Slavery Advertisements Published May 26, 1775

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 26, 1775).

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Supplement to Story and Humphreys’s Pennsylvania Mercury (May 26, 1775).

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Supplement to Story and Humphreys’s Pennsylvania Mercury (May 26, 1775).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 26, 1775).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 26, 1775).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 26, 1775).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 26, 1775).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 26, 1775).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 26, 1775).

May 25

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

New-England Chronicle (May 25, 1775).

“CONSTITUTIONAL POST … to the CAMPS at ROXBURY and CAMBRIDGE.”

During the siege of Boston that followed the battles at Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775, Nathan Bushnell, Jr., advertised his services as a post rider along a route that connected Boston and New London.  He placed advertisements simultaneously in the New-England Chronicle, published in Cambridge, and the Connecticut Gazette, published in New London.  With militia unites from throughout New England converging on Boston, the demand for his services significantly increased.

Bushnell asserted that he was affiliated with the Constitutional Post, a network operated independently of the British postal system.  William Goddard, formerly the printer of the Maryland Journal and the Pennsylvania Chronicle, founded the Constitutional Post in 1774.  As an alternative to the British postal system, it allowed colonizers to send letters and to disseminate newspapers without interference from British officials.  The first route connected Philadelphia and Baltimore, but the Constitutional Post extended to New England by the time the Revolutionary War began.  Bushnell mentioned several associates, each with established routes between towns in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.

Although Bushnell accepted correspondence of all sorts, he emphasized letters sent to soldiers away from home now that the imperial crisis had taken a new turn.  He rode to “the CAMPS at ROXBURY and CAMBRIDGE, and as often as practicable, to BOSTON.”  On the return trip, he carried “Letters from the Camps.”  In a nota bene, he advised that “when Letters are directed to private Soldiers, the Regiment they belong to may be mentioned” to aid in efficient delivery.

This was such an important service, especially considering the events unfolding in New England, that Bushnell did not expect those who sent letters to fund it by themselves.  Instead, he placed subscription papers “in the Hands of Gentlemen in several Towns … to encourage this expensive Undertaking — and the smallest Favours will be acknowledged.”  The post rider anticipated that subscribers would make pledges to fund the enterprise, recognizing its value and affirming their support of an alternative to the Parliamentary Post.  As the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum notes, the Constitutional Post “proved quite popular as a way of rejecting British rule.”

Slavery Advertisements Published May 25, 1775

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Maryland Gazette (May 25, 1775).

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Maryland Gazette (May 25, 1775).

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Maryland Gazette (May 25, 1775).

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Maryland Gazette (May 25, 1775).

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Maryland Gazette (May 25, 1775).

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New-York Journal (May 25, 1775).

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New-York Journal (May 25, 1775).

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Norwich Packet (May 25, 1775).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (May 25, 1775).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (May 25, 1775).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (May 25, 1775).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (May 25, 1775).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (May 25, 1775).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (May 25, 1775).

May 24

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

Pennsylvania Journal (May 24, 1775).

“I … have inadvertently and imprudently sold India Bohea TEA, to sundry persons and at sundry times.”

Isaac Worrell needed to do some damage control when others discovered that he had been selling tea in violation of the third article of the Continental Association in the spring of 1775.  That nonimportation agreement, devised by the First Continental Congress the previous fall, stated “we will not purchase or use any Tea imported on Account of the East India Company, or any on which a Duty hath been or shall be paid; and, from and after the first Dat of March next, we will not purchase or use any East India Tea whatever.”  Yet Worrell had not abided by those terms.

In an advertisement that first appeared in the May 17, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Journal and ran again the following week, Worrell confessed that he “imprudently sold India Bohea TEA, to sundry persons and at sundry times since the resolves of the Congress have taken place,” though he claimed that he had done so “inadvertently.”  Readers may have been skeptical that a prohibited act that occurred repeatedly happened “inadvertently.”  All the same, Worrell hoped that they would take note of his explanation for the infractions and accept his apology.  He asserted that he had “no other motive or consideration … but my own interest, in getting off my hands about 30 or 40 pounds of said Tea.”  He also contended that he acquired the tea “long before the said resolves took place,” hoping that would make his offense seem less serious.  At least he had not actively ordered or received new shipments.

