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

“A New Weekly NEWS-PAPER … The WORCESTER GAZETTE; OR, AMERICAN ORACLE of LIBERTY.”

Among the advertisements in the February 23, 1775, edition of the Massachusetts Spy appeared “PROPOSALS For … A New Weekly NEWS-PAPER … To be entitled, The WORCESTER GAZETTE; OR, AMERICAN ORACLE of LIBERTY.”  That newspaper would commence publication in Worcester, about forty miles west of Boston, “as soon as Seven Hundred Subscribers have entered their names.”  It would be the first newspaper published in that town, giving residents greater access to “the most early and authentic Intelligence, and such Political Essays, as are worthy of Public notice, with other matters interesting and entertaining.”

In his History of Printing in America (1810), Isaiah Thomas explained, “In 1774, a number of gentlemen in the county of Worcester, zealously engaged in the cause of the country, were from the then appearance of public affairs, desirous to have a press established in Worcester.”  In other words, supporters of the patriot cause wanted a local newspaper instead of relying on newspapers published in Boston, Salem, Newburyport, Providence, Portsmouth, Norwich, and Hartford.  Although newspapers from each of those towns served readers in larger, overlapping regions, Patriots in Worcester believed that a local newspaper would both serve their community and strengthen their position.  By the time they “applied to a printer in Boston” in December 1774, the “Worcester Revolution” had already closed the courts and removed British authority from that town.  Thomas, that printer in Boston, “engaged to open a printing house, and to publish a newspaper there, in the course of the ensuing spring.”  He initially intended to follow a model like the one for establishing the Essex Journal in partnership with Henry-Walter Tinges in Newburyport.  Tinges, the junior partner, managed the printing office there while Thomas remained in Boston.  As part of his preparations, Thomas published the proposals for the Worcester Gazette as he worked on recruiting “a suitable person to manage the concerns of it.” However, when the Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, Thomas “was obliged to leave Boston, and came himself to Worcester” and became the city’s first printer.[1]

When Thomas disseminated the first issue on May3, he combined the name of the newspaper he published in Boston for several years, the Massachusetts Spy, and the intended name for the new newspaper, calling it the Massachusetts Spy or American Oracle of Liberty.  As outlined in the proposals from February, he published the newspaper “every WEDNESDAY Morning, as early as possible” so it could be “delivered to the Subscribers in Worcester at their houses, and sent by the first opportunity to such as are at a greater distance.”  The annual subscription fee in the colophon matched the proposals, “Six Shillings and Eight Pence per annum, the same as the Boston news-papers.”  The colophon did not list rates for advertising, though the proposals stated that they would be “inserted in a neat and conspicuous [manner], at the same rates as they are in Boston.”  Little did Thomas know when he published the “PROPOSALS [for] The WORCESTER GAZETTE” in February 1775 that he would soon relocate to that town and become one of its most prominent residents, establishing the first printing office and, eventually, founding the American Antiquarian Society in 1812.

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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), 180-181.