What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“AN assortment of dry goods … at the house of Mr. John Dixen, near Mr. Horton’s Meeting House, in Morris County, New-Jersey.”
When Samuel Loudon discontinued publication of the New York Packet, his advertisement in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury explained that the “City of New-York, is now invaded by a powerful Fleet and army” so the “Inhabitants are obliged to seek a Retreat in the Country.” Hugh Gaine, the printer of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, was one of those inhabitants who decided to leave New York at the beginning of the British occupation. The September 21, 1776, edition featured a new location in the colophon: “Newark, in East-New-Jersey.” That issue consisted of only two pages instead of the usual four, perhaps the result of paper shortages, perhaps because Gaine did not have time to publish a full issue, or perhaps due to other circumstances related to getting out of the New York. He printed only seven issues in Newark before returning to New York.
The masthead proclaimed that newspaper “Contain[ed] the freshest Advices Foreign and Domestic.” In the three most recent news updates, Gaine reported that “Yesterday Morning a very heavy firing was hear on York Island from Bergen Town,” “We hear there are no more than one thousand of the King’s troops now in New-York, and those principally Englishmen,” and “About 3 o’clock this morning, a most dreadful fire was discovered from the heights back of this town, which upon the appearance of day light was supposed to be the city of New York in flames.” That was the first newspaper coverage of the burning of New York City.
The first Newark edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury had half a dozen advertisements placed by customers as well as one for bibles, writing supplies, and patent medicines that Gaine sold ay his new printing office. The news and advertisements, as Clarence S. Brigham notes, “were expressly intended for New Jersey.”[1] The advertisement that appeared immediately below news about the conflagration in New York City promoted an “assortment of dry goods (not before exposed to sale) just opening at the house of Mr. John Dixen, near Mr. Horton’s Meeting House, in Morris County, New-Jersey.” It listed dozens of items to entice prospective customers. The advertisement concluded with a nota bene drawing attention to a “small assortment of the above goods, particularly such articles as will suit the army, … opened at Mr. John Halstead’s, in Elizabeth-Town.”
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[1] Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 513.