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

“A NEAT MEZZOTINTO PRINT of the HON. JOHN HANCOKC, ESQ; PRESIDENT of the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.”

On October 4, 1775, Nicholas Brooks took to the pages of the Pennsylvania Journal to announce that he “JUST PUBLISHED … An Exact VIEW of the Late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.  Brooks had previously distributed subscription proposals for the project that he pursued in collaboration with Bernard Romans.  Brooks and Romans had recently worked together on a map of Boston that depicted the siege of the city following the battles at Lexington and Concord.  Brooks described the new print now ready for purchase as a “Large Elegant PIECE, beautifully Coloured, and much superior to any pirated copy now offered or offering to the public.” Apparently, Brooks had not worked with Robert Aitken in making a version to accompany the Pennsylvania Magazine.  It was not the first time that one colonizer pirated the work of another when producing items that commemorated the imperial crisis that eventually became a war for independence.  Paul Revere had done the same with Henry Pelham’s image of the Boston Massacre, advertising his copy in Boston’s newspapers before Pelham marketed the original.

Despite his frustration with the situation, Brooks must have considered prints commemorating the people and events related to the current crisis viable business ventures.  Immediately below his advertisement for “An Exact View of the Late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” he inserted another advertisement, that one proclaiming, “It is PROPOSED to PRINT, in about ten days, A NEAT MEZZOTINTO PRINT of the HON. JOHN HANCOCK, ESQ; PRESIDENT of the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.”  Brooks collected subscribers’ names and reserved copies of the print for them at his shop on Second Street in Philadelphia.  Interested parties could also visit the London Coffee House, a popular spot for socializing, conducting business, and talking politics.  Brooks’s advertisement did not give details about what to do at the London Coffee House.  Subscribers may have given their names to an employee who recorded them on a list or they may have signed their own names (and indicated the number of copies they wished to purchase) on a subscription proposal posted alongside other advertisements.  They very well may have perused the names of other patriots who ordered the print as they committed to acquiring their own copy.  Brooks hoped that they would also purchase “Frames and Glasses” to display the prints from his shop, just as he marketed a “Double Carv’d and Gilt Frame … with Crown Glass” for the print depicting the battle.  Brooks certainly wanted commemorative items to become fashionable items that consumers believed that they not only wanted but needed as the imperial crisis intensified.