John Mein

June 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Jun 21 - 6:21:1770 Boston Chronicle
Boston Chronicle (June 21, 1770).

“Desires that all Persons, who have any Accounts open with him, will settle them.”

This is the last advertisement from the Boston Chronicle that will be featured by the Adverts 250 Project.  Regular readers may remember that last month the project noted its final advertisement from the Georgia Gazette, a publication no longer included because copies of that newspaper printed after May 1770 have not survived.  In contrast, the Boston Chronicle, the first newspaper published twice a week in New England, will no longer be featured because it ceased publication on Monday, June 25, 1770.  The America’s Historical Newspapers database does not include that final edition.  Instead, it ends with the penultimate issue from Thursday, June 21.

John Mein and John Fleeming (as their names appeared in the colophon) commenced publication of the Boston Chronicle in December 1767.  In his monumental History of Printing in America (1810), Isaiah Thomas remarks that during the newspaper’s first year of publication it “grew daily into reputation, and had a handsome list of subscribers.”[1]  Thomas also described the decline and demise of the Boston Chronicle:

“Before the close of the second year of publication, its publisher, Mein, engaged in a political warfare with those who were in opposition to the measures of the British administration.  In the Chronicle he abused numbers of the most respectable whigs in Boston; and he was charged with insulting the populace.  To avoid the effects of popular resentment, it became necessary for him to leave the country.  Fleming continued the Chronicle during the absence of Mein, in the name of the firm; but it had fallen into disrepute, and its subscribers in rapid succession withdrew their names.  Many supposed that Mein was privately assisted by the agents of government, and several circumstances rendered this opinion probable.  But when the paper lost its subscribers it could neither be profitable to its publishers, nor answer the design of its supporters.”[2]

In addition to noting that subscribers “withdrew their names,” Thomas could have also reported that advertisers did not place notices in the publication.  The Boston Chronicle competed with four other newspapers published in the city at the time; all of those ran significant advertising content, sometimes so much that they distributed supplements devoted entirely to paid notices.  Many advertisers inserted notices in two, three, or four newspapers simultaneously, usually excluding the Boston Chronicle.  In comparison to its rivals, the Boston Chronicle ran relatively few advertisements. Notices placed by its printers accounted for a disproportionate number of those that did appear within its pages.  The dearth of advertising in a newspaper published in a bustling port city suggested that prospective advertisers did not consider placing their own advertisements in the Boston Chronicle a sound investment.  They may have worried about how many readers would encounter their notice or they may not have desired to have their names and businesses associated with the Boston Chronicle and its reputation.

Only two advertisements appeared in the penultimate issue.  John Bernard placed a notice calling on “all Persons, who have any Accounts open with him” to settle before he departed for England in the fall.  The other announced an auction of “Sundry unserviceable Ordnance Stores” along with timber and stones to be auctioned in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, in August.  Compared to other newspapers printed in the city, the Boston Chronicle has received less notice from the Adverts 250 Project.  That reflects attitudes toward the newspaper in its final years of publication.  Advertisers certainly did not publish notices in the Boston Chronicle to the same extent they did in its competitors.

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[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 264.

[2] Thomas, History of Printing, 264.

January 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jan 3 1770 - 1:3:1770 Georgia Gazette
Georgia Gazette (January 3, 1770.)

“The whole taken from the Boston Chronicle, in which they were first published.”

Newspaper printers participated in networks of exchange in eighteenth-century America, liberally reprinting articles, letters, and editorials from one newspaper to another. Items originally published in, for example, Philadelphia’s newspapers found their way into newspapers printed in other colonies, both north and south. Over time, information radiated outward from the original place of publication. “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” penned by Pennsylvania lawyer and legislator John Dickinson, originally ran as a series of essays in newspapers printed in that colony, but printers from New England to Georgia reprinted the essays over the course of several months as they came into possession of them.

Although the most common, this was not the only means of acquiring coverage of current events published in newspapers in faraway colonies. Sometimes printers collected together several news items and republished them as pamphlets. At least four printers issued their own edition of the popular series of “Letters from a Farmer” in 1768. A couple of years later, an advertisement in the January 3, 1770, edition of the Georgia Gazette informed readers that they could purchase a different pamphlet, A State of the Importations from Great-Britain into the Port of Boston, from the Beginning of Jan. 1769, to Aug. 17th 1769. The entire narrative came directly “from the Boston Chronicle, in which they were first published.” John Mein and John Fleeming, printers of the Boston Chronicle, had collected together a series of articles that ran on the front page for several months.

