Boston-Gazette

July 18

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

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

Boston-Gazette (July 18, 1774).

“I did suddenly and inadvertently sign an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson.”

When he published an advertisement in the July 18, 1774, edition of the Boston-Gazette, Thomas Kidder of Billerica attempted to extricate himself from a difficult situation.  He explained that he had “suddenly and inadvertently sign[ed] an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson with some others, (Justices of the Peace) of Middlesex.”  Thomas Hutchinson, the outgoing governor, had received several letters praising his administration of the colony, each of them signed by dozens of colonizers.  Some of those letters found their way into print, revealing to the public which members of the community approved of the way the unpopular royal governor had participated in Parliament’s efforts to establish greater control over Boston, the rest of Massachusetts, and all the colonies.

That garnered the wrong kind of attention for Kidder and others, especially those who then professed that they did not actually harbor loyalist sympathies but had instead been “inadvertently” embroiled in the controversy.  Kidder explained that he had signed the letter to Hutchinson “in great Haste, and not so well considering every Part thereof, nor the dangerous Consequences of said Address.”  He did not enjoy the reception he received from colonizers who supported the patriot cause, prompting him to apologize.  He confessed that he was “very sorry” for signing the letter and “as it hath offended my Christian Brethren and Neighbours, I do hereby desire their Forgiveness, and a Restoration of their Friendship.”  Apparently, Kidder’s seeming endorsement of Hutchinson caused so many difficulties in his daily interactions with others that he found it necessary to take to the public prints to disavow an address that he claimed he had not fully considered or understood when he signed it.  It was no mistake that he ran his advertisement in the Boston-Gazette, a newspaper noted for advocating the political views of patriots who opposed the policies enacted by Parliament and Hutchinson’s collaboration in executing them.

In “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” William Huntting Howell documents which newspapers published addresses to Hutchinson and broadsides printed in response, some of them identifying the occupations and places of business of the signatories.  That amounted to an eighteenth-century version of doxing people based on their political views.  Howell argues that such a response was designed “to coerce and secure individual compliance.”  He examines several “RECANTATIONS” that appeared in the newspapers as signatories of addresses to Hutchinson attempted to restore their standing among their fellow colonizers.[1]  Over the next several months, the Adverts 250 Project will feature advertisements, like the one place by Kidder, placed for similar purposes, demonstrating the pressure that patriots managed to bring to bear against real and perceived loyalists as the imperial crisis intensified in 1774.

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[1] William Huntting Howell, “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” Early American Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 191, 208-215.

May 9

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (May 9, 1774).

“Cannot fail to give universal Satisfaction to their Customers.”

I originally selected this advertisement to further demonstrate that even though advertisers usually wrote the copy but left the format and other aspects of graphic design to compositors who worked in printing offices they sometimes gave instructions about how they wanted specific elements of how their notices to appear.  In this instance, John Barrett and Sons ran a lengthy advertisement enclosed within a border of decorative type in three newspapers simultaneously.  Their notice appeared in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy on May 9, 1774.  On closer examination, however, I discovered that this advertisement presents further evidence that printing offices in Boston sometimes shared type already set for advertisements.  A week ago, I documented this with Joseph Peirce’s advertisement.

As was the case with that notice, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy operated independently.  Among other newspapers, Barrett and Sons’ advertisement apparently originated in the Boston-Gazette before being reprinted in the Boston Evening-Post.  Notably, it ran next to Peirce’s advertisement in the May 9 edition, that type having made its way back to the printing office for the Boston-Gazette.  The visual evidence makes it difficult to dispute that some printers transferred type from one newspaper to another.  The printing ornaments that formed the border around the advertisement make that clear.  Even if the compositor for the Boston Evening-Post happened to copy the font, capitalization, italics, size, centering, left justification, right justification, and other format exactly from the Boston-Gazette, itself a highly unlikely scenario, matching the decorative type would have been practically impossible.  Note that the compositor chose one type of ornament for the upper and lower borders and a different ornament for the left and right borders, except for the last ornament before the right corner in the lower border.  In that position appears the same ornament from the left and right borders in the advertisements in both newspapers.  Furthermore, the compositor introduced one more variation midway down the left and right borders, marking where the side-by-side columns listing goods begin.  To the left of “Chints, Calicoes” and to the right of “An Assortment,” a different ornament appears, once again in both the Boston-Gazette and the Boston Evening-Post.

