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

“The Proceedings of the late Continental CONGRESS.”

It was a brief yet important notice: “A few Copies of the Proceedings of the late Continental CONGRESS May be had at the Printing-Office.”  It was the first advertisement that appeared in the March 18, 1775, edition of the Providence Gazette, immediately following the local news.  During the era of the American Revolution, printers often gave advertisements they considered significant, often advertisements for political pamphlets and other publications, that privileged place.  Such notices marked a transition between news selected by the printer and other content submitted by advertisers.  Printers may have expected that readers were more likely to give their attention to notices that followed (or even appeared to continue) the news than if they had been interspersed among other advertisements.

John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, stocked a variety of political publications at his printing office “at Shakespear’s Head, in Meeting-Street, near the Court-House.”  He previously advertised “EXTRACTS From the VOTES and PROCEEDINGS of the AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.”  Once the First Continental Congress concluded its meetings in Philadelphia at the end of October 1774, printers in many towns, including Carter, published and advertised local editions of the Extracts to supplement coverage provided in their newspapers.  Not nearly as many printers, however, published the “JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONGRESS.”  William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, published a Philadelphia edition.  Hugh Gaine, the printer of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, published another edition.  Printers and booksellers in other cities and towns apparently acquired copies of the Journal from the Bradfords or from Gaine rather than devoting resources to producing local editions.  They believed that a market existed for that publication, even if local customers demanded only “A few Copies” to read along with the Extracts that provided so much information about the work of the First Continental Congress.  As the imperial crisis intensified in the first months of 1775, Carter suspected that readers of the Providence Gazette might desire their own copies of the Journal.