Massachusetts Spy

June 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Massachusetts Spy (June 14, 1775).

“RAN away … a NEGRO MAN, named TOWER.”

Isaiah Thomas, the printer of the Massachusetts Spy, left Boston just before the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.  He had previously advertised that he intended to establish a printing office in Worcester and install a junior partner there to print the town’s first newspaper.  When he decided to leave Boston to escape the ire of British officials he had angered with his advocacy for the Patriot cause, however, he revised his plans.  Instead of a junior partner printing a new newspaper, Thomas moved the Massachusetts Spy to Worcester and continued publishing it there, safely beyond the reach of Tories in Boston.  Although the numbering of the newspaper continued uninterrupted, it gained a new subtitle, American Oracle of Liberty, and a warning that ran across the top of the masthead, “Americans! — Liberty or Death! — Join or Die.”

When published in Boston, the Massachusetts Spy carried advertisements that offered enslaved people for sale and notices that described enslaved people who liberated themselves by running away from their enslavers and offered rewards for their capture and return.  Despite the new subtitle and the admonitions in the masthead, Thomas continued to earn revenue for his newspaper by printing those advertisements in the Massachusetts Spy after moving it to Worcester.  Away from the colony’s largest urban port, colonizers did not resort to such notices as often, but they did submit them to the printing office and Thomas did publish them. The June 14, 1775, edition of the Massachusetts Spy, the seventh issue printed in Worcester, carried an advertisement about a “NEGRO MAN, named TOWER” who “RAN away” from Nathaniel Read of the nearby town of Western.  Read stated that “Whoever will take up said Runaway shall be handsomely rewarded.”  That advertisement appeared immediately below a news update that confirmed that residents of Charleston, South Carolina, had received word of “a skirmish, or in fact rather an engagement, which happened between his Majesty’s troops and the Provincials” on April 19.  The extract of the letter, written by a British officer in Boston and sent to a correspondent in Charleston, acknowledged that “On the whole the Provincials behaved with unexpected bravery.”  Tower also acted with courage, though not necessarily “unexpected bravery,” as he enacted his own plan for “Liberty or Death!”  Neither Read nor most readers allowed for that possibility, though an item that appeared in the next issue of the Massachusetts Spyindicated that some colonizers in Massachusetts did grapple with the meaning of freedom for enslaved people and the applied the rhetoric of the Revolution to them as well.  The Adverts 250 Project will feature that item next week.

May 31

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (May 31, 1775).

“The Publisher of this paper will be supplied with the most early and authentic Intelligence from all parts of the continent.”

Four weeks after commencing publication of the Massachusetts Spy in Worcester at the beginning of May 1775, Isaiah Thomas continued building the infrastructure necessary to operate a successful newspaper.  The Massachusetts Spy had been published in Boston since July 1770, but Thomas removed his press from the city and sent it to Worcester shortly before the battles at Lexington and Concord.  He had previously intended to install a junior partner in a printing office in Worcester and oversee publication of a new newspaper from afar, but he became increasingly nervous about remaining in Boston since his ardent advocacy for the patriot cause drew the attention of British officials and Loyalist colonizers. Fearing for his safety, he revised his plans, removing the Massachusetts Spy to Worcester and giving it a new secondary title, American Oracle of Liberty.

In the May 31 edition, Thomas continued to run subscription proposals that gave information about the newspaper, including its size (“large folio”), day of publication (“every WEDNESDAY Morning, as early as possible), and price (“Six Shillings and Eight Pence per annum”).  He also solicited advertisements and listed about two dozen local agents who accepted subscriptions in various towns in Worcester County.  In addition to the subscription proposals, Thomas inserted a new notice that announced, “In a few days a rider will be established to go from this town to Cambridge,” where the Massachusetts Provincial Congress met during the siege of Boston, “and on suitable encouragement another appointed to go to Providence, exclusive of the public Post-riders.”  Why did Thomas hire his own riders?  He explained that “the publisher of this paper will be supplied with the most early and authentic Intelligence from all parts of the continent,” the latest news “which he will ever furnish his readers, as soon as possible after it comes to his hands.”  Although Worcester is the second largest city in New England today, it was a small town in 1775.  It was not a hub for collecting information about current events, but Thomas aimed to change that.  He devised a plan for getting letters from Cambridge and newspaper from throughout the colonies via Providence.  Moving the Massachusetts Spy to Worcester meant establishing new means of gathering the news to collate into the newspaper to keep readers well informed.  Thomas was so committed to that endeavor that he employed his own riders rather than depending solely on those who already had routes that connected Worcester to Cambridge or Providence.