The advertisement in the Georgia Gazette merely reiterated the lengthy title of this pamphlet, adopting a common marketing strategy in the eighteenth century when titles sometimes provided detailed overviews of the contents of books and pamphlets. Prospective customers learned that it included “the Advertisements of a Set of Men who assumed to themselves the Title of ‘All the Well Disposed Merchants,’ who entered into the a solemn Agreement, (as they called it) not to import Goods from Britain, and who undertook to give a ‘True Account’ of what should be imported by other persons.” Even the notation about “The whole taken from the Boston Chronicle, in which they were first published” appeared on the title page.

This pamphlet collected together lively coverage of recent events in Boston, including Mein’s accusations that prominent merchants played the part of patriots in public while secretly violating the nonimportation agreements for their own benefit. Mein, a Loyalist who resented such hypocrisy, named several of these “Well Disposed Merchants,” taking particular aim at John Hancock. His essays drew the ire of Boston’s patriots and led to violence, especially when Mein published insulting caricatures of many of Boston’s patriot leaders. By the time the advertisement for A State of the Importations ran in the Georgia Gazette, Mein had fled Boston to escape an angry mob.

James Johnston, printer of the Georgia Gazette, did not have enough space in the pages of his newspaper to reprint all of Mein’s explosive essays about Boston’s “Well Disposed Merchants.” Selling the pamphlet that collected them together, however, provided an alternative for sharing items that originally appeared in Boston’s newspaper with notorious Loyalist sympathies. Even if readers did not agree with Mein’s politics, they might have been curious to examine for themselves the spectacle that led to his flight from Boston.

October 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Oct 26 - 10:26:1769 Boston Chronicle
Boston Chronicle (October 26, 1769).

“Printed in AMERICA.”

John Mein was an ardent Tory. In the late 1760s, he and John Fleeming published the Boston Chronicle, one of the most significant Loyalist newspapers. Merrill Jensen describes the Boston Chronicle as “the handsomest newspaper in America” but “also one of the most aggressive.”[1] Mein and Fleeming made it their mission to contradict and oppose the narrative promulgated by patriot printers Benjamin Edes and John Gill in the Boston-Gazette. Mein opposed the nonimportation agreements ratified by Boston’s merchants in response to Parliament imposing duties on imported paper, glass, lead, paint, and tea. Yet when it came to marketing the wares available at his London Book Store on King Street, Mein sometimes adopted a strategy more often associated with patriots who encouraged resistance to the abuses perpetrated by Parliament. In an advertisement that extended an entire column in the October 26, 1769, edition of the Boston Chronicle, Mein proclaimed that he sold books “Printed in AMERICA.” In this instance, the printer and bookseller managed to separate business and politics, hoping to increase the appeal of more than a dozen titles, including several “Entertaining Books for Children,” by making a “Buy American” appeal to consumers.

In that same issue of the Boston Chronicle, Mein and Fleeming published “Outlines OF THE Characters of some who are thought to be ‘WELL DISPOSED.’” As Jensen explains, the “Well Disposed” was “a name first used by the popular leaders to describe themselves, but which their enemies had turned into a gibe.”[2] The character sketches included “Johnny Dupe, Esq; alias the Milch-Cow of the “Well Disposed” (John Hancock), “Samuel the Publican, alias The Psalm Si[ng]er” (Samuel Adams), “Counsellor Muddlehead, alias Jemmy with the Maiden Nose” (James Otis), and “The Lean Apothecary” (Joseph Warren). Jensen notes, “There were many other nicknames which contemporaries doubtless recognized.” These insults created such an uproar that Mein soon departed from Boston in fear of his life. A mob attacked him, but Mein managed to escape, first hiding in the attic of a guardhouse and eventually disguising himself as a soldier and fleeing to a British warship in the harbor. From there he sailed to England, only to discover that “London booksellers to whom he owed money had given power of attorney to John Hancock to collect from his property in Boston.”[3] On Hancock’s suggestion, Mein was jailed for debt.

