Bernard Romans

October 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-York Journal (October 16, 1775).

“THIS Map of Boston, &c. is one of the most correct that has ever been published.”

Richard Sause, a cutler in New York, became a local agent in that city when Nicholas Brooks and Bernard Romans collaborated on a map of Boston.  Brooks, a shopkeeper in Philadelphia, described himself as “the printer of said Maps” in newspaper advertisements, though he likely meant that he was the publisher who collaborated with Romans, a noted cartographer.  Sause had not been among the original list of local agents in an advertisement that appeared in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer in August 1775, nor had he been on the list on a broadside subscription proposal that circulated in the summer and fall.  When Brooks and Romans launched a second project, “An Exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” the subscription proposal in the Pennsylvania Ledger included “Mr. Richard Sause in New-York” among the local agents.  Brooks and Romans apparently supplied him with copies of the map as well as the print depicting what is now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Sause, a frequent advertiser, was already familiar to consumers in New York.  A woodcut depicting various kinds of cutlery available at his “Jewlery, Hardware, and Cutlery Store” often adorned his advertisements in newspapers printed in that city.  In the summer and fall of 1775, he emphasized “SMALL SWORDS” in his advertisements.  Following the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord in April, residents of New York and other towns did not know what to expect.  Many prepared to defend their liberties should the British turn their attention to them.  Sause made sure that Patriots in New York knew that he could supply them with various kinds of small swords.  He even made a pitch for those items at the end of his advertisement for Romans’s map of Boston: “Swords and Cutteaux de Chase [a short sword], with a variety of Jewellery, Hardware and Cutlery, to be sold at the above Store.”

Yet the “MAP OF BOSTON” was the main attraction in that advertisement.  In addition to the headline in capital letters, Sause’s notice billed the map as “one of the most correct that has ever been published.”  To help make sales, he emphasized that the “draught [draft] was taken by the most skilful Draughtsman in all America.”  Buyers could depend on its accuracy because Romans “was on the spot at the engagements of Lexington and Bunker’s-Hill.”  Current events certainly played a role in Sause expanding his business to incorporate a new revenue stream, yet marketing and selling both Brooks and Romans’s map of Boston and prints depicting the Battle of Bunker Hill also gave him an opportunity to participate in politics via the marketplace.

September 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (September 20, 1775).

“A neat and correct VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN, not inferior to any hithero proposed.”

After appearing in the Pennsylvania Ledger on September 16, 1775, the subscription proposal for “An exact VIEW of the late Battle at Charlestown,” now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, ran in the Pennsylvania Gazette four days later.  It featured nearly identical copy, including a list of local agents, among them several printers in Philadelphia, who collected the names of subscribers in that city and other towns from New York to Virginia.  The notice named Nicholas Brooks as the “printer of said view,” but did not mention that he collaborated with Bernard Romans, the cartographer and engraver.  An addition at the bottom of the advertisement, “Frames and Glass may be had at the abovesaid N. Brooks’s,” suggested that Brooks managed the marketing of the proposed print.

Immediately below that advertisement, Robert Aitken announced, “NOW engraving for the Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum, a neat and correct VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN, not inferior to any hitherto proposed.”  Aitken, who was not among the printers listed as local agents for the Brooks and Romans print, promoted a competing print!  This one, however, “shall be printed in a size proper for the Magazine.”  The two prints looked strikingly similar, not unlike the competing prints of the Boston Massacre produced by Henry Pelham and Paul Revere in 1770, though one was larger than the other.  Aitken’s print measured 18 x 26 cm (approximately 7 x 10 inches), the right size to tuck it inside the magazine for delivery to subscribers.  Brooks and Romans’s print measured 31.5 x 42.2 cm (approximately 12.5 x 16.5 inches) on a 40.6 x 50.5 cm sheet (approximately 16 x 20 inches), perhaps making it a better candidate to frame and display.

Robert Aitken (engraver and publisher), “A Correct View of the Late Battle at Charlestown” (1775). Courtesy Library of Congress.

Subscribers to the Pennsylvania Magazine received the print as a premium.  Nonsubscribers could purchase the issue for “One Shilling and Sixpence, on account of the great expence of the engraving.”  On other occasions, including the September 16, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger, Aitken advertised the price as one shilling per issue.  He now informed “those Gentlemen who incline to purchase this View of the Battle may be furnished with it at the moderate price of Sixpence.”  In effect, he did not give readers who purchased a single issue of the magazine any sort of discount, perhaps hoping to encourage them to subscribe to receive the print as a gift.  Whatever the case, Aitken’s print was slightly more expensive than the five shillings that Brooks and Romans charged for their uncolored print.