May 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (May 3, 1775). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

“I beg the Assistance of all the Friends to our righteous Cause to circulate this Paper.”

When the patriot printer Isaiah Thomas revived the Massachusetts Spy, originally published in Boston, after fleeing to Worcester to evade “friends of the British administration” who “openly threatened him with the effects of their resentment,” the first issue published in that town opened with a notice to the public.[1]  He reminded readers that he had previously entered into an agreement to aid in establishing a press in Worcester, installing a junior partner to manage a printing office there while he oversaw the enterprise from Boston.  He had issued proposals for the newspaper, intending to name it the “WORCESTER GAZETTE, or AMERICAN ORACLE of LIBERTY.”  However, when Thomas determined that it became “highly necessary that I should remove my Printing Materials from Boston to this Place,” he decided to “continue the Publication of the well-known MASSACHUSETTS SPY, or THOMAS’S BOSTON JOURNAL.”  He continued the numbering but gave it a new title, combining elements of the existing one and the proposed one: Massachusetts Spy Or, American Oracle of Liberty.  In addition, the masthead proclaimed, “Americans! — Liberty or Death! — Join or Die!”

In his notice, Thomas reported that first he sent his “Printing Utensils” to Worcester and then “escaped myself from Boston on the memorable 19th of April, 1775, which will be remembered in the future as the Anniversary of the BATTLE of LEXINGTON!”  Elsewhere that first issue published in Worcester, Thomas provided a chronicle of the battle “collected from those whose veracity is unquestioned.”  That narrative likely incorporated elements drawn from the printer’s own firsthand account.  Several years later, he recorded that at daybreak on April 19 he “crossed from Boston over to Charlestown in a boat with Dr. Joseph Warren, went to Lexington, and joined the provincial militia in opposing the king’s troops.”[2]  The following day, went to Worcester to open the printing office and revive his newspaper.  He was proud of that work and the service he provided, making a note and signing his name in the margin at the bottom of the first page of the first issue published there: “This News-paper is the first Thing ever printed in Worcester – Isaiah Thomas.”

Massachusetts Spy (May 3, 1775). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

Having installed himself in that town, he made clear his purpose in publishing the Massachusetts Spy as such momentous events occurred.  He pledged to give “the utmost of my poor Endeavours … to maintain those Rights and Priviledges for which we and our Fathers have bled!”  To that end, he would “procure the most interesting and authentic Intelligence” to keep his readers in central Massachusetts and beyond informed of the latest news.  In addition, he called on “all the Friends to our righteous Cause” to aid in circulating the Massachusetts Spy.  Many had already enlisted in that endeavor, serving as local agents who collected the names of subscribers and forwarded them to the printing office.  In revised proposals that ran immediately below Thomas’s notice, he listed associates who accepted subscriptions in nearly three dozen towns in Worcester County and indicated that “many other Gentlemen in several parts of the province” did as well.

Of the five newspapers published in Boston at the beginning of April 1775, the Massachusetts Spy was the first to suspend publication, the decision resulting from Thomas leaving town rather than the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord.  It was also the first to resume circulating weekly issues on a regular schedule, a result of the printer’s foresight in relocating to Worcester.  Some of the other newspapers folded completely, but the Massachusetts Spy continued throughout the war and well beyond.

Massachusetts Spy (May 3, 1775). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

Click here to view the entire May 3, 1775, edition of the Massachusetts Spy, including Thomas’s note on the first page and the account of the Battle of Lexington on the third page.  That copy is in the collections of the American Antiquarian Society, founded by Thomas in 1812.

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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), 168

[2] Thomas, History of Printing, 168-9.

April 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Boston Evening-Post (April 17, 1775).

“THE Massachusetts Spy … will be published … in the Town and County of Worcester.”