Mein’s proclamation that he sold books “Printed in AMERICA” had a political valence, but the politics of the marketing appeal did not necessarily match his own politics. Instead, he appropriated a marketing strategy that resonated with prospective customers rather than reflected his own partisan position. His editorials made clear where he stood when it came to current events and the relationship between the colonies and Britain, but that did not prevent him from making a “Buy American” argument in the service of selling of wares.

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[1] Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763-1776 (Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing, 1968, 2004), 360.

[2] Jensen, Founding of a Nation, 361.

[3] Jensen, Founding of a Nation, 362.

April 17

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

GUEST CURATOR: Matthew Ringstaff

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

Boston Chronicle (April 17, 1769).

“APPRENTICES, (Wanted for the PRINTING BUSINESS).”

On April 17, 1769, John Mein and John Fleeming, the printers of the Boston Chronicle, put this advertisement searching for three young apprentices in their own newspaper. The printers wanted apprentices between thirteen and sixteen years of age. Two would work in the “PRINTING BUSINESS” and one in “BOOK BINDING.” Young men usually started apprenticeships in their teenage years and they finished in their early twenties. Bookbinding apprenticeship were not easy, according to Ed Crews. “Mastering the trade required hard work, dexterity, attention to detail, and a willingness and ability to handle painstaking tasks. By the time they became journeymen, apprentices had learned dozens of skills, including folding pages, collating them, stitching, gluing, and techniques for decorating covers.” This shows how hard it was to be a skilled bookbinder. Most apprenticeships were strenuous and not easy, but being an apprentice to a bookbinder could open new opportunities when the apprenticeship ended. Crews says, “Bookbinders with high skills, working in the right shop, could expect satisfying jobs and pay.”

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

Residents of Boston and its environs had access to several local newspapers in the late 1760s. The Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, the Boston Post-Boy, and the Boston Weekly News-Letter had all been published in one form or another for several years or even decades. In December 1767, John Mein and John Fleeming commenced publication of another newspaper, the Boston Chronicle, expanding the options for disseminating both news and advertising. According to Isaiah Thomas in his monumental History of Printing in America, the Boston Chronicle was “intended to imitate in its appearance the London Chronicle.” Like their competitors, Mein and Fleeming published one issue each week. Upon successfully concluding the first year of publication, the partners altered the size of the newspaper and began distributing new issues on both Mondays and Thursdays, making it the first newspaper published twice a week in New England.

In an overview of its contents, Thomas states that the Boston Chronicle “was well supplied with essays on various subjects judiciously selected from British authors, and it contained the celebrated letters of the Pennsylvania Farmer” by John Dickinson, a series reprinted in nearly every newspaper in the colonies in late 1767 and early 1768. Thomas also notes that the newspaper “grew daily into reputation, and had a handsome list of subscribers.” He did not, however, note how successfully Mein and Fleeming attracted advertisers for their newspaper.

Examining the pages of the Boston Chronicle reveals that no matter how “handsome” the list of subscribers, the newspaper did not publish as many advertisements as any of its local competitors, especially not in 1769. This may have been due in part to Mein’s outspoken political sympathies. “Before the close of the second year of publication,” Thomas reports, Mein “engaged in a political warfare with those who were in opposition to the measures of the British administration. In the Chronicle he abused numbers of the most respectable whigs in Boston; and he was charged with insulting the populace.” Perhaps some prospective advertisers hesitated to insert their notices in the Boston Chronicle for fear of being associated with Mein’s strident politics. Others may have made principled decisions not to advertise in the pages of his newspaper. Thomas declares that as the newspaper steadily lost its subscribers “it could neither be profitable to its publishers, nor answer the design of its supporters.”[1] Again, he does not comment on the role of advertising, especially the revenues generated from paid notices, in the demise of the Boston Chronicle.

Not only did the Boston Chronicle carry fewer advertisements than its competitors, a greater proportion of those that appeared in its pages promoted Mein and Fleeming’s endeavors, including their advertisement for apprentices “Wanted for the PRINTING BUSINESS” that appeared immediately below an advertisement for a book Mein sold at the London Book-Store. Only eight advertisements ran in the April 17, 1769, edition of the Boston Chronicle, one quarter of them placed by the publishers. The advertisement for apprentices was not explicitly political, but the politics of the printers may have influenced how many other advertisements happened to appear on the same page.

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[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; 1874; New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 264-265.

March 23

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

GUEST CURATOR: Zachary Dubreuil

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

Boston Chronicle (March 23, 1769).

