Exact View of the Late Battle at Charlestown

December 23

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

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

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (December 23, 1775).

“A large and exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN.”

Like other printers, John Dixon and William Hunter sold books, pamphlets, almanacs, stationery, and other merchandise to supplement the revenues they generated from newspaper subscriptions, advertisements, and job printing.  They frequently placed advertisements in their newspaper, the Virginia Gazette, to generate demand for those wares.  The December 23, 1775, edition, for instance, included three of their advertisements, one for “SONG BOOKS and SCHOOL BOOKS For SALE at this OFFICE” and another for the “Virginia ALMANACK” for 1776 with calculations “Fitting VIRGINIA, MARYLAND, [and] NORTH CAROLINA” by “the ingenious Mr. DAVID RITTENHOUSE of Philadelphia,” the same mathematician who did the calculations for Father Abraham’s Almanack marketed in Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Their third advertisement promoted memorabilia related to the hostilities that erupted at Lexington and Concord earlier in the year.  “Just come to Hand, and to be SOLD at this PRINTING-OFFICE,” Dixon and Hunter proclaimed, “A large and exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.  The copies they stocked were “Elegantly coloured” and sold for “one Dollar.”  Dixon and Hunter apparently carried a print, “An Exact View,” engraved by Bernard Romans and published by Nicholas Brooks, rather than a striking similar (and perhaps pirated) print, “A Correct View,” that Robert Aitken included in a recent issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum and sold separately.  Romans and Brooks had advertised widely and designated local agents to accept subscriptions for the print.  Dixon and Hunter also advertised another collaboration between Romans and Brooks, “an accurate MAP of The present SEAT of CIVIL WAR, Taken by an able Draughtsman, who was on the Spot at the late Engagement.”  The map also sold for “one Dollar.”  Previous efforts to market the map included a broadside subscription proposal that listed local agents in various towns, including “Purdie and Dixon, Williamsburgh.”  Romans and Brooks apparently had not consulted with all the printers, booksellers, and other men they named as local agents when they drew up the list or else they would have known that Alexander Purdie and John Dixon had dissolved their partnership in December 1774.  Dixon took on Hunter as his new partner while Purdie set about publishing his own Virginia Gazette.  Those details may have mattered less to Romans and Brooks than their expectation that printers, booksellers, and others with reputations for supporting the American cause would indeed aid them in marketing and selling a map depicting the conflict underway in Massachusetts.  Whether or not Purdie or Dixon and Hunter collected subscriptions, local agents in Williamsburg did eventually sell the print and the map that supplemented newspaper accounts and encouraged feelings of patriotism among the consumers who purchased them.

November 1

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

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

Pennsylvania Journal (November 1, 1775).

“A NEAT Mezzotinto print of the Hon. JOHN HANCOCK.”

“A large and exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN.”

“An accurate map of the present seat of CIVIL WAR.”

Nicholas Brooks produced and marketed items that commemorated the American Revolution before the colonies declared independence.  In an advertisement in the November 1, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Journal, for instance, he packaged together three prints previously advertised separately, each of them related to imperial crisis that had boiled over into a war.  For this notice, Brooks presented them as a collection of prints for consumers who wished to demonstrate their support for the American cause by purchasing and displaying one or more of them.

Brooks announced that a “NEAT Mezzotinto print of the Hon JOHN HANCOCK, Esquire, President of the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS,” that had previously been proposed in other advertisements had been published and was now for sale at his shop on Second Street in Philadelphia.  The subscribers who had reserved copies in advance could pick up their framed copies or arrange for delivery.  Others who had not placed advanced orders could acquire the print for three shillings and nine pence or pay two extra shillings for one “elegantly coloured.”