Barrett and Sons’ advertisement did not make it into the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, in any form, unlike the type for Peirce’s advertisement that seems to have been transferred from the Boston-Gazette and the Boston Evening-Post to that newspaper.  That might have been due to Richard Draper’s poor health and seeking a partner to assist him in running his printing office making such coordination too difficult at that moment.  Yet the type for Peirce’s advertisement made its way into that newspaper once again on May 12 after running in the Boston-Gazetteon May 9 (but not in the Boston Evening-Post for a second time on that day).  This suggests instead that Barrett and Sons, the advertisers, made decisions about which publications would carry their advertisement, likely based on their own marketing budget and sense of which newspapers had the best circulation.  This instance raises further questions about the coordination among printing offices, especially the logistics, the bookkeeping, and the fees.  These advertisements demonstrate that printers in Boston who usually competed with each other for both subscribers and advertisers cooperated on occasion when it came to inserting advertisements in their newspapers.

Left to right: Boston-Gazette (May 9, 1774); Boston Evening-Post (May 9, 1774).

May 2

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

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

Boston-Gazette (May 2, 1774).

{ Blue }
Rich { Black and } Sattins
{ White }

Joseph Peirce’s advertisement on the front page of the May 2, 1774, edition of the Boston-Gazette stood out thanks to its unique graphic design.  The shopkeeper provided a list of merchandise that he recently imported from London, but rather than arrange it in a dense paragraph, as in most advertisements, or create columns with one item per line, as in some advertisements, this one featured one item per line with each line centered.  As a result, the text created an irregular shape with a lot of white space on either side.  That certainly distinguished the advertisement from the news in the column to the right, justified on both sides.

Advertisers usually generated copy, while compositors made most decisions about format.  When merchants and shopkeepers ran advertisements with identical copy in multiple newspapers, variations in fonts, capitalization, italics, font size, and other design elements testified to the creative work done by the compositors in each printing office.  Advertisers likely submitted general instructions with the copy for advertisements that arranged goods in columns, but that may not have always been the case.  M.B. Goldthwait’s advertisement for “DRUGS and MEDICINES” in the April 28, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Spy, for instance, listed a variety of patent medicines in a paragraph, while his advertisement in the May 2 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy separated them into side-by-side columns.

Peirce seems to have submitted specific instructions with the copy for his advertisement.  It had the same format in the May 2 editions of the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and the May 5 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  They even gave the same treatment to three lines for:

{ Blue }
Rich { Black and } Sattins
{ White }

That indicates that the compositors incorporated the format that Peirce sketched when he composed the copy.  Curiously, the advertisements in the Boston-Gazette, the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter appear identical, as though the printing offices shared type set in one and transferred to the others.  If that was indeed the case, it raises questions about day-to-day operating practices and collaboration among printers in Boston. Even if some printing office shared type, Pierce’s advertisements in the Boston-Gazette and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy had minor variations while retaining the same format.  That suggests that Peirce provided his vision for his advertisement to at least two printing offices, taking an active role in designing as well as writing his notice.

Left to right: Boston-Gazette (May 2, 1774); Boston Evening-Post (May 2, 1774); Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 5, 1774).

April 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Supplement to the Boston-Gazette (April 25, 1774).

“A Bell … which is erected over his Auction-Room Door.”