Worrell assured his community that he had reformed.  “I do now promise to adhere to, and strictly observe and keep inviolate for the future,” he proclaimed, “the said resolves of the Congress relating to Trade and Commerce.”  He hoped that would be sufficient that “my fellow countrymen will accept this my accknowledgment, as a satisfaction for my offence.”  The Continental Association called for breaking off all ties, commercial and social, with those who violated it, yet Worrell hoped that his apology would outweigh his flimsy excuses to restore him to the good graces of the public. That he managed to sell “30 or 40 pounds of said Tea,” however, suggests that many others did not obey the terms of the Continental Association.  Loyalists accused Patriots of cheating, especially when it came to tea.  Worrell’s notice seems to support such allegations.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 24, 1775

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Maryland Journal (May 24, 1775).

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Maryland Journal (May 24, 1775).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (May 24, 1775).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (May 24, 1775).

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Pennsylvania Journal (May 24, 1775).

May 23

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

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (May 23, 1775).

Proper medicines in all stages of the Venereal disease put up with the most faithful attention to the symptoms.”

Patrick Kennedy, a surgeon and apothecary, advertised an “assortment of genuine Patent Medicines” available at his “Drug-Store” in Baltimore in the May 23, 1775, edition of Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette.  He carried many familiar items, including Bateman’s Drops and Stoughton’s Bitters, as well as “a few boxes of Patent dentifrice powder, for cleaning and beautifying the teeth.”  He also “compounded [prescriptions] with care and fidelity.”

Beyond those medicines and services, Kennedy devoted a significant portion of his advertisement to addressing readers who contracted syphilis and other venereal diseases.  “Proper medicines in all stages of the Venereal disease,” the apothecary advised, “put up with the most faithful attention to the symptoms.”  In other words, Kennedy devised prescriptions baes on the specific symptoms that patients reported to him.  When doing so, he observed “the most profound secrecy” to protect the privacy of his clients.  Prospective patients could trust Kennedy’s discretion concerning such delicate matters.  In addition to residents of Baltimore who visited his shop, he offered these services to “Persons afflicted with this disorder in the country.”  He instructed them to send “a line descriptive of their case” and then he would supply “remedies of the most approved kind, with ample directions.”  Providing written directions substituted for in-person consultations, allowing patients to use the medicines responsibly and effectively.  Although some may have been anxious about submitting their requests in writing, they may have found doing so less embarrassing than discussing their symptoms with the apothecary in his shop.  Ordering medicines from a distance made the patients nearly anonymous compared to face-to-face interactions at Kennedy’s shop.  His promise of “profound secrecy” also applied to those orders.

For those who had avoided misfortune and wished to keep it that way, the apothecary promoted the “Antivenereal preventive Wash.”  He explained that “repeated experiments” demonstrated its “assured efficacy in destroying the recent venereal infection; as it never fails to search after and cleanse away the acting cause of the malady.”  Kennedy hoped that readers would consider this preventative regimen worth the investment since it “preserv[ed] the constitution from the long course of medicines” that they would otherwise take after contracting venereal diseases.  As Benjamin Franklin had advised a few decades earlier, an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure!  Kennedy hoped that sentiment would resonate with prospective clients who sought to avoid venereal diseases.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 23, 1775

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 23, 1775).

May 22

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 22, 1775).

“Shop-keepers and traders, who are under disadvantages by reason of the non-importation.”

The Continental Association, a nonimportation agreement devised by the First Continental Congress in response to the Coercive Acts, created an opportunity for Jeremiah Andrews, a jeweler in New York, to market his services in the spring of 1775.  In the May 22 edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, he announced that he “CONTINU[ED] his business still in the same place” and “thinks it proper to acquaint shop-keepers and traders, who are under disadvantages by reason of the non-importation, that he is willing chearfully to bear his part.”  How would Andrews help them with that burden?  By supplying retailers with items that they could not import while the Continental Association remained in effect!

He explained that he could “make every article … pertaining to his branch,” jewelry, “as cheap as they could be imported from London, and materials as good.”  Andrews expected that he offered an attractive alternative.  After all, he used quality materials in crafting his jewelry and set prices comparable to those previously charged for imported items.  His appeals resonated with various articles of the Continental Association, including the eighth article that called for “promot[ing] Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country” and the ninth article that prohibited “tak[ing] Advantage of the Scarcity of Goods” by increasing prices for those “Goods or Merchandise” available for sale.