Isaiah Thomas published the last issue of the Massachusetts Spy in Boston on April 6, 1775.  Eleven days later, advertisements in the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy informed readers that the “Massachusetts Spy, or Thomas’s Boston Journal, will be published on Wednesday the 3d Day of May next in the Town and County of Worcester, and will be immediately forwarded to Boston.”  Why did Thomas suddenly suspend publishing the Massachusetts Spy, founded in 1770, and relocate to Worcester with plans to revive the newspaper there?

In his History of Printing in America, published in 1810, Thomas declared, “It became at length apparent to all reflecting men that hostilities must soon take place between Great Britain and her American colonies.”  Through the editorial stance he took in the Massachusetts Spy, the patriot printer “had rendered himself very obnoxious to the friends of the British administration; and, in consequence, the tories, and some of the British soldiery in the town, openly threatened him with the effects of their resentment.”  Along with other residents of Boston, Thomas had endured all sorts of “Distresses,” as he called them, following the closure of the harbor in retaliation for the destruction of the tea, but now his own safety was at stake.  “For these and other reasons, he was induced to pack up, privately, a press and types, and to send them in the night over the Charles river to Charlestown, whence they were conveyed to Worcester.”  Thomas was smart with his timing for getting out of Boston: “This was only a few days before the affair at Lexington.”[1]  The printer smuggled a press out of Boston just before the Revolutionary War began with the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord followed by the siege of Boston.

Near the end of February, the Massachusetts Spy carried subscription proposals for a “New Weekly NEWS-PAPER … To be entitled, The WORCESTER GAZETTE.”  Thomas had made arrangements with “a number of gentlemen in the county of Worcester, zealously engaged in the cause of the country … to open a printing house, and to publish a newspaper there, in the course of the ensuing spring.”  It would be the town’s first printing office and first newspaper.  Thomas planned “to send a press, with a suitable person to manage the concerns of it,” having previously gained experience setting up Henry-Walter Tinges as a junior partner who oversaw their printing office in Newburyport and printed the Essex Journal.  “The war commencing sooner than expected,” however, Thomas “was obliged to leave Boston, and came himself to Worcester, opened a printing house, and on the 3d of May, 1775, executed the first printing done in the town.”[2]

As he prepared to open that printing office, his advertisement in newspapers still published in Boston advised the public that the “Publisher [of the Massachusetts Spy] begs the continuance of the favors of his good Customers, and assures then that notwithstanding the distance to which he has removed, he shall be able to give them all that Satisfaction in his publications which they have hitherto approved.”  Furthermore, he planned to return to Boston “[a]s soon as the tranquility of this unfortunate Capital is restored,” not knowing at the time that he would remain in Worcester after the war ended.  For the moment, he designated a local agent, Alexander Thomas, who oversaw his shop in Boston and saw to the delivery of new issues of the Massachusetts Spy on Thursdays, the day after the printer published them in Worcester.  He also requested that “All Persons indebted for the Massachusetts Spy … pay their respective balances.” Like other printers, Thomas extended credit to his customers, but the “great distress [of] the unhappy state of affairs” made it necessary to call on them to make payment.”  Thomas faced a new chapter, one that the Adverts 250 Projectwill chronicle as it examines advertisements placed in revolutionary American newspapers.

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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 Press, 1970), 168.

[2] Thomas, History of Printing, 180-181.

March 23

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

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

Massachusetts Spy (March 23, 1775).

“A FINE mezzotinto print of that truly worthy Patriot S.A.”

When Charles Reak and Samuel Okey set about publishing a “FINE mezzotinto print of that truly worthy Patriot” Samuel Adams in the spring of 1775, they believed that they could generate interest in their project in Boston.  Accordingly, they placed advertisements in the March 23 edition of the Massachusetts Spy and the March 26 edition of the Boston-Gazette. Reak and Okey chose among the five newspapers published in Boston at the time, selecting the two that consistently took the strongest stance in favor of the American cause during the imperial crisis that eventually became a war for independence.  The savvy entrepreneurs knew which publications would put their notice before the eyes of readers most likely to form a market for a print of the influential and vocal advocate for American liberties.