Martin Bicker’s neighbors were not happy with him.  As the auctioneer explained in an advertisement addressed “To thePUBLIC” in the Boston-Gazette in the spring of 1774, some of them objected to one of the methods he deployed to get bidders into his “Auction-Room.”  Bicker had hired someone to stand “at his Door to invite Gentlemen and others to his public Sales.”  In other words, he stationed an employee at the entrance to engage passersby in hopes of convincing them to check out the items going up for bid.  That innovation supplemented other marketing efforts undertaken by auctioneers, including newspaper notices, catalogs, handbills, and previews of goods in advance of auctions.

Other colonizers in the vicinity of Bicker’s auction house apparently did not care for this innovation.  He reported that it “has given Dissatisfaction to some” and singled out “Gentlemen Shopkeepers in particular.”  Perhaps those shopkeepers claimed that they did not like the noise or the constant presence of Bicker’s employee on the street outside the auction house, but most likely they really opposed the competition that potentially affected their own sales.  After all, both consumers and retailers who bought to sell again could often find better bargains at auctions than they could get at local shops and stores.  Bicker underscored in his advertisement that the public should attend his auctions “for their own Advantage.”  An employee outside his door could have made that point to prospective bidders in greater detail repeatedly throughout the day and within earshot of nearby “Gentlemen Shopkeepers.”  They may have worried that someone lurking on the street made their customers anxious about becoming the target of unwanted appeals or having to extricate themselves from uncomfortable conversations as they sought to go about their business, but concerns about losing those customers to the auction house probably motivated their complaints just as much.

Bicker devised a solution that he “flatters himself cannot fail giving universal Satisfaction, as he sincerely wishes so to do,” though the tone suggested that he was not sincere nor that he cared much about the “Satisfaction” of the “Gentlemen Shopkeepers.”  He may very well have been thumbing his nose at them when he installed a bell “over his Auction-Room Door.”  In an earlier advertisement, he noted that a red flag marked his location.  The bell, a new enhancement, likely attracted as much notice, drawing attention to his auction house and calling prospective bidders to his sales from an even greater distance than the employee stationed at the door.  Bicker’s concern for the “Gentlemen Shopkeepers” may have been a polite fiction considering that he concocted a solution with so much potential to cause just as much “Dissatisfaction.”

April 11

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

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

Boston-Gazette (April 11, 1774).

“The SECOND EDITION of Mr. HANCOCK’S ORATION.”

Benjamin Edes and John Gill, printers of the Boston-Gazette, gave their advertisement for the “SECOND EDITION of Mr. HANCOCK’S ORATION Deliver’d March 5th” a privileged place in their newspaper.  Readers did not need further explanation to understand that “March 5th” referred to the date of the Boston Massacre and that Hancock had been selected to give the annual address that memorialized the victims and raised an alarm about the danger of quartering an army in an urban center, like Boston, during times of peace.

Still, Edes and Gill, who printed the “ORATION” as well as the newspaper, did what they could to draw attention to the second edition.  The first time they announced it was “This Day Published,” in the April 4, 1774, edition of the Boston-Gazette, they ran the notice immediately below news and editorials.  Even if readers chose not to peruse other advertisements closely once they realized they had finished the news, they likely took note of the advertisement for the “ORATION” in its place of transition from one kind of content to another.  In the next issue of the weekly newspaper, the notice ran at the bottom of the last column on the first page, the only advertisement on that page.  Once again, the patriot printers increased the likelihood that readers would spot that advertisement and accept an invitation to demonstrate their own commitment to the patriot cause by purchasing copies for themselves.

That Edes and Gill published a “SECOND EDITION” testified to the demand for the first edition.  It sold well enough to justify another printing.  Edes and Gill took it to press just a few months after the Boston Tea Party and just a few weeks after another destruction of tea.  Although that second Boston Tea Party is not nearly as well known today, it was certainly among the current events that would have been on the minds of colonizers as they participated in commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, discussed the politics of tea, and decried various abuses perpetrated by Parliament.  Purchasing and reading Hancock’s “ORATION” was part of the growing resistance to British rule in the colonies, a means for consumers to practice politics in the marketplace and imbibe the rhetoric of a noted patriot long after the Boston Massacre’s annual commemorative events concluded.