Nicholas Brooks (publisher) and Bernard Romans (engraver), “An Exact View of the Late Battle at Charlestown” (1775). Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

Given the similarity of the prints, did Aitken pirate his “VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN” from Brooks and Romans?  That had been the case with Revere issuing a print based on a drawing by Pelham before the artist managed to publish his own.  Or did Aitken collaborate with Brooks and Romans?  It was not the first time that an image that accompanied his magazine resembled one of their projects.  The July 1775 issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine featured a map, “A New and Correct Plan of the Town of Boston, and Provincial Camp.”  Aitken marketed it at the same time that Brooks and Romans published a map of eastern Massachusetts and northern Rhode Island that featured an inset showing a “Plan of BOSTON and its ENVIRONS 1775.”  The two did not resemble each other as much as the “VIEW” that each advertised.  Whether they collaborated or competed, Aitken and Brooks and Romans all aimed to disseminate a commemorative item that simultaneously kept buyers better informed and inspired them to support the American cause.

September 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (September 16, 1775).

“It is proposed to PRINT An Exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN.”

Bernard Romans, a cartographer, apparently met with sufficient success in marketing and publishing his “MAP, FROM BOSTON TO WORCESTER, PROVIDENCE AND SALEM” in the summer of 1775 that he launched a similar project as fall arrived.  He placed a subscription proposal for a print depicting “An Exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” known today as the Battle of Bunker Hill, in the September 16, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger.  The proposal stated that it “shall be printed on a good crown imperial paper” at a price of five shillings, “plain,” or seven shilling and six pence, “coloured.”

In promoting the print, Romans summarized the battle, though most readers likely already knew the details.  “[A]n advanced party of Seven hundred PROVINCIALS,” the cartographer narrated, “stood an attack made by Eleven Regiments and a Train of Artillery, of the Ministerial forces, and after an engagement of two hours retreated to their main body at Cambridge, leaving Eleven Hundred of the Regulars killed and wounded on the field.”  Even though the British prevailed, it was such a costly victory in terms of casualties that officers that British General Henry Clinton wrote in his diary, “A dear bought victory, another such would have ruined us.”  The Americans had reason to feel proud despite retreating.  Romans hoped to capitalize on that even as he aimed to publish a print that helped colonizers far from Boston visualize the battle.  The print included “a view of Gen. [Israel] Putnam,” an American officer, “a part of Boston, Charlestown in flames, Breed’s hill, Provincial breast-work, a broken Officer, and the Somerset man of war and a frigate firing upon Charlestown.”

As had been the case with his map, Romans collaborated with Nicholas Brooks, a shopkeeper and “Printer of said View” as well as local agents in several cities and towns from New York to Virginia.  The subscription proposal indicated that the print would be ready “to be delivered to the subscribers in about ten days,” not nearly enough time to disseminate the proposal and collect the names of subscribers before making the first impressions.  In both instances, Romans likely felt confident that consumers would be so interested in purchasing items that commemorated the newest chapter in the struggle against Britain that the demand for the map and the print would justify the expense of producing initial copies as well as prompt him to issue even more as local agents submitted their lists of subscribers.

August 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (August 19, 1775).

“Map of Boston … the engagements of Lexington and Bunker’s Hill.”

More advertisements for “MR. ROMANS’s MAP OF BOSTON” appeared in the August 19, 1774, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger.  Bernard Romans, the cartographer who created a “MAP, FROM BOSTON TO WORCESTER, PROVIDENCE AND SALEM. Shewing the SEAT of the present unhappy CIVIL WAR in NORTH-AMERICA,” and Nicholas Brooks, the publisher, previously promoted the project with a broadside subscription proposal that began circulating in the middle of July and scattered references to the map at the end of advertisements in the Pennsylvania Ledger.  Two weeks earlier, for instance, Brooks ran an advertisement that featured an extensive list of merchandise available at his shop and added a nota bene of a single line: “Romans’s map of the seat of war near Boston, &c.”  Robert Aitken mentioned the map in a slightly longer nota bene when he advertised Military Instructions for Officers Detached in the Field.  An advertisement in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer replicated the copy from the broadside.

