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

“THE first Number of the PENNSYLVANIA EVENING POST is now laid before the respectable Public.”

On January 24, 1775, Benjamin Towne launched a new newspaper, the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  The printer distinguished this publication with a publication schedule that differed from all other newspapers in Philadelphia and throughout the colonies, distributing three issues a week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evenings rather than a single weekly issue.  In an address to “the respectable Public” that opened the inaugural edition, Towne asserted that this publication schedule “will … give particular Satisfaction to all Persons anxious for early Intelligence at this important Crisis.”  To that end, he explained that he timed his issues according to the arrival of the “Eastern Post” that carried newspapers and letters from New York and New England.

The first issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post did not feature any advertisements, unlike other newspapers founded in the early 1770s, yet Towne sought to attract advertisers to defray the expenses of printing the newspaper.  Although he could not yet promote widespread circulation to entice advertisers, he did note that because “no Paper is published between Wednesday and Saturday, that on Thursday will be very convenient for Advertisements, which shall be punctually and conspicuously inserted.”  Readers in Philadelphia were accustomed to new editions of the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal on Mondays and Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet on Wednesdays.  Towne anticipated publication of the Pennsylvania Ledger on Saturdays, realizing that James Humphreys, Jr., would soon print yet another newspaper in Philadelphia.  Humphreys distributed the first issue on January 28.  Still, Towne attempted to seize an advantage, advising advertisers that they could disseminate notices in the Pennsylvania Evening Post during a portion of the week without other publications in Philadelphia.

Towne charged the “usual Rates” for advertisements, though “All Advertisements of useful and ingenious Inventions in Manufactures and Agriculture shall be inserted gratis.”  Savvy readers knew that meant that Towne did his part to support the eighth article of the Continental Association.  It called on all colonizers, “in our several Stations, [to] encourage Frugality, Economy, and Industry; and promote Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country.”  In his “Station” as a printer, Towne could play an important role in delivering information about the “Manufactures of this Country” to the public, provided that advertisers supported his newspaper by supplying him with that information.

Not long after Towne published the first issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, he distributed a broadside that declared, “The first ATTEMPT in AMERICA.  On TUESDAY, the 24th of JANUARY, 1775, was published … An UNINFLUENCED and IMPARTIAL NEWSPAPER, ENTITLED THE Pennsylvania Evening Post, Which will be regularly PUBLISHED every TUESDAY, THURSDAY, and SATURDAY EVENINGS.”  The printer certainly sought to capitalize on the frequency of publication in promoting his newspaper.  Yet he was not entirely correct that his tri-weekly was the “first ATTEMPT” by an American printer.  The American Antiquarian Society’s copy of this broadside, previously bound in a volume with issues of the newspaper from 1775, includes a manuscript notation by Isaiah Thomas: “This is a mistake: a small newspaper, The Spy, was published 3 times weekly, in Boston in 1770.”  Towne may have been unaware that the Massachusetts Spy had been published three times a week in August, September, and October 1770 adjusting its schedule to twice a week in November 1770 and once a week in March 1771.  The Massachusetts Spy had been a tri-weekly just briefly, but Thomas remembered because he and Zechariah Fowle had been partners in the endeavor.  Although Towne was mistaken about the Pennsylvania Evening Post being the “first ATTEMPT” at a tri-weekly, he offered access to the news on a schedule not previously available to subscribers in Philadelphia.