March 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (March 21, 1774).

“THE ORATION DELIVER’D BY THE Hon. JOHN HANCOCK, Esq; Will be PUBLISHED.”

Many colonizers commemorated events that were part of the American Revolution before the Revolutionary War began.  For instance, residents of Boston acknowledged the anniversary of the “horrid Massacre on the 5th of March 1770” each year.  That description of the Boston Massacre came from coverage of the fourth anniversary commemorations in the March 7, 1774, edition of the Boston-Gazette.  Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the printers, reported that “the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of this Town met at Faneuil-Hall.”  They selected Samuel Adams as moderator for the meeting.  Adams, in turn, recognized John Hancock to deliver “an ORATION, on the dangerous Tendency of Standing Armies being placed in free and populous Cities” and sought to “perpetuate the Memory of the horrid Massacre … by a Party of Soldiers belonging to the 29th Regiment, commanded by Capt. Thomas Preston.”

According to the printers, a “prodigious Crowd of People attended to hear the Oration, which was received with universal applause.”  In turn, two committees were appointed, one to select a speaker to deliver the oration the following year and the other “to return the Orator the Thanks of the Town for his elegant and spirited Oration, and also to request a Copy of it for the Press.”  Already, the annual commemoration including publishing the oration for further dissemination throughout the city and beyond.  Edes and Gill further reported that the anniversary occurred on Saturday, “the Evening of which is considered by many Persons as the Commencement of the Sabbath,” so the display of the “Exhibition Portraits of the Murderers, and the slaughtered Citizens” was delayed until Monday evening, the same day the printers distributed that issue of the Boston-Gazette.

Two weeks later, on March 21, Edes and Gill ran a notice in their own newspaper to alert readers that “ON WEDNESDAY NEXT … THE ORATION DELIVER’D BY THE Hon. JOHN HANCOCK, Esq; Will be PUBLISHED” at their printing office.  They even specified the time, “ELEVEN o’Clock,” so prospective customers would know exactly when they could obtain their copies.  The printers staged an eighteenth-century precursor to a release party.  In hopes of inciting greater demand and gaining even more attention for Hancock’s arguments about the rights of colonizers, Edes and Gill also ran advertisements in the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy on March 21.  The next issue of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter carried a notice that the oration had been published and was available from “EDES & GILL in Queen-Street.”  Each year, printers published the oration marking the anniversary of the Boston Massacre and advertised it widely.  Commodification of the event went hand in hand with commemoration.

February 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  Caroline Branch

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

Boston-Gazette (February 14, 1774).

“KEYSER’s FAMOUS PILLS … eradicating every Degree of a certain Disease.”

The date of this advertisement for “KEYSER’s FAMOUS PILLS” to treat venereal disease is an ironic one, appearing on Valentine’s Day, but advertisements for these pills ran often. This advertisement displays the fear of venereal diseases throughout Europe and the colonies in the eighteenth century. Doctors agreed that mercury was the way to treat the disease, including Jean Keyser, a French military surgeon. According to Micheline Louis-Courvoisier, many doctors prescribed a mercurial ointment that patients rubbed all over their bodies for about forty days. In contrast, Keyser’s Pills “contain[ed] a combination of mercuric acid and acetic acid.”  The pills were an invention to treat venereal diseases better. In 1761 doctors in Geneva tested the two methods. Louis-Courvoisier states that “following that trial, Keyser pills were considered a good treatment.” They were deemed a success due to the improvement of side effects from previous medications. The pills became a common medication to treat syphilis and other diseases in Europe and the American colonies.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

Keyser’s Pills may very well have been the most popular, or at least the most widely advertised and generally recognized, patent medicine marketed in British mainland North America in the 1760s and 1770s.  Apothecaries stocked the pills, as did shopkeepers and even printers.  The Adverts 250 Project traced the competition among apothecaries and printers in New York and Philadelphia in the fall of 1773.  That competition (or was it a coordinated effort?) continued into the winter of 1774, extending to Boston as well.

