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

“The Editor being driven from his house and business by the perfidious [Thomas] Gage.”

Like so many other Bostonians, Joseph Greenleaf, the publisher of the Royal American Magazine, became a refugee who fled from the city during the siege that followed the battles at Lexington and Concord.  When the governor, General Thomas Gage, and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress agreed that Loyalists could enter the city and Patriots and others could depart, each with any of their effects they could transport (except for firearms and ammunition), Greenleaf removed to Watertown.  He crafted his own narrative of what happened in an advertisement that ran in the June 9, 1775, edition of the Essex Journal: “The Editor [was] driven from his house and business by the perfidious –– Gage in public violation of his most sacred engagements, leaving ALL (except Beds and some Clothing) behind.”  Apparently, Greenleaf had not managed to take his press or any of his supplies and other equipment with him.

He found himself in desperate need of money, deprived of his livelihood in Boston.  In his advertisement in the Essex Journal, published in Newburyport, Greenleaf called on “Subscribers for the American Magazine at Newbury, Newbury-Port, and the vicinity … to pay their respective ballances to the month of March, being fifteen months, to Bulkeley Emerson of Newbury-Port,” his local agent in that town.  In a single sentence, Greenleaf gave an abbreviated history of the Royal American Magazine.  The publication, first proposed by Isaiah Thomas in May 1773, had commenced publication with the January 1774 issue.  Thomas published several issues, fell behind, and then suspended the magazine due to the “Distresses” that he and everyone else in Boston experienced due to the Boston Port Act closing the harbor until colonizers made restitution for the tea destroyed there in December 1773.  Almost as soon as he announced that he suspended the Royal American Magazine, Thomas informed subscribers and the public that Greenleaf became the new proprietor.  From August 1774 through April 1775, Greenleaf worked diligently to publish the delinquent issues and get the magazine back on schedule.  He succeeded … until the beginning of the Revolutionary War became too disruptive to continue.

When Greenleaf became the proprietor of the magazine, Thomas transferred all the accounts to him.  Some subscribers thus owed for the entire fifteen months of the magazine’s run from January 1774 through March 1775.  Under the circumstances, the publisher could no longer afford to extend credit to them.  He prorated the subscription fees, but expected that “being driven from his house and business … will no doubt excite the Subscribers to be kindly Punctual, as it is at present the only dependence for support of the Person and Family of their Humble Servant.”  The war meant that Greenleaf could no longer do business as usual.  After leaving Boston, he needed subscribers to pay what they owed.

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The Adverts 250 Project has tracked the entire marketing campaign for the Royal American Magazine from Thomas’s first mention of distributing subscription proposals to Greenleaf’s last advertisements for the final issue.