“Likewise, may be had at the above place,” Brooks reported, “a large and exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” depicting what has become known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.  This print competed with an imitation bearing a similar title, “a neat and correct VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” that Robert Aitken inserted in the Pennsylvania Magazine and sold separately.  Brooks, who had long experience selling framed prints, offered choices for his “exact VIEW.”  Customers could opt for an “elegantly coloured” version for seven shillings and six pence” or have it “put in a double carved and gilt frame, with glass 20 by 16 inches,” for eighteen shillings and six pence.  The eleven shillings for the frame, half again the cost of the print, indicated that Brooks anticipated that customers would display the “exact VIEW” proudly in their homes or offices.

He also promoted “an accurate map of the present seat of CIVIL WAR, taken by an able Draughtsman,” Bernard Romans, “who was on the spot of the late engagement.”  Brooks revised copy from earlier advertisements: “The draught was taken by the most skillful draughtsman in all America, and who was on the spot at the engagements of Lexington and Bunker’s Hill.”  The map showed a portion of New England that included Boston, Salem, Providence, and Worcester.   This print, he declared, was a “new impression, with useful additions,” though he did not specify how it differed from the one he previously marketed and sold.  As with the others, customers had a choice of a plain version for five shillings or a “coloured” one for six shillings and six pence.

Brooks added one more item, “a humorous and instructive print, entitled the COMET of 1774, done by a Gentleman in New-York.”  Did this print offer some sort of satirical commentary on current events?  Or was it unrelated to the prints of Hancock, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the “CIVIL WAR” in New England?  Whatever the additional print depicted, Brooks made the prints that commemorated the American Revolution the focus of his advertisement, gathering together three items previously promoted individually.  In so doing, he not only offered each print to customers as separate purchases but also suggested that they could consider them part of a collection.  Consumers who really wanted to demonstrate their patriotism could easily acquire all three at his shop.

October 4

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

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

Pennsylvania Journal (October 4, 1775).

“A NEAT MEZZOTINTO PRINT of the HON. JOHN HANCOKC, ESQ; PRESIDENT of the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.”

On October 4, 1775, Nicholas Brooks took to the pages of the Pennsylvania Journal to announce that he “JUST PUBLISHED … An Exact VIEW of the Late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.  Brooks had previously distributed subscription proposals for the project that he pursued in collaboration with Bernard Romans.  Brooks and Romans had recently worked together on a map of Boston that depicted the siege of the city following the battles at Lexington and Concord.  Brooks described the new print now ready for purchase as a “Large Elegant PIECE, beautifully Coloured, and much superior to any pirated copy now offered or offering to the public.” Apparently, Brooks had not worked with Robert Aitken in making a version to accompany the Pennsylvania Magazine.  It was not the first time that one colonizer pirated the work of another when producing items that commemorated the imperial crisis that eventually became a war for independence.  Paul Revere had done the same with Henry Pelham’s image of the Boston Massacre, advertising his copy in Boston’s newspapers before Pelham marketed the original.

Despite his frustration with the situation, Brooks must have considered prints commemorating the people and events related to the current crisis viable business ventures.  Immediately below his advertisement for “An Exact View of the Late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” he inserted another advertisement, that one proclaiming, “It is PROPOSED to PRINT, in about ten days, A NEAT MEZZOTINTO PRINT of the HON. JOHN HANCOKC, ESQ; PRESIDENT of the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.”  Brooks collected subscribers’ names and reserved copies of the print for them at his shop on Second Street in Philadelphia.  Interested parties could also visit the London Coffee House, a popular spot for socializing, conducting business, and talking politics.  Brooks’s advertisement did not give details about what to do at the London Coffee House.  Subscribers may have given their names to an employee who recorded them on a list or they may have signed their own names (and indicated the number of copies they wished to purchase) on a subscription proposal posted alongside other advertisements.  They very well may have perused the names of other patriots who ordered the print as they committed to acquiring their own copy.  Brooks hoped that they would also purchase “Frames and Glasses” to display the prints from his shop, just as he marketed a “Double Carv’d and Gilt Frame … with Crown Glass” for the print depicting the battle.  Brooks certainly wanted commemorative items to become fashionable items that consumers believed that they not only wanted but needed as the imperial crisis intensified.

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.