Hugh Gaine, the printer of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, continued advertising Keyser’s Pills in his newspaper in the new year.  To corner as much of the market as he could, he had previously advertised in the Newport Mercury, encouraging prospective customers in Rhode Island to submit orders to “his book store and printing-office, at the bible & crown in Hanover-square” in New York.  When Benjamin Edes and John Gill, printers of the Boston-Gazette, advertised “KEYSER’s FAMOUS PILLS” on February 14, 1774, they lifted the copy for their notice directly from Gaine’s advertisement.  Edes and Gill used the same headline, followed by two paragraphs of identical text (with some variations in capitalization and italics).”  Like Gaine, they declared that declared that the remedy was “So well known all over Europe, and in this and the neighbouring Colonies, for their superior Efficacy and peculiar Mildness,” making note of the less severe side effects that Caroline discusses above.  The format continued to replicate Gaine’s advertisement, with a secondary headline distributed over three lines.  It announced, “THESE PILLS ARE NOW SOLD BY / EDES and GILL, / (In Boxes of 7s6 L.M. each, fresh imported).”  They simply traded out Gaine’s name for their own and converted the price into local currency.  In another paragraph, Edes and Gill claimed that they “have in their Hands a Letter from the Widow KEYSER, and a Certificate from under her own Hand of the Genuineness of the above Pills.”  Apothecaries, shopkeepers, printers, and other purveyors of Keyser’s Pills frequently squabbled over who sold the real remedy and who peddled counterfeits.  Edes and Gill invited “any Person” to have a “Perusal” of the letter and certificate at their printing office, once again replicating and only slightly editing as necessary Gaine’s advertisement.

Printers and others competed to sell Keyser’s Pills, sometimes even appropriating advertising copy devised by their rivals.  Edes and Gill may not have needed to resort to consulting an advertisement from the Newport Mercury published a couple of months earlier when they first ran their own notice on January 31 and again on February 7 and 14.  More recently, Gaine ran the same advertisement in his New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, commencing on January 17.  (He resurrected copy that previously appeared in both his own newspaper and the Newport Mercury.)  That allowed enough time for Edes and Gill to receive that issue in Boston.  Perhaps Gaine even franchised out Keyser’s Pills to Edes and Gill to sell in New England, providing them with both pills and copy for their marketing efforts.  Whatever the explanation, readers in New York and New England experienced consistent messaging about a product imported from Europe and sold in several American ports.  That likely contributed to the acclaim the pills earned in the colonies.

February 13

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Boston-Gazette (February 7, 1774).

“This Pamphlet run thro’ Ten Editions in London in less than twelve Months.”

American printers and booksellers marketed and sold a variety of political pamphlets and treatises during the imperial crisis that led to thirteen colonies declaring independence from Great Britain.  In addition to hawking items printed in London and imported to the colonies, some of those printers and booksellers also published American editions, as was the case with The Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations, Concerning the Rights, Privileges and Properties of the People.  Three American editions appeared in 1773 and 1774, one in Philadelphia, one in Boston, and one in Newport, Rhode Island.

Several rare book dealers, including Bauman Rare Books, offer overviews of the publication history, contents, and significance of The Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations.  Originally published as Vox Populi, Vox Dei in London in 1709, the pamphlet “examines principles of limited monarchy and the right of resistance to tyranny,” drawing on “historical precedents and reiterat[ing] opposition to absolute monarchy during the time of England’s Glorious Revolution.”  Colonial printers and booksellers both answered the demand for this sort of political philosophy and helped to stoke opposition to king and Parliament by publishing and disseminating this pamphlet and other tracts and treatises.  The Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations “contains the seed of what would become the American Bill of Rights – reprinting the English Bill of Rights – and was read by many of the Founding Fathers, including John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who owned the Philadelphia 1773 edition.”

