an inventory of the collection, the librarian was “ready to settle with the delinquent Proprietors” who had not paid their subscriptions.

At the end of November, Foster published a new advertisement in the wake of a vote at a recent “Meeting of the Proprietors.”  They had decided that “the Names of those Gentlemen who are now indebted to the Library Company should we inserted three Weeks successively in the Providence Gazette, with the Sums respectively due from each.”  That list consisted of more than two dozen subscribers, most of them with debts going back more than a decade.  The proprietors in good standing determined that the grace period had extended long enough.  Accordingly, the advertisement also informed the delinquent subscribers that if they did not make payment before December 3 then “their Rights should be sold by the Treasurer” at a public auction on December 10.  They took that action “agreeable to the printed and established Rules of the Library.”  The advertisement first ran on November 19 and again on November 26.  It made its final appearance on December 3, the deadline for settling accounts.  Perhaps Foster offered a little more leeway, provided subscribers paid before the auction on December 10, but the advertisement made clear that overdue subscriptions would be addressed, one way or another, “By Order of the Proprietors.”  Their next meeting was scheduled for the day of the auction, an opportunity to assess the outcome of their efforts to get everything in good order.

As was often the case, advertisements like this one relayed local news to the readers of the Providence Gazette.  John Carter, the printer, selected which news and editorials to publish elsewhere in the newspaper, yet purchasing advertising space gave individuals and organizations opportunities to become editors who decided on some of the information presented to the public.