Once the map was “completely finished, and ready to be delivered to the SUBSCRIBERS,” as William Bradford and Thomas Bradford put it in their advertisement, or “just Printed, Published, and To be Sold,” as Brooks proclaimed in his own notice, it received greater attention in newspaper notices.  Although many similar projects utilized subscription proposals in newspapers to generate demand attract orders in advance of publication, Romans and Brooks relied on their broadside subscription proposal during their first round of marketing and later added newspaper advertisements once the map was available for sale.

Just four months after the battles at Lexington and Concord, a remarkably short interval for such an endeavor, Brooks advertised copies of Romans’s map of Boston for sale at his “Dry Goods, Picture, and Jewellery SHOP” in Philadelphia.  He touted the quality of the map, declaring it “one of the most correct that has ever been published” and emphasiziong that the “draught was taken by the most skillful draughtsman in all America.”  As if that was not enough to sell it, Romans “was on the spot at the engagements of Lexington and Bunker’s Hill.”  Brooks marketed an eyewitness account of those important battles.  Furthermore, he asserted that consumers had a patriotic duty to examine the map, which they could do by purchasing it.  “Every well-wisher to this country,” Brooks trumpeted, “cannot but delight in seeing a plan of the ground on which our brave American Army conquered the British Ministerial Forces.”  Commemoration and commodification of the American Revolution occurred before the Continental Congress declared independence.

August 12

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (August 12, 1775).

“MILITARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR OFFICERS DETACHED IN THE FIELD.”

On August 12, 1775, Robert Aitken, a printer in Philadelphia, launched a new advertising campaign to promote his American edition of Military Instructions for Office Detached in the Field by Roger Stevenson.  He began with advertisements in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the Pennsylvania Ledger.  Two days later, he placed the same advertisement in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet and then in the Pennsylvania Gazette another two days after that. Aitken’s new advertisement significantly expanded on the notice that he had published in June.

This time, for example, the printer announced that his American edition was “Dedicated to His Excellency GEORGE WASHINGTON, Esq; General and Commander in Chief of the Army of the United Colonies of North-America.”  The book itself featured a short dedication essay that extended four pages.  In the new advertisement, Aitken promoted some of the usual qualities that printers, publishers, and booksellers often highlighted, noting that the book was printed “On fine Paper, [with] a beautiful new Type” and the “twelve useful Plates” or illustrations “of the Manœuvres” supplemented the text.  Each bound copy cost six shillings and six pence, though Aitken also marketed a “few copies on a superfine paper” for one dollar to those who desired even higher quality.  The price was a bargain, the printer noted, with a bound copy of the London edition selling for ten shillings.

Beyond those details, Aitken incorporated an address “TO THE PUBLIC” into this advertisement, though he did not generate the copy himself.  Instead, he borrowed liberally from the preface of the book, making minor revisions here and there.  In effect, he gave prospective customers a preview of what they would read once they purchased Military Instructions for Officers Detached in the Field.  In the preface, Stevenson lamented that “inferior officers have had no source from whence they could derive instruction on the duties of their sphere in the field,” but he aimed to remedy that with this volume.  He almost certainly had not intended, however, that it would be used by officers in the “Army of the United Colonies of North-America” as they defended their liberties in what would eventually become a war for independence.  Aitken saw an opportunity to generate revenues in the wake of the battles at Lexington and Concord.

In a nota bene, the printer added that he stocked “A complete and elegant MAP of the country, shewing the Seat of the present unhappy Civil War in North-America.”  Bernard Romans, a prominent cartographer, distributed broadside subscription proposals a month earlier, listing Aitken among the many local agents who collected names of subscribers who ordered copies in advance.   The printer gave details about the map not included in the broadside subscription proposal and that had not appeared in newspaper notices.  The map featured a “beautiful Draught of the Provincial CAMP: Likewise, A perspective View of BOSTON, and Gen. Gage’s LINE.”  Current events certainly shaped which items Aitken produced, advertised, and sold at his printing office in Philadelphia.

August 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (August 5, 1775).

“Romans’s map of the seat of war near Boston.”