Adams may have acquired his copy after reading the advertisement that John Langdon placed in the February 7, 1774, edition of the Boston-Gazette, a newspaper that took an especially vocal stance in support of the Sons of Liberty and the rights of Americans.  Langdon, a bookseller, published the book, engaging the services of Isaiah Thomas as printer.  To incite demand, Langdon informed prospective customers that “This Pamphlet run thro’ Ten Editions in London in less than twelve Months.”  How could anyone interested in politics in the colonies miss out on what was such a popular and influential work in the capital of the empire?  Readers of the Boston-Gazette had to decide for themselves how much to trust Langdon’s assertion about the rapid sales of the pamphlet in London.

That report, however, may have contributed to colonizers overestimating how much the general public on the other side of the Atlantic supported them in their disputes with George III and Parliament.  In Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America, Jordan E. Taylor argues that American newspapers selectively published reports from London, creating narratives of recent events that matched the ideologies of the printers.  Langdon’s note at the end of his advertisement for a political pamphlet used to support the American cause may have buttressed the narrative that Benjamin Edes and John Gill advanced in the news items and editorials they published elsewhere in the Boston-Gazette.  Declaring that The Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations sold so rapidly in London suggested widespread support for the principles it contained as well as applying them to the American colonies.

February 7

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  Kolbe Bell

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (February 7, 1774).

“Embellished with a (Quarto) View of the Town of Boston … neatly engraved on Copper.”

The Royal American Magazine was a popular magazine during a run cut short due to the fighting of the American Revolution.  It was first published in 1774 by Isaiah Thomas, a renowned printer who ran the Massachusetts Spy, a newspaper, since 1770.  The Royal American Magazine lasted from January 1774 to early spring of 1775.  Not many successful magazines were started in America before the American Revolution.  Frank Luther Mott states that there were only fifteen magazines published in America before the Royal American started, most of them lasting a year or less.[1]  Isaiah Thomas’s advertisement campaign for the Royal American, however, helped to make it one of the most successful American magazines prior to independence.

The Royal American Magazine was known for having many more engravings than other American magazines at the time; engravings are visual images inserted into a written work, and were made by carefully carving a reverse image onto a copper plate, coating it with ink, and then transferring the image to paper in a printing press.  The engravings representing a “View of the Town of Boston, and a Representation of a Thunder Storm,” as mentioned in this advertisement, enticed more people to subscribe to the magazine.  According to Mott, “its distinctive feature was a little series of engravings by Paul Revere.”[2]  The fact that the advertisement does not include the name of Paul Revere as the engraver for the magazine shows that Paul Revere’s fame increased after the American Revolution.  Despite the Royal American Magazine containing so many engravings and other content, it did not last much longer than a year.  Nevertheless, it was one of the most popular magazines printed in America before the American Revolution.

Visit the “Royal American Magazine Plates,” part of the “Illustrated Inventory of Paul Revere’s Works at the American Antiquarian Society,” to view the engravings and learn more about them.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

Later than he intended (and later than he had advertised), Isaiah Thomas published the first issue of the Royal American Magazine in early February 1774.  The Adverts 250 Project has tracked Thomas’s extensive advertising campaign over many months in 1773 and 1774, including his announcements that he would publish the first issue in January 1774 and an explanation that a ship running aground delayed delivery of the types for the magazine to Boston.  On Thursday, February 3, he inserted a brief notice in his own newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, pledging that “MONDAY next will be published … NUMBER I. of The Royal AMERICAN MAGAZINE.”  Just as he would do four days later in the advertisement Kolbe examines today, he promoted copperplate engravings of a “View of the Town of Boston, and a Representation of a Thunder Storm.”  Subscribers could leave the engravings intact or, as many likely did, remove them to display in their homes, shops, or offices.

Boston-Gazette (February 7, 1774).