The advertisement did not go into much detail about the print.  It did not even name Adams, trusting that prospective customers would recognize him from the description and his initials, “S.A.”  They did give the size, “fourteen inches by ten and an half,” so readers could envision framing and displaying the print.  A note at the end of Reak and Okey’s notice in the Massachusetts Spy suggested that they had provided more information to the printing office and “[t]he remainder of this advertisement [will appear] in our next [issue].”  The Boston-Gazette, however, carried the same copy without any additions.  The Massachusetts Spy did not run any version of the advertisement again, neither the original nor an updated variation.  Isaiah Thomas, the printer, published only two more issues in Boston before the political situation got too hot for him to remain there.  He re-established the Massachusetts Spy in Worcester, safely away from British authorities, in May.  The Boston-Gazette did run Reak and Okey’s advertisement one more time, on April 3, but Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the printers (and local agents designated to sell the print of Adams) suspended the newspaper after publishing the April 17 edition.  Following the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord on April 19, they dissolved their partnership.  Edes moved to Watertown and continued publishing the newspaper from there in June.  The outbreak of hostilities almost certainly disrupted Reak and Okey’s plans for advertising and distributing their print of Samuel Adams.

March 9

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

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

Massachusetts Spy (March 9, 1775).

“Imported from LONDON the Spring before the Harbour of Boston was blockade up.”

Although marketing began a little later in the season than in recent years, several retailers placed advertisements for garden seeds in Boston’s newspaper in early March 1775.  The March 9 edition of the Massachusetts Spy, for instance, once again carried Susannah Renken’s advertisement as well notices placed by John Adams, Elizabeth Clark and Elizabeth Nowell, and Ebenezer Oliver.  Each of these purveyors of seeds took to the public prints as spring approached each year, though many familiar names did not yet appear.  More than half a dozen women usually advertised garden seeds that they sold in Boston, but the imperial crisis, especially the closing of the harbor because of the Boston Port Act, disrupted that annual ritual.

Renken, one of the most enterprising of those female seed sellers, apparently acquired her inventory from a ship that landed at Salem.  She identified the captain of the vessel that had transported them across the Atlantic.  Adams and Oliver both declared that they sold seeds “Imported from London,” but did not provide additional details to allow prospective customers in the eighteenth century (or historians in the twenty-first century) to reach conclusions about when and how they came into possession of those seeds.  Clark and Nowell, on the other hand, made clear that their seeds had been “Imported from LONDON the Spring before the Harbour of Boston was blockade up.”  They received their seeds at least nine months earlier, a factor that may or may not have been an advantage.  Adams declared that he “warrants [his seeds] good, and of the last Year’s Growth.”  Similarly, Renken described her seeds as “New and warranted of the last Year’s Growth.”  Clark and Nowell could not make such claims.  Instead, they attempted to leverage the date of delivery as a point in their favor.  Although not “new,” their seeds also were not so old that they would not germinate, especially if Clark and Nowell had stored them carefully.  They asked prospective customers to take into account the challenges that they all faced due to the blockade, hoping that a sense of mutual support would convince consumers to select their seeds over the ones offered by their competitors.

March 2

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (March 2, 1775).

“GARDEN SEEDS New and warranted of the last Year’s Growth.”

Although her advertisement appeared later than in some years, Susannah Renken was the first to advertise “GARDEN SEEDS” in Boston in 1775.  She had also been first in 1768, 1770, and 1773, commencing an annual ritual of seed sellers, most of them women, taking to the pages of Boston’s newspapers to hawk extensive selections of garden seeds.  In 1775, Renken’s first advertisements was brief, just two lines in the February 23 edition of the Massachusetts Spy: “SUSANNAH RENKEN, has received a fresh supply of Garden Seeds.  Particulars in our next.”  She may have been in such a rush to run any advertisement at all that she did not have time to prepare her usual list of seeds before Isaiah Thomas, the printer, took that issue to press, though Thomas may have opted to publish an abbreviated notice.  A note at the bottom of the column advised, “Advertisements omitted will be in our next.”  Renken may have been fortunate that even a short notice appeared.  The following week, her full advertisement, featuring dozens of varieties of seeds, ran in the Massachusetts Spy.

