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

“The Printing-Business, in its different branches carried on with care and fidelity.”

When Benjamin Dearborn circulated subscription proposals for establishing a “NEW WEEKLY PAPER ENTITLED The FREEMAN’s JOURNAL, OR New-Hampshire GAZETTE” in April 1776, he stated that “[a]s soon as a sufficient number of Subscribers appear, the first number will be publish’d.”  It did not take long for him to gain enough subscribers to begin publishing the newspaper.  On May 25, he distributed the first issue.

It may have worked to Dearborn’s advantage that Daniel Fowle, the printer of the New-Hampshire Gazette, suspended his newspaper in January or February.  It had been the only newspaper printed in the colony, which meant that residents relied even more on newspapers printed in Massachusetts and other colonies to supply them with news about current events, including the progress of the war and meetings of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia and provincial conventions throughout the colonies.  In the subscription proposals, Dearborn declared that the Freeman’s Journal would include “all authentic domestic intelligence worth notice; together with the most material Extracts from the Southern and other papers.”  He may have received some of those newspapers via exchange networks with other printers, though, like other printers, he would have also participated in a process of reprinting news from one newspaper to another in a chain of disseminating information.

The inaugural issue of the Freeman’s Journal featured a small number of advertisements, enough to fill the final column on the last page.  As many other printers did, Dearborn used the colophon that ran across the bottom of that page as an advertisement for his printing office that concluded each issue week after week: “PORTSMOUTH: Printed by BENJAMIN DEARBORN, near the Parade, where this Paper may be had at Eight Shillings L[awful]. M[oney]. Per year, one half at entrance.  The Printing-Business, in its different branches carried on with care and fidelity.”  New subscribers had to pay four shillings when they began their subscription.  Customers of all sorts could have job printing, such as handbills and broadsides, done at Dearborn’s printing office.  That gave the printer another revenue stream to supplement subscriptions and advertisements.