Correction to Advertisement

February 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Weekly News-Letter (February 3, 1774).

“In the Advertisement in the last Page … the Sale is to be at the House of Capt. Chase, Innholder in Freetown.”

A correction to an advertisement that appeared on the final page of the February 3, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter appeared on the second page.  It advised, “In the Advertisement in the last Page, of Part of the Estate of the late WILLIAM BOWDOIN, Esq; at Freetown, the Sale is to be at the House of Capt. Chase, Innholder in Freetown (lately improved by Mr. Strange) at Noon, &c.”  The original advertisement stated that a tract of land “is to be Sold at the House of Mr. Strange, Innholder in Freetown.”  The revision correctly acknowledged that Chase now occupied and operated the inn formerly belonging to Strange.  Bowdoin’s executors likely also hoped that it prevented prospective bidders from missing the sale if they went to Strange’s current establishment instead of Chase’s house.

Why not avoid that confusion by updating the advertisement itself?  The answer to that question requires knowing more about the process of producing newspapers on manual presses in the eighteenth century.  Weekly newspapers usually consisted of four pages created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and then folding it in half.  Printers typically printed the first and fourth pages first.  As the ink dried, they set type for the second and third pages.  That meant that the newest or more significant content did not necessarily appear on the front page!  Instead, advertisements sometimes filled the first and last page, with news items and editorials on the center pages.

For the February 3 edition, advertisements ran in the first column of the first pages and news received from New York in the other two columns.  The estate notice appeared on the final page.  On January 27, the first time the executors inserted it in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, the advertisement ran on the first page.  From one issue to the next, the compositor transferred type already set from one page to another.  By the time the executors contacted the printing office about the error, it had already been replicated once again.  Presumably the first and fourth pages for the new issue had been printed, leaving Richard Draper, the printer, to resort to a separate notice on another page to offer the clarification.

The same advertisement, with the same error, ran in the Boston Evening-Post on January 24.  Bowdoin’s executors did not spot the error in time to submit a correction before the January 31 edition, so it appeared once again.  That correlates with a correction for the February 3 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter arriving at the last minute to make it into that issue.  In the next issue of the Boston Evening-Post, published February 7, the estate notice ran with revised copy.  Similarly, the February 10 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Lettercarried the advertisement once again, this time with revised copy.  Given sufficient time, printers and compositors did revise advertisements when their customers made such requests.  When they did not have time, they deployed other strategies for updating their readers.

July 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Essex Gazette (July 6, 1773).

“Should it be observed that Mr. Watkins’s Advertisement, in the next Page, is not inserted in due Order, it may be imputed to our mistaking his Design in the Copy.”

Benjamin Watkins’s advertisement in the July 6, 1773, editions of the Essex Gazette filled two-thirds of a column.  In it, he listed many of the items included among the “fine Assortment of English and India GOODS” that he sold at his shop in Marblehead, Massachusetts.  Listing one or two items per line, Watkins divided his advertisement into two columns.  Compared to other advertisements that consisted of dense paragraphs that clustered the merchandise together, this format incorporated more white space that made it easier for prospective customers to peruse and spot items of interest.

Essex Gazette (July 6, 1773).

Still, the advertisement may not have appeared exactly as Watkins intended.  The editors considered it necessary to publish a brief notice about it: “Should it be observed that Mr. Watkins’s Advertisement, in the next Page, is not inserted in due Order, it may be imputed to our mistaking his Design in the Copy.”  In general, advertisers usually submitted copy to printing offices and then entrusted the format of their advertisements to compositors.  On occasion, some advertisers made special requests or gave instructions, as seems to have been the case with Jolley Allen and the decorative borders that regularly enclosed his advertisements that ran simultaneously in multiple newspapers in Boston.

On occasion, advertisers submitted copy in the format they desired.  That seems to have been the case with Watkins when he sent his advertisement to the printing office in Salem.  Apparently, Watkins’s message to the printers and notes on the format caused some confusion, prompting the compositors to do their best to follow his directions.  Those efforts fell short.  An updated version of the advertisement appeared in the next issue of the Essex Gazette.  It retained the format of two columns with one item per line, but removed some items and moved others so they appeared in a different order.

What kind of communication occurred between Watkins and the printing office?  Watkins ran a shorter advertisement in the June 22 edition.  It consisted of the introduction to the longer versions as well as a nota bene that explained, “The Particulars to be in next Week’s Paper.”  The printers may have inserted that note because they did not have sufficient space to run Watkins’s entire advertisement in that issue, but that may have also been a strategy to gain more time to decipher whatever the merchants sent to the printing office.  On June 29, the longer advertisement appeared for the first time, in the format that merited the note in the July 6 edition.  Perhaps the printers received a message from a dissatisfied Watkins after they had already printed the page that included the second insertion of his advertisement.  In acknowledgment, they published the note on the last page that went to press and then set about making corrections to achieve a final version that ran in four consecutive issues.

Though speculative, this seems like a reasonable sequence of events based on the various iterations of the advertisements and common practices in printing offices in eighteenth-century America.  It suggests that some advertisers actively provided extensive directions concerning format and design even though most simply submitted copy and left the rest to the compositors.