“JUST PRINTED … PSALMS of DAVID.”

Religion played an important role in the colonies. This advertisement attempted to sell a book, “PSALMS of DAVID … By the Rev. Dr. WATTS.” Watts (1674-1748) was an English educator who later became a pastor. He wrote a series of essays and poetry on theological topics. According to the Poetry Foundation, “Watts published four volumes of poetry: Horae Lyricae; Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707); Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (1715); and The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719).” In addition, “several of his Psalms are among the best-known poems in the English-speaking world. ‘Joy to the World’, for example, is Watts’s rendering of the second part of Psalm 98 in common meter.” Watts’s work is still being used today, like it was during colonial times. This advertisement for a religious book shows us how much many colonists valued religion.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

John Mein’s advertisement for Isaac Watts’s Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament was one of four notices that he inserted in the March 23, 1769, edition of the Boston Chronicle, the newspaper that Mein published with partner John Fleeming. The others included an advertisement for the second edition of Bickerstaff’s Boston Almanack, one for Mein and Fleeming’s Register for New-England and Nova-Scotia, and one in which Mein offered to purchase entire libraries or exchange books. These four advertisements comprised nearly two of the three columns of the final page of the issue.

Guest curator Luke DiCicco and I recently examined the advertisements for the Boston Almanack and the Register. When we published short summaries on Twitter, historian J. L. Bell questioned the number of advertisements placed by Mein and the amount of space that the printer occupied in his own publication. Did the Boston Chronicle lack other advertisers? Or did something else explain the disproportionate advertising related to Mein’s own ventures? After all, other printers regularly placed notices in their own newspapers, but not usually to the same extent.

Three factors likely played a role in the overabundance of advertising by the printer. The Boston Chronicle competed with several other newspapers. It had commenced publication less than a year and a half earlier, while the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, the Boston Post-Boy, and the Boston Weekly News-Letter had been around for years or even decades. From its inception, the Chronicle had fewer advertisements than any of the other newspapers printed in Boston. It took time to build a clientele of readers, subscribers, and advertisers. In 1769, many prospective advertisers likely considered placing their advertisements in other newspapers a better investment. Part of that may have been due to the second factor, Mein’s vocal Tory sentiments. The advertisement for the Register, especially the inclusion of “BRITISH LISTS,” celebrated the colonies’ connection to Britain at a time when many colonists engaged in resistance to abuses by Parliament, including the Townshend Acts. Some prospective advertisers may have been hesitant to hawk their wares in the Chronicle due to the political sympathies expressed by the printers, especially Mein. This hypothesis requires further research. Finally, if Mein still had surplus copies of the Boston Almanack and the Register twelve weeks into 1769 then he desperately needed to sell them. That alone may have justified giving so much space to the advertisements, especially since they promoted reference information good throughout the year, such as lists of colonial officials and the correct dates when the courts would be in session, rather than the astronomical calculations.

Mein’s advertisement for Watts’s Psalms of David was just one several that called attention to his various ventures. As printer of the Boston Chronicle, he exercised his prerogative over the content, filling much of the final page with notices related to his “LONDON BOOK-STORE” on King Street.

March 13

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

GUEST CURATOR: Luke DiCicco

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

Boston Chronicle (March 13, 1769).

“The Reign of his MAJESTY KING GEORGE III.”

This advertisement features an almanac sold by John Mein, who happened to be one of the printers of the Boston Chronicle. The advertisement talks about the king and refers to him as “his MAJESTY KING GEORGE III,” which was still common in 1769 because most colonists were not yet fully in favor of independence. Loyalists were still present in the colonies despite many of the colonists having turned against Parliament because of the Townshend Acts. Mein might have been trying to use this wording to appeal to the colonists and make them want to sympathize with the King again. He was not afraid to show his support for the crown, even if it made some colonists unhappy.

