Melchior Steiner and Charles Cist

March 31

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

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

Supplement to the Pennsylvania Ledger (March 30, 1776).

“BLANKS and HAND-BILLS in particular are done on the shortest notice.”

In the spring of 1776, Melchior Steiner and Charles (Carl) Cist ran an advertisement “to acquaint the public, that they have removed their PRINTING OFFICE to the house of Ludwick Sprogrell, in Second-street” in Philadelphia.  In their new location, the partners “carry on the PRINTING-BUSINESS in its different branches, in the English, German, and other languages, with care, fidelity & dispatch.”  That had been a common appeal in advertisements that they previously placed in several newspapers in December and January, emphasized in a headline that proclaimed, “PRINTING In ENGLISH, GERMAN, and other Languages.”  By the time they relocated, Steiner and Cist collaborated with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, in printing a new edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense approved by the author and a German translation of the popular pamphlet.

Yet the printers did not limit themselves to books and pamphlets and other major projects.  They concluded their advertisement with a note that “BLANKS and HAND-BILLS in particular are done on the shortest notice.”  In other words, they accepted all sorts of smaller job printing assignments, quickly producing documents useful in business.  “BLANKS” referred to a variety of forms so commonly used that it saved time to print them in volume and then write the details by hand for each transaction.  In an advertisement in the Providence Gazette, John Carter listed more than a dozen kinds of blanks he printed, including “long and short Powers of Attorney, long and short Deeds, Bills of Sale, Bills of Lading, Portage Bills, Policies of Insurance, Apprentices Indentures, [and] Bonds of various Sorts.”  When it came to “HAND-BILLS,” customers used them to promote consumer goods and services, sometimes supplementing newspaper advertisements, and to disseminate news about politics, meetings, and other current events.  That printers so often advertised that they printed handbills suggests that many more of those items circulated in early American cities and towns than have survived in research libraries, historical societies, and private collections.  Steiner and Cist printed both blanks and handbills “on the shortest notice,” indicating that customers expected their orders to be filled speedily so they could get more information into circulation.

March 15

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

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

Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (March 15, 1776).

“Gesunde Bernunft.”

An advertisement partially in English and partially in German informed readers of the March 15, 1776, edition of Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote that the printer stocked and sold several political journals, including “The WEEKLY VOTES Of the HONOURABLE HOUSE of ASSEMBLY, of the present Sitting,” “All the VOTES of the last Year’s Session,” and “The Fourth and Fifth VOLUMES of [the] Collection of the VOTES from the Year 1744.”  Miller offered his readers opportunities to learn more about current events as well as the political history of Pennsylvania over the past three decades.  “Gleichfalls” or likewise, he sold “Gesunde Bernunft,” a German translation of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.  Among the many printers who had advertised the popular political pamphlet in the two months since Robert Bell published the first edition in Philadelphia on January 9, Miller was the first to list it as an item also available for purchase rather than making it the focal point of his advertisement.

That had not always been the case in the pages of Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote.  On January 16, Bell inserted an advertisement (in English) that announced the publication and sale of Common Sense at his shop on Third Street.  A week later, Bell’s advertisement ran once again, this time competing with an advertisement (in German) that announced that Gesunde Bernunft “Es ist jebt under der Presse” or “is in the press” and soon to be published by Melchior Steiner and Carl Cist.  Although Steiner and Cist did not collaborate with Bell on their German edition, they replicated much of his advertisement.  That included giving readers an overview of the contents by listing the headings for the four sections of pamphlet and publishing an epigraph from “Liberty,” a poem by James Thomson.  A month later, Steiner and Cist ran another advertisement (in German) announcing publication of Gesunde Bernunft.  They charged one shilling for a single copy or nine shillings for a dozen.  Like other printers, they offered a discount for those who purchased in volume for retail sales or to distribute to family and friends.

The Adverts 250 Project continues to track the proliferation of local editions of Common Sense and newspaper advertisements intended to disseminate the pamphlet widely, yet a complete accounting cannot overlook the German translation, Gesunde Bernunft, published and advertised by Steiner and Cist.  Very shortly after the pamphlet grabbed the attention of English-speaking colonizers, Steiner and Cist set about making Paine’s radical ideas accessible to German-speaking colonizers in Philadelphia and the backcountry.

January 2

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

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 2, 1776).

“PRINTING In ENGLISH, GERMAN, and other Languages.”

In late December 1775 and early January 1776, Melchior Steiner and Charles Cist placed advertisements for “PRINTING In ENGLISH, GERMAN, and other Languages” in several newspapers published in Philadelphia.  Having acquired a “general assortment of new and elegant TYPES, and other Printing Materials,” they opened an office “where they intend carrying on the PRINTING BUSINESS in all its different branches, with care, fidelity, and expedition.”  Both partners had been born in Europe and migrated to Philadelphia, as Isaiah Thomas explained in his History of Printing in America (1810).  Steiner, born in Switzerland, served an apprenticeship with Henry Miller, the printer of the Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (formerly Der Wochentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote and Der Wochentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote).  Cist, an apothecary born in St. Petersburg, Russia, came to the colonies in 1769, worked for Miller as a translator of English into German, and “by continuing in the employment of Miller several years he acquired a considerable knowledge of printing.”[1]

Steiner and Cist, according to Thomas, “executed book and job work, in both the German and English languages,” the “different branches” of printing that they advertised in their notice.  They competed with other local printers, especially Miller.  Their former associate also took orders for job printing in both languages and annually published an almanac in German.  The masthead of the Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote indicated that “All ADVERTISEMENTS to be inserted in this Paper, or printed single by HENRY MILLER, Publisher hereof, are by him translated gratis.”  Thomas reported, “Not long after the commencement of the revolutionary war, [Steiner and Cist] published a newspaper in the German language; but, for want of sufficient encouragement, it was discontinued in April, 1776.”[2]  The venerable printer appears to have been misinformed on that point.  Clarence S. Brigham does not attribute any newspaper published in 1775 or 1776 to Steiner and Cist, but he does list another newspaper that Thomas credited to the partners, the Philadelpisches Staatsregister, published during the war from 1779 to 1781.[3]  Even if they considered launching a newspaper eventually, the new partners sought to establish a printing office with a reputation for “giv[ing] satisfaction to those who may be pleased to employ them” for job printing.  As they surveyed the local and regional landscape, they may have determined that Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote and the Germantowner Zeitung already met the needs of colonizers who spoke German and the market would not support another newspaper.  That they operated their printing office in Philadelphia throughout most of the war, leaving temporarily during the British occupation of the city, testifies to the multilingual origins of the new nation.  English was the language spoken (and printed) most prevalently in the thirteen colonies that declared independence, but certainly not exclusively during the era of the American Revolution.

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[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; Weathervane Books, 1970), 404.

[2] Thomas, History of Printing, 404.

[3] Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 (American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 1392, 1487.