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

“PRINTING In ENGLISH, GERMAN, and other Languages.”

In late December 1775 and early January 1776, Melchior Steiner and Charles Cist placed advertisements for “PRINTING In ENGLISH, GERMAN, and other Languages” in several newspapers published in Philadelphia.  Having acquired a “general assortment of new and elegant TYPES, and other Printing Materials,” they opened an office “where they intend carrying on the PRINTING BUSINESS in all its different branches, with care, fidelity, and expedition.”  Both partners had been born in Europe and migrated to Philadelphia, as Isaiah Thomas explained in his History of Printing in America (1810).  Steiner, born in Switzerland, served an apprenticeship with Henry Miller, the printer of the Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (formerly Der Wochentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote and Der Wochentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote).  Cist, an apothecary born in St. Petersburg, Russia, came to the colonies in 1769, worked for Miller as a translator of English into German, and “by continuing in the employment of Miller several years he acquired a considerable knowledge of printing.”[1]

Steiner and Cist, according to Thomas, “executed book and job work, in both the German and English languages,” the “different branches” of printing that they advertised in their notice.  They competed with other local printers, especially Miller.  Their former associate also took orders for job printing in both languages and annually published an almanac in German.  The masthead of the Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote indicated that “All ADVERTISEMENTS to be inserted in this Paper, or printed single by HENRY MILLER, Publisher hereof, are by him translated gratis.”  Thomas reported, “Not long after the commencement of the revolutionary war, [Steiner and Cist] published a newspaper in the German language; but, for want of sufficient encouragement, it was discontinued in April, 1776.”[2]  The venerable printer appears to have been misinformed on that point.  Clarence S. Brigham does not attribute any newspaper published in 1775 or 1776 to Steiner and Cist, but he does list another newspaper that Thomas credited to the partners, the Philadelpisches Staatsregister, published during the war from 1779 to 1781.[3]  Even if they considered launching a newspaper eventually, the new partners sought to establish a printing office with a reputation for “giv[ing] satisfaction to those who may be pleased to employ them” for job printing.  As they surveyed the local and regional landscape, they may have determined that Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote and the Germantowner Zeitung already met the needs of colonizers who spoke German and the market would not support another newspaper.  That they operated their printing office in Philadelphia throughout most of the war, leaving temporarily during the British occupation of the city, testifies to the multilingual origins of the new nation.  English was the language spoken (and printed) most prevalently in the thirteen colonies that declared independence, but certainly not exclusively during the era of the American Revolution.

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[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; Weathervane Books, 1970), 404.

[2] Thomas, History of Printing, 404.

[3] Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 (American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 1392, 1487.