As I read through this newspaper, I kept on noticing John Mein’s name appearing over and over again. I did some research to see what else I could learn about him. He was indeed a loyalist who got himself into a good amount of trouble. According to Carol Sue Humphrey in The American Revolution and the Press, he was very openly opposed to the colonial violation of the nonimportation agreement and often tried to expose those who cheated while they claimed they boycotted British goods in an attempt to have Parliament repeal the taxes from the Townshend Acts.[1] Many of the colonists saw him as a threat and tried to end his schemes. After a series of arguments and some physical altercations, Mein ends up accidently shooting an innocent bystander during an exchange with some angry colonists. In order to avoid trial, he fled the colonies and headed back to Britain

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

In his analysis of John Mein’s advertisement for Bickerstaff’s Boston Almanac, Luke draws on a theme that we have developed in our Revolutionary America class: the transition from resistance to revolution. Rather than assume that as soon as Parliament imposed the Stamp Act in 1765 colonists began clamoring for independence, we have instead traced how they initially sought a redress of grievances and worked for reconciliation with Parliament. Only after “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” as Thomas Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence, did colonists determine that they wished to sever political ties with Great Britain rather than remain part of its empire. By March 1769 colonists had experienced only some of those “abuses” and they did not know what kinds of “usurpations” they might encounter in the future. As Luke notes, many colonists were in the process of enacting nonimportation agreements, leveraging commerce as a means of political resistance in hopes that Parliament would repeal the Townshend Acts just as it had repealed the Stamp Act three years earlier.

Yet not everyone took up the patriot cause, not in 1769 nor in 1776. Luke and his classmates have also studied the presence of loyalists in the colonies during the imperial crisis and the war. I appreciate how he drew on our discussions from class to seek evidence of loyalist sentiment in newspapers and advertisements from the period. The advertisement he selected appeared next to another placed by John Mein and his partner John Fleeming, that one for a “REGISTER FOR NEW-ENGLAND and NOVA-SCOTIA … AND An ALMANACK for 1769.” This second advertisement extensively listed the contents of the almanac, which was a common marketing strategy intended to excite interest among prospective customers. Unlike other advertisements, however, it emphasized “BRITISH LISTS” that included “Births, Marriages and Issues of the Royal family,” an “Alphabetical List of the HOUSE of COMMONS,” and lists of “His Majesty’s most Honorable Privy Council,” among many others. Like other almanacs, Mein and Fleeming’s Register also included lists of colonial officeholders, but it placed particular emphasis on the connection to Britain. The printers used both their almanac and the advertisement to assert British identity even at a time that the rocky relationship between colonies and Parliament intensified. Perhaps they even went to such efforts because they witnessed the relationship deteriorating and wished to remind their fellow colonists where their loyalties should lie.

The Adverts 250 Project frequently traces advertisements that voiced patriot sentiments, either explicitly or implicitly, in the late 1760s, yet patriots were not the only ones who promoted their allegiances in newspaper advertisements. Some loyalists, especially bold ones like Mein, utilized advertisements in addition to other portions of the public prints to make political arguments.

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[1] Carol Sue Humphrey, The American Revolution and the Press: The Promise of Independence (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2013), 56-58.

January 15

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Boston Chronicle (January 12, 1769).

“The sittings of the superior and inferior courts … may be depended on as correct.”

In January 1769, printers and booksellers throughout the colonies advertised almanacs for the new year, attempting to sell excess inventory rather than take a loss on surplus copies. In his efforts to incite demand for a second edition of “BICKERSTAFFs BOSTON ALMANACK,” John Mein emphasized the accuracy of its contents, especially the dates of the “sittings of the superior and inferior courts” in Massachusetts. In so doing, Mein implicitly referenced a dispute between other printers in Boston, William McAlpine on one side and T. and J. Fleet, Edes and Gill, and Richard Draper on the other. After McAlpine issued Nathaniel Ames’s Astronomical Diary, or, Almanack for the Year of our Lord Christ 1769 in the fall of 1768, a cabal of rival printers published a counterfeit edition of the popular almanac. To add insult to injury, they promoted the pirated copy by running advertisements that claimed “a counterfeit Ames’s Almanack has been printed not agreeable to the original copy” and implied that it contained “above Twenty Errors in the Sittings of the Courts.”

Mein did not weigh in on that controversy, but as one of the printers of the Boston Chronicle he almost certainly would have been aware of it. With so many competing titles, he took advantage of an opportunity to distinguish the almanac that he printed and sold at his bookstore on King Street. His advertisement in the January 12 edition of the Boston Chronicle did not comment on any of the contents except to declare the accuracy of the court dates. Mein did not highlight any of the entertaining features. He did not promote other useful information included in the almanac. Instead, he assured prospective customers that “The sittings of the superior and inferior courts of this province, inserted in this Almanack, may be depended on as correct; being obtained from a Gentlemen, one of the Clerks of the court.” Mein had done his due diligence in confirming the dates with a reputable source before taking the almanac to press. Furthermore, “The same care has been taken with the courts of the other provinces.” Prospective customers who might have business in Connecticut, New Hampshire, or Rhode Island could depend the accuracy of the dates in Bickerstaff’s Boston Almanack.

