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

“A remarkable fine breeding MARE to be SOLD.”

It was not exactly front-page news, at least not as twenty-first-century readers think about how newspapers are organized.  The first item in the first column on the first page of the March 28, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post was an advertisement for a “remarkable fine breeding MARE to be SOLD.”  Immediately below, Benjamin Towne, the printer inserted an excerpt about the “right and capacity of the people to judge of government” from “CATO’s LETTERS, No. 38.”  It continued onto the second page, followed by news from Annapolis, Boston, Newport, and New York.  Local news from Philadelphia ran on the third and fourth pages, with advertisements completing the issue.

Once again, eighteenth-century methods of organizing the news differed from what modern readers have come to expect from newspapers.  The news with the dateline “PHILADELPHIA, March 28” included “the copy of a letter which was wrote by a Lady of New-York, to Capt. S—s, and Capt. McD—” and an “Extract of a letter from London, to a gentleman in Virginia, dated Dec. 24, 1774.”  Only a few very brief items relayed news from the vicinity, including a report on the “appointment [of] officers of militia for the county of Newcastle” and the date for the “MAYOR’s COURT.”

Eighteenth-century readers devised their own strategies for perusing newspapers published during the era of the American Revolution.  They did not depend on editors intentionally placing the most important news first, nor did they rely on headlines to summarize the content of letters and articles.  Instead, they had to give greater attention to that “letter which was wrote by a lady of New-York” and that “Extract of a letter … to a gentleman in Virginia” to determine what they contained and if they were interested in examining them more closely.  In contrast, the advertisement for the “breeding MARE” did feature a headline.  Advertisements were far more likely to have some sort of headline than any other items in early American newspapers.  The differences between those newspapers and today’s newspapers can be disorienting at first, yet they testify to an evolution in how publishers have disseminated the news and how readers engage with it.