Thomas had aggressively advertised in other newspapers, including several published in Boston.  He once again did so when he finally took the magazine to press.  In addition to the version that ran in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy on February 7, featured above, he placed a shorter notice in the Boston-Gazette on the same day.  Extending only three lines, it declared, “THIS DAY PUBLISHED, (by I. THOMAS,) Number I. of The Royal American MAGAZINE.”  Perhaps he submitted copy that included the blurb about the copperplate engravings to the printing office only to have the compositors edit it for length to fit on the page with the rest of the news and advertising in that issue.  Whatever the case, Thomas fulfilled the promise he made in the Massachusetts Spy on February 3.  He did indeed publish the Royal American Magazine on the following Monday.  He followed up with much more extensive advertisements in the Massachusetts Spy and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter on February 10, announcing his success and encouraging more readers to subscribe.

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[1] Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741-1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), 787-788.

[2] Mott, History of American Magazines, 26.

January 30

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

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Boston-Gazette (January 24, 1774).

“Our Advertising Customers, are desired for the future to send their Advertisements by Saturday Sunset.”

Benjamin Edes and John Gill, printers of the Boston-Gazette, exercised their prerogative as proprietors of the newspaper to place some notices about its operation at the top of the first column on the first page of the January 24, 1774, edition.  Doing so, they hoped, increased the likelihood that the customers they addressed would see them and take note.  To that end, they enclosed their first notice within a decorative border.  The printers declared, “ALL Persons indebted for this Paper, whose Accounts have been above 12 Months standing, are requested to make immediate Payment.”  Printers often extended credit to subscribers.  Some of them remained delinquent for years.

In another notice, Edes and Gill instructed that “Our Advertising Customers, are desired for the future to send their Advertisements by Saturday Sunset.”  Rather than a decorative border, a manicule and italic font called attention to this notice.  Edes and Gill published the Boston-Gazette on Mondays, but ordinances in colonial Boston prohibited working on Sundays.  Sunset occurred at 4:52 in the afternoon on the day the printers published this announcement.  Though that time has been standardized for modern time zones, it was early enough in the day that those laboring in the printing office could set type and finish printing the newspaper in the evening.  John Adams suggests that Edes and Gill may not have always abided the prohibition on working on Sundays.  On Sunday, September 3, 1769, he wrote in his diary that he attended a “Charity Lecture” and then “Spent the Remainder of the Evening and supped with Mr. Otis, in Company with Mr. Adams, Mr. Wm. Davis, and Mr. Jno. Gill.  The Evening spent in preparing for the Next Days Newspaper – a curios Employment.  Cooking up Paragraphs, Articles, Occurences, &c. – Working the political Engine!”  Things were in motion at Edes and Gill’s printing office on Sundays, at least sometimes!  Yet in the early 1770s some colonizers even complained about work undertaken on Saturday evenings.  Announcing that they accepted advertisements until sunset on Saturdays may have been Edes and Gill’s way of indicating that they completed most of their work by that time while also holding firm that they could labor into the evening if they wished.  Although they would not have used the phrase, it gave them plausible deniability about any intentions of working on Sundays.

In a third notice, the printers teased an item that would appear in the next edition.  They acknowledged that they “receiv’d THE REMEMB’RANCER … intended for this Day’s Paper,” yet chose to delay publication for a week.  The piece “publickly reveals very marvellous Practices of his Excellency, at the last Session of the General Assembly.”  Edes and Gill chose to hold off on embarrassing the governor, Thomas Hutchinson, “till next Week, when the Members of both Houses will be more generally in Town.”  The printers may have hoped that the anticipation would yield more sales for the next issue of the Boston-Gazette, though their primary goal seemed to be that as many people as possible, especially those who served in the assembly, would read the piece when issues circulated the following week.  It appeared as the first item on the first page of the January 31 edition.

Rather than opening the January 24 edition with news, editorials, or advertisements submitted by customers, Edes and Gill instead tended to the business of operating their newspaper first and then published other content.  They called on delinquent subscribers to settle accounts, directed advertisers when to submit their notices, and previewed a juicy letter that would appear in the next issue, giving their own notices a prominent place on the page.