That Mein issued a second edition testified to the popularity of the almanac, yet he presented readers an additional reason for choosing it over others. Amidst the uncertainty of which edition of Ames’s Almanack contained accurate information, consumers could sidestep the confusion by purchasing Bickerstaff’s Boston Almanack instead. Its contents had been carefully compiled after consultation with officials who possessed the most accurate information about when the courts would conduct business in 1769.

January 2

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

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

“Received many intimations and advices, from numbers of our Subscribers.”

Boston Chronicle (January 2, 1769).

When the Boston Chronicle concluded its first year of publication, printers John Mein and John Fleeming inserted a lengthy notice that listed several proposed “Amendments and Additions.” These included “enlarg[ing] the size of our Paper one half more,” starting on the first Monday of January 1769. When that day arrived, however, Mein and Fleeming published a new address “To the PUBLIC” to explain that they had further revised their proposals in response to requests received “from numbers of our Subscribers.” Rather than a larger newspaper delivered once a week on Mondays, those subscribers stated a preference for an “additional Paper on THURSDAY, or SATURDAY.”

While certainly informal compared to modern standards, this feedback amounted to market research for the printers. Mein and Fleeming weighed the evidence before making their final determination about the new plan for their publication. In choosing between Thursday and Saturday for a second edition, they opted for Thursday due to “the greatest number of our Subscribers inclining to have it on that day.” Yet they did not wish to disappoint those who desired a Saturday edition. To that end, they devised an alternative when circumstances permitted: “to oblige our friends, who wish for part of the paper on SATURDAY evening, whenever the southern post arrives before seven o’clock, we shall publish four pages that night.” Subscribers who lived in town could send for their newspapers two hours after the arrival of the post. Any who declined to do so could depend on the newspaper being delivered on Monday as usual.

Mein and Fleeming underscored that they made these changes in acknowledgment of the needs and desires expressed by their customers: “this alteration is made at the request of a great number of our Subscribers, and is designed for the better entertainment of the whole.” The printers made it their “first and principal study to give them satisfaction.” In other words, when presented with the results of rudimentary market research, Mein and Fleeming adjusted their business model accordingly in order to better serve their customers. In so doing, they commenced a new publication schedule unlike that of any other newspaper in the city. The Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, the Boston Post-Boy, the Boston Weekly News-Letter, Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette, and Green and Russell’s Massachusetts Gazette all continued as weeklies. The Boston Chronicle became a semiweekly in response to customer demand, at least according to the address “To the PUBLIC” the printers inserted in the first issue for 1769.

December 12

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

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

Boston Chronicle (December 12, 1768).

“The peculiar advantage of having most of their Advertisements preserved and generally in view.”

The masthead of the December 12, 1768, Boston Chronicle proclaimed that it was “VOL. I. NO. 52.” John Mein and John Fleeming, the publishers acknowledged the milestone in a notice that they inserted immediately before the other advertisements at the end of the issue. “THE first year of the Publication of the BOSTON CHRONICLE being now concluded,” the publishers proclaimed, “we take this opportunity of returning our thanks to all the Gentlemen and Ladies, who have contributed to support it.” Partly out of appreciation and partly out of enthusiasm for commencing another year of publication, Mein and Fleeming then outlined several “Amendments and Additions” to the plan for their newspaper.

Each of the six enumerated “Amendments and Additions” marketed the Boston Chronicle in one way or another. The first, for instance, stated that they would enlarge the size of the newspaper by half “without any additional expence to the Subscribers.” The change would commence with the first issue of 1769. This change would make space for the third, fourth, and fifth improvements to the newspaper: reviews of “every New Book of Note, published in Great-Britain,” more comprehensive reporting of “Religious Disputes,” and, most ambitiously, “Every piece of history, politics, entertainment, agriculture, or poetry, &c. &c. that shall be judged worthy of inserting.” Space constraints and “the length of the historical and political articles” had previously prevented Mein and Fleeming from including all the content they considered valuable to subscribers, but enlarged editions would remedy that. If all of this was not enough, the publishers also offered a premium to subscribers: “an elegant copper-plate [map], the size of a folio page.” The second of the “Amendments and Additions” stated that subscribers would receive this gift gratis sometime within the coming year. Mein and Fleeming envisioned it as an annual tradition.

