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

“The patient fisher takes his silent stand, / Intent, his angle trembling in his hand.”

Edward Pole was no stranger to advertising.  He experimented with a variety of marketing strategies over the years.  Pole started out operating a “GROCERY STORE” in Philadelphia, but he also sold “FISHING TACKLE Of all sorts, for use of either sea or river.”  His advertisement in the Pennsylvania Chronicle in August 1772 gave nearly as much space to fishing tackle as to groceries.  In May 1774, he began adorning his advertisements in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet with a woodcut depicting a fish, drawing attention to the portion of his notice that promoted fishing tackle.  In January 1775, Pole delivered the woodcut to the printing office of the Pennsylvania Ledger to accompany his advertisements in that newspaper.  In April 1776, the familiar image appeared in an advertisement in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet once again.  This time, however, Pole did not mention groceries.  Instead, he devoted his entire advertisement to “FISHING TACKLE” and firearms.  Pole must have found that he could make a living by specializing in sporting goods.  In the 1780s, he distributed ornate trade cards that listed his occupation as “FISHING-TACKLE-MAKER.”

Even though Pole included his woodcut depicting a fish in his advertisement in the April 15, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, it did not appear first.  Visual images usually appeared at the top of newspaper advertisements, but Pole instead chose to open his notice with several lines of poetry from Alexander Pope’s “Windsor-Forest” (1713).

IN genial Spring, beneath the quiv’ring shade,
Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
With looks unmov’d, he hopes the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork and bending reed.
Our plenteous streams a various race suppy:
The bright ey’d PEARCH, with fins of TYRIAN dye;
The silver EEL, in shing volumes roll’d;
The yellow CARP, in scales bedrop’d with gold;
Swift TROUTS, diversify’d with crimson stains,
And PIKE, the tyrants of wat’ry plains.  POPE.

As spring arrived and some consumers contemplated spending leisure time fishing, Pole deployed the poem to invite them to imagine themselves spending time outside, next to a river.  To make the most of that time, they could treat themselves to new fishing equipment, including a “dancing cork” (or bobber) and a “bending reed” (or pole).  Pole was prepared to supply “Gentlemen going on parties in the FISHING way, either to the river, capes, or Black Point,” with “the best kind of FISHING TACKLE suitable for those places.”  Via the lines from “Windsore-Forest,” he prompted them to envision the different fish they might catch or simply the pleasure they would derive from their pastime and the company they would keep, whether their own quiet contemplation or fellowship with other members of their party.  Including the poem increased the length of his advertisement and thus the cost of running of it, but Pole apparently considered it worth the investment to engage prospective customers and make his marketing more memorable.