At the end of July 1775, Nicholas Brooks began running a new advertisement in the Pennsylvania Ledger.  It first appeared on July 29 and then again in the next two issues.  In it, Brooks hawked a “curious collection of GOODS” that he sold at his shop on Second Street in Philadelphia.  He listed everything from sword belts and “beautiful guns for gentlemen officers” and “gilt and stone buckles for ladies” to “razors in new fashion cases, very convenient for traveling” and “cork screws of the best quality” to “a very elegant assortment of ladies and gentlemans pocket books in Morocco velvet, worked with gold and silver” and “a variety of music of the most approved tunes.”  He also stocked “a very elegant assortment of pictures and maps in books or single.”  Brooks had already established “PRINTS and PICTURES” as a specialty.

He concluded this advertisement with a nota bene that indicated he sold “Romans’s map of the seat of war near Boston,” but he did not say anything more about that item.  In addition, neither Brooks nor Bernard Romans, the cartographer and “AUTHOR” of the map, previously advertised the project in the Pennsylvania Ledger or any of the other newspapers printed in Philadelphia at the time.  Perhaps Brooks expected that readers were familiar with a broadside subscription proposal, dated July 12, that had been circulating or posted around town and beyond.  The subscription proposal featured the same copy as the advertisement for the map that ran in the August 3 edition of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, though the newspaper notice listed only local agents while the broadside gave a much more extensive list of printers, booksellers, and others who collected subscriptions in towns from New England to South Carolina.  James Rivington apparently adapted the broadside rather than composing copy for the advertisement when he inserted it in his newspaper.  That broadside documented a sophisticated network for inciting demand for the map and distributing it to subscribers.  In addition to the five printers and booksellers who collected subscriptions in Philadelphia, twenty-two local agents in eighteen towns in ten colonies collaborated with Brooks and Romans.  That list represented an “imagined community,” a concept developed by Benedict Anderson, of readers and consumers near and far who simultaneously examined the same map “Shewing the SEAT of the present unhappy CIVIL WAR in NORTH-AMERICA.”

Brooks did not limit his marketing of the map to the broadside subscription proposal and the nota bene at the end of an advertisement that cataloged dozens of items available at his shop.  He eventually ran newspaper advertisements devoted exclusively to the map, seeking to generate more interest and demand for such a timely and important work.

Broadside Subscription Proposal: “It Is Proposed to Print, A Complete and Elegant Map” (Philadelphia, 1775). Courtesy Library Company of Philadelphia.

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The Massachusetts Historical Society has digitized Romans’s map, accompanied by a brief overview of its significance and a short essay about Romans and other cartographers active during the era of the American Revolution.

August 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

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

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (August 3, 1775)

“MAP … Shewing the SEAT of the present unhappy CIVIL WAR in NORTH-AMERICA.”

On August 3, 1775, Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer carried a subscription proposal for a “COMPLETE and ELEGANT MAP” that extended from Boston to Worcester to the west, Providence to the south, and Salem to the north, “Shewing the SEAT of the present unhappy CIVIL WAR in NORTH-AMERICA.”  The “AUTHOR,” Bernard Romans, realized that colonizers who read and discussed news about the battles at Lexington and Concord in April, the siege of Boston that followed, and the Battle of Bunker Hill would likely be interested in learning more about the geography of New England.  Among the conditions, he specified that “all places where any remarkable event has hitherto occurred, and the provincial lines, &c. shall be particularly pointed out.”  The map itself featured an inset that depicted “BOSTON and itsENVIRONS” that did indeed have its own legend identifying important places, “Provincial Lines,” and “Enemy Lines” as well as an illustration that provided “A View of the Lines thrown upon BOSTON NECK: by the Ministerial Army.”

Romans made support for the American cause an integral part of his marketing effort.  He followed the list of conditions for subscribing (that included the price and descriptions of “good paper and large scale”) with a reflection on the imperial crisis: “Hail, O Liberty! thou glorious, thou inestimable blessing: Banished from almost every part of the old world, America, thy darling, received thee as her beloved: Her arms shall protect thee, – her sons will cherish thee!”  When Romans published the map, it included a dedication “To the Hone. Jno. Hancock Esqre. President of ye Continental Congress … By his Most Obedient Humble Servant.”  As Patriots purchased, collected, and consulted political pamphlets, journals of the proceedings of the First Continental Congress, orations about the Boston Massacre, and sermons about the present state of affairs, Romans presented them with yet another piece of memorabilia that helped them in better understanding current events.  The map was a commemorative item produced and sold even before the colonies declared independence.

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The Massachusetts Historical Society has digitized Romans’s map, accompanied by a brief overview of its significance and a short essay about Romans and other cartographers active during the era of the American Revolution.