The sixth and final improvement addressed advertising: “Advertisements will be inserted at a very reasonable price.—The Advertisers will enjoy the peculiar advantage of having most of their Advertisements preserved and generally in view, as the Papers are calculated to be bound up at the conclusion of the year.” Mein and Fleeming imagined that subscribers collected every issue of the Boston Chronicle throughout the year, with the intention of taking them to bookbinder to be bound into a single volume. Subscribers could then consult the “historical and political articles” later, but that was not the only content they would peruse. They would also encounter advertisements as they once again consulted the pages of the Boston Chronicle. According to Mein and Fleeming, the newspaper was not disposable. The advertisements were not ephemeral. Instead, both would continue to inform, educate, and influence people long after first published.

When they announced their “Amendments and Additions” to mark the first complete year of publishing he Boston Chronicle, Mein and Fleeming focused primarily on the benefits to subscribers, but not exclusively. They also promoted their newspaper as a mechanism for distributing advertisements, aiming to increase the number of paid notices as well as the number of subscribers.

May 2

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

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

May 2 - 5:2:1768 Page 183 Boston Chronicle Supplement
Supplement to the Boston Chronicle (May 2, 1768).

“LONDON BOOK-STORE, North-side of KING-STREET, Boston.”

Like many other printers in eighteenth-century America, John Mein and John Fleeming took advantage of publishing a newspaper to insert advertisements for their own goods and services. In addition to a note in the colophon advising prospective clients that “All Manner of Printing-work performed at the most reasonable Rates” at their printing office in Newbury Street, the partners included two advertisements for books they sold in the May 2, 1768, edition of the Boston Chronicle. One appeared in the standard issue and the other in the supplement that accompanied it.

The first did not deviate significantly from the length of most other advertisements in their newspaper. It promoted their pamphlet that collected together John Dickinson’s “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” proclaiming that each was “Printed exactly from the Philadelphia papers, in which these Letters were first published.”

The second occupied significantly more space. In it, Mein published a book catalog that listed many of the titles from the “very GRAND ASSORTMENT of the BEST BOOKS in every branch of POLITE LITERATURE, ARTS, and SCIENCES” in stock at the London Book-Store on King Street. This advertisement filled an entire page as well as the first column of the next page, four of the twelve columns in the supplement.

Full-page advertisements were rare but not unknown in the 1760s. Still, scholars of advertising and printing history must be careful when distinguishing among such advertisements, especially when working primarily with digitized sources. No matter the actual size of an original, databases of digitized newspapers standardize it to the size of the screen. When scholars print those sources they are once again standardized when remediated, this time to an 8.5×11 sheet of office paper. Thus a page from the May 2, 1768, edition of the Boston Chronicle appears to be the same size as a page from the May 2, 1768, edition of the Boston Evening-Post.

Yet that was not the case. The production process created material texts of two different sizes. The Boston Evening-Post, like most other newspapers printed in the colonies at the time, was a folio newspaper. In other words, each issue consisted of four pages created by printing two per side and folding a broadsheet in half. The Boston Chronicle, on the other hand, was a quarto newspaper. It had been folded once again, yielding eight pages from a single broadsheet rather than just four. The pages were smaller, changing the experience of carrying and reading the newspaper.

This also changed the proportion of space constituted by a single page in quarto-sized newspapers. In standard issues, each page accounted for one-eighth rather than one-quarter of the content. In supplements, each page accounted for one-quarter rather than one-half. This does not diminish the significance of Mein and Fleeming devoting so much space in the May 2, 1768, edition of the Boston Chronicle to their own advertisements, especially since the full-page advertisement in the supplement flowed through an entire column on a subsequent page. At the same time, however, the magnitude of this innovation must be measured against the size of the actual page rather than the deceptive size of the remediated image. The publishers created a spectacle, but since a full-page advertisement required less space in their newspaper than in most others they also left room for news items and paid notices.

May 2 - 5:2:1768 Page 184 Boston Chronicle Supplement
Supplement to the Boston Chronicle (May 2, 1768).