What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
“News-Carriers from Boston to Northampton, Deerfield, &c.”
An advertisement that Silent Wilde and Isaac Church inserted in the May 2, 1776, edition of the New-England Chronicletestifies to the infrastructure for disseminating information in Massachusetts as the Revolutionary War entered its second year. These “News-Carriers from Boston to Northampton, Deerfield,” and other towns, as they described themselves, helped in keeping residents in western Massachusetts informed about the latest news from Boston and, via letters from correspondents and items reprinted from newspapers from other colonies, about current events throughout the continent and the Atlantic world.
Wilde and Church stated that they “go into Boston weekly” and “leave Boston on Mondays … to bring the Monday’s papers to such gentlemen and ladies as shall desire them.” By “go into Boston,” they may have meant Watertown, where Benjamin Edes published the Boston-Gazette and Country Journal during the siege of Boston and remained for several months after the British evacuated the city. Edes distributed new issues on Mondays. The “News-Carriers” composed their message on April 16, during a period that Samuel Hall briefly suspended the New-England Chronicle when relocating from Cambridge (with the final issue published there on April 4) to Boston (with the first issue published there on April 25). Whether in Cambridge or Boston, new issues of the New-England Chronicle came out on Thursdays. Wilde and Church apparently planned their service around the Boston-Gazette even though they carried both newspapers printed in the Boston area and picked up Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy (published on Fridays) when they passed through Worcester.
Wilde and Church also reminded their customers that “the printers have advanced” or raised “their price” for subscriptions, so those who availed themselves of the delivery service needed to take that into account when making payment. In addition, due to the “greatly increasing charge of travelling, they hope the gentlemen who have employed them, will generously consider the same, by contributing each one a small matter to them on this account.” In other words, Wilde and Church requested tips to help cover expenses that had gone up since entering into agreements with their customers in Northampton, Deerfield, and other towns in western Massachusetts. They also “can’t let slip the present opportunity without very earnestly calling upon those who are in arrears with them for former services to settle their accounts forthwith.” If customers were not inclined to give the “News-Carriers” a tip, they could at least pay what they owed.