The copy of the March 2 edition digitized to grant greater access has been damaged, eliminating the first lines of Renken’s advertisement, but it ran again the following week.  That issue reveals that the notice began with a familiar introduction: “Imported in Capt, Shayler from LONDON, And to be Sold by SUSANNAH RENKEN.”  Merchants, shopkeepers, and other purveyors of goods often stated which vessels carried their merchandise, revealing to prospective customers when their wares had been shipped and delivered.  In this case, it meant that Renken’s seeds arrived in the colonies, but not in Boston, several months before she placed her advertisement; she may have acquired her seeds only recently.  With the city’s harbor closed to commerce because of the Boston Port Act, Shayler’s vessel arrived in Salem with “Fresh Advices from London” in late November 1774, according to the December 5 edition of the Boston-Gazette.  Shayler delivered goods as well as news, but Renken had to arrange to have her seeds transported from Salem to Boston.  Perhaps she had only just confirmed delivery when her brief notice appeared in the Massachusetts Spy.  When W.P. Bartlett advertised garden seeds in the February 21, 1775, edition of the Essex Gazette, published in Salem, he proclaimed that his wares were “JUST IMPORTED, in the Venus, from LONDON.”  In previous years, Renken and her sister seed sellers in Boston usually did not describe their seeds as “just imported.”  In 1775, the imperial crisis prevented them from even considering doing so.

February 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (February 23, 1775).

“A New Weekly NEWS-PAPER … The WORCESTER GAZETTE; OR, AMERICAN ORACLE of LIBERTY.”

Among the advertisements in the February 23, 1775, edition of the Massachusetts Spy appeared “PROPOSALS For … A New Weekly NEWS-PAPER … To be entitled, The WORCESTER GAZETTE; OR, AMERICAN ORACLE of LIBERTY.”  That newspaper would commence publication in Worcester, about forty miles west of Boston, “as soon as Seven Hundred Subscribers have entered their names.”  It would be the first newspaper published in that town, giving residents greater access to “the most early and authentic Intelligence, and such Political Essays, as are worthy of Public notice, with other matters interesting and entertaining.”

In his History of Printing in America (1810), Isaiah Thomas explained, “In 1774, a number of gentlemen in the county of Worcester, zealously engaged in the cause of the country, were from the then appearance of public affairs, desirous to have a press established in Worcester.”  In other words, supporters of the patriot cause wanted a local newspaper instead of relying on newspapers published in Boston, Salem, Newburyport, Providence, Portsmouth, Norwich, and Hartford.  Although newspapers from each of those towns served readers in larger, overlapping regions, Patriots in Worcester believed that a local newspaper would both serve their community and strengthen their position.  By the time they “applied to a printer in Boston” in December 1774, the “Worcester Revolution” had already closed the courts and removed British authority from that town.  Thomas, that printer in Boston, “engaged to open a printing house, and to publish a newspaper there, in the course of the ensuing spring.”  He initially intended to follow a model like the one for establishing the Essex Journal in partnership with Henry-Walter Tinges in Newburyport.  Tinges, the junior partner, managed the printing office there while Thomas remained in Boston.  As part of his preparations, Thomas published the proposals for the Worcester Gazette as he worked on recruiting “a suitable person to manage the concerns of it.” However, when the Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, Thomas “was obliged to leave Boston, and came himself to Worcester” and became the city’s first printer.[1]

When Thomas disseminated the first issue on May3, he combined the name of the newspaper he published in Boston for several years, the Massachusetts Spy, and the intended name for the new newspaper, calling it the Massachusetts Spy or American Oracle of Liberty.  As outlined in the proposals from February, he published the newspaper “every WEDNESDAY Morning, as early as possible” so it could be “delivered to the Subscribers in Worcester at their houses, and sent by the first opportunity to such as are at a greater distance.”  The annual subscription fee in the colophon matched the proposals, “Six Shillings and Eight Pence per annum, the same as the Boston news-papers.”  The colophon did not list rates for advertising, though the proposals stated that they would be “inserted in a neat and conspicuous [manner], at the same rates as they are in Boston.”  Little did Thomas know when he published the “PROPOSALS [for] The WORCESTER GAZETTE” in February 1775 that he would soon relocate to that town and become one of its most prominent residents, establishing the first printing office and, eventually, founding the American Antiquarian Society in 1812.

