What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
The September 30, 1776, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury consisted of only two pages printed on a half sheet rather than the usual four on a broadsheet. About a dozen advertisements, including one for a vendue or auction of “SUNDRY articles of dry goods,” filled the final column on the second page. It was the first issue published in the city in three weeks. It was also the first issue published there since the British occupation of New York began a few weeks earlier.
However, it was not the first issue of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury published in that time. Hugh Gaine left New York just before British forces arrived and set up a printing office in Newark, New Jersey. On September 21, he printed the newspaper with updated publication information in the masthead: “Printed by Hugh Gaine, at Newark, in East-New-Jersey.” He continued the same volume numbering with issue 1301. As Clarence S. Brigham explains, “The Newark issues were evidently edited and printed and in Newark, since the type of the heading differs from the New York issues, and the news and advertisements were expressly intended for New Jersey.”[1]
Yet the September 30 edition printed in New York featured Gaine’s name in the masthead, as usual, and continued the volume numbering with issue 1301. The printer was not publishing newspapers in both Newark and New York. The British found themselves in possession of one of the largest cities in America but without a newspaper. They tasked Ambrose Serle with printing the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury. He produced only one issue with Gaine’s name in the masthead. Starting with the October 7 edition, “the printer’s name was omitted from the imprint.”[2] It simply stated, “PRINTED AT THE BIBLE AND CROWN, IN HANOVER-SQUARE.” Serle published six issues of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury before Gaine decided to return to New York and resume printing his newspaper there with the November 11 edition.
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[1] Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 513.
[2] Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 640.