What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“Intend to enlarge the paper equal to any in the province the year ensuing.”
The Essex Journal and Merimack Packet: Or The Massachusetts and New-Hampshire General Advertiser completed its first year of publication with its December 21, 1774, edition. For the last time, the masthead stated, “VOL. I.” The compositor updated that to “VOL. II” the following week. Isaiah Thomas and Henry-Walter Tinges launched the newspaper, published in Newburyport, with a free preview issue on December 4, 1773, then commenced weekly publication on December 29. Thomas withdrew from the partnership in August 1774, about the same time that he transferred proprietorship of the Royal American Magazine to Joseph Greenleaf. Ezra Lunt joined Tinges in publishing the Essex Journal without a disruption in distributing the newspaper to subscribers. Despite those disruptions and the “many disadvantages and great expence that unavoidably attend the establishing a Printing Office in a new place,” the Essex Journal made it through its first year and continued into a second.
In a notice in the final issue of Volume I, Lunt and Tinges announced their plans to improve and expand the newspaper. They proclaimed that they “are ambitious to give our customers as much, or more, for their money, as any of our Brother Types” who published the Essex Gazette in Salem, the New-Hampshire Gazette in Portsmouth, or any of the five newspapers printed in Boston at the time. To that end, Lunt and Tinges confided, “we have been at an additional expence, and intend to enlarge the paper equal to any in the province the year ensuing.” Furthermore, they sought to improve the newspaper for subscribers in other ways. In order that “those of our customers who live in the country may be better and more regularly served, we have engaged a person to ride from this town every Wednesday, through Haverhill, Exeter,” and other towns. Lunt and Tinges published the Essex Journal on Wednesdays. As soon as the ink dried, they gave copies to a postrider to deliver to subscribers throughout the countryside, improving on the services provided throughout the previous year.
Printers often noted when their newspapers completed another year of publication, often marking the occasion with calls for subscribers and others to settle overdue accounts. Lunt and Tinges did not make any mention of subscribers who were delinquent in making payment. Instead, they expressed their appreciation and sketched their plans for the next year, hoping to increase support and enthusiasm for the newest newspaper published in Massachusetts.