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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), 180-181.

February 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (February 16, 1775).

“THE PETITION of the American Continental Congress, to the KING.”

In February 1775, Isaiah Thomas, printer of the Massachusetts Spy, published and advertised “THE PETITION of the American Continental Congress, to the KING.”  During its meetings in Philadelphia in September and October 1774, the delegates to the First Continental Congress drafted several documents.  Almost as soon as they adjourned, William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, advertised “EXTRACTS FROM THE VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.”  Over the next several weeks, printers in towns throughout the colonies published local editions to supplement coverage in their newspapers.  By the end of November, the Bradfords published a more complete “JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONGRESS Held at PHILADELPHIA,” though not as many printers issued local editions of that pamphlet.  After all, the Extracts already contained “The BILL of RIGHTS; a List of GRIEVANCES; occasional RESOLVES; the ASSOCIATION; and ADDRESS to the people of Great-Britain; and a MEMORIAL to the Inhabitants of the British American Colonies.”

Yet neither the Extracts nor the Proceedings included all the work undertaken by the First Continental Congress.  In his advertisement, Thomas asserted that he published the Petition “For the benefit of those who have purchased the Votes and Proceedings of the Continental Congress, or the Extracts therefrom, as it is inserted in neither of said Pamphlets.”  He encouraged colonizers to complete their collections of these important documents.  As part of that marketing strategy, he noted that he printed the Petition “in a Pamphlet that it may be either bound of stitched up with the Votes and Proceedings.”  Buyers had the option to collect the several pamphlets together under a single cover, though few seem to have done so.  In a description of the copy now in the collections of the Princeton University Library, the William Reese Company declared, “We can locate only three copies of this rarity, those at the Library of Congress, Massachusetts Historical and American Antiquarian Society.”  That colonizers did not bind the Petition with other pamphlets, however, does not necessarily mean that they did not purchase or read it.  Thomas described the Petition as “Worthy the perusal of his Majesty and every subject in his dominions.”  As the imperial crisis intensified in the winter and spring of 1775, readers may have been eager to consume as much as they could about the positions taken by the First Continental Congress, including this eight-page pamphlet for “two coppers.”  In an advertisement for another political pamphlet claimed that such a “small price” made it affordable to “every person who is desirous” of reading about “our political Controversy.”

February 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (February 16, 1775).

“I have no connection with said SUMNER.”

Charles Willis needed to correct an error.  An advertisement in the February 13, 1775, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy proclaimed that “SUMNER and WILLIS … CARRY on the Sail-Making Business in all its Branches.”  It gave their location and listed prices.  Yet Willis had no knowledge of this partnership.  Rather than wait for the next issue of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy on February 20, he submitted his own advertisement to the Massachusetts Spy for inclusion in its February 16 edition.

“WHEREAS an Advertisement appeared in Messrs. Mills & Hick’s paper of Monday last, notifying the Public, that SUMNER & WILLIS carried on the SAIL-MAKING business together,” the aggrieved Willis asserted, “This is to acquaint my Friends and the Public, that I have no connection with said SUMNER, that the advertisement abovementioned was published without my knowledge or consent, and was a gross imposition upon CHARLES WILLIS.”  The sailmaker was angry as he set the record straight.  Readers of the Massachusetts Spy, on the other hand, may have been mildly amused by the drama that unfolded in the public prints.  After all, a dispute between sailmakers could have been a welcome distraction from the hardships they encountered while the harbor remained closed to commerce because of the Boston Port Act.

Willis likely visited or contacted Mills and Hicks’s printing office about the offensive advertisement.  It did not appear a second time, though the standard fee for advertisements provided for inserting them in three consecutive issues.  Willis’s advertisement, for instance, ran in the Massachusetts Spy twice more before it was discontinued.  Willis opted not to run a similar notice in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, the newspaper that carried the original “SUMNER and WILLIS” advertisement.  That could have been because he did not wish to invest any more money on such notices in the public prints, yet it also suggests his confidence in the circulation of the Massachusetts Spy and ensuing conversations inspired by its contents, both news and advertisements.  Advertising in just one newspaper sufficiently clarified that “SUMNER and WILLIS” were not indeed partners in the “Sail-Making Business.”