Andrews also informed both retailers and the public that “he hath a great variety of patterns of the newest fashions, which he received from London since his last advertisement.”  Assessing the situation, he realized that consumers still valued connections to the largest and most cosmopolitan city in the empire.  The Continental Association made importing textiles, accessories (including jewelry), housewares, and other goods from there off limits, but it did not proscribe replicating the styles currently in fashion.  Andrews presented retailers and consumers with a means of keeping up with the latest trends for jewelry without sacrificing support for the American cause.  After all, most colonizers still valued being part of the British Empire, despite the imperial crisis and the battles between regulars and colonial militia in Massachusetts in April and the ongoing siege of Boston.  They thought of themselves as British and hoped for a redress of grievances.  Andrews provided a means for minimizing the disruptions that consumers experienced, his way “chearfully to bear his part” while expanding his business.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 22, 1775

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Courant (May 22, 1775).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (May 22, 1775).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (May 22, 1775).

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Newport Mercury (May 22, 1775).

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Newport Mercury (May 22, 1775).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 22, 1775).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 22, 1775).

May 21

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 19, 1775).

“Articles of Intelligence, foreign or domestic will be gratefully received.”

It was the first issue of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter in a month.  Margaret Draper published an issue on April 20, 1775, the day after the battles at Lexington and Concord.  It carried some of the first newspaper coverage of those skirmishes.  Then the presses in Boston went quiet.  Isaiah Thomas had already removed the Massachusetts Spy to Worcester.  The Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boyceased publication altogether, while their printers suspended the Boston-Gazette and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter temporarily.  A city that had five newspapers at the beginning of April 1775 did not have any by the end of the month.

On May 19, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter became the first to resume publication, though it did not manage to stick to a regular schedule during the siege of Boston.  A notice to the public filled most of the first column on the first page of that issue: “AS a Number of Gentlemen are very desirous of a Continuation of the MASSACHUSETTS-GAZETTE, the Proprietor therefore proposed to renew the Publication.”  The siege of Boston continued.  General Thomas Gage had allowed colonizers who wished to depart the city to do so, provided they did not take firearms with them when they departed.  These factors meant new “Conditions” for the newspaper.  It would “contain two Pages in Folio” instead of the usual four since paper was scarce.  In addition, “Communication with the Country is at present impeded” by the siege so “the Number of Customers it’s likely will be but few.”  That meant that “the Price to Subscribers cannot be less than Eight Shillings Lawful Money per Year, one Quarter to be paid at Entrance, and another Quarter Part at the end of three Months.”  Printers often extended credit to newspaper subscribers, but Draper did not have that luxury under the circumstances.  She noted that subsequent issues would appear upon achieving a certain number of subscriber, but that number was next to the left margin, unfortunately not visible in the digitized image of the issue bound into a volume with other editions of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.

Draper added a second notice immediately below the first.  “Emboldened by the encouraging assurances of a Number of respectable [gentlemen] … and being willing to oblige them as speedily as possible,” she declared, “we have ventured upon the Publication of the first Paper, hoping that a sufficient Number will be subscribed through the Course of the Week to encourage us to continue it weekly from this Time.”  The next two issues did come out on schedule on May 25 and June 1.  Draper further explained that the “Difficulties attending the Publication of a News-Paper, at this unhappy Period, when almost all Communication with the Continent is cut off, and so every regular Source of intelligence stopped, obliges us to [beg(?)] a twofold Share of that Candor we have formerly experienced.”  Draper needed assistance generating content for the revived Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  She suggested an eighteenth-century version of crowdsourcing among those who remained in the city: “we would take this Opportunity to request of Gentlemen who may at any Time be possessed of London Papers, that they would be so kind as to favour us with them.”  Furthermore, “Articles of Intelligences, foreign or domestic will be gratefully received; and if Gentlemen would take the Trouble of forwarding them to us, it would in a great Measure supply the Want of a regular weekly Conveyance.”  Printers regularly reprinted news from other newspapers they received through exchange networks, but Draper no longer had access to new issues of newspapers from other colonies.  She had to depend on other sources, including newspapers from London that residents of Boston had received from correspondents there. Advertisements could also fill some of the space, but few of those appeared in subsequent issues.