“WILLIAMSBURG: Printed by CLEMENTINA RIND, at the NEW PRINTING OFFICE.”
It was the first time that Clementina Rind’s name appeared in the colophon of the Virginia Gazette, formerly published by her late husband. William Rind died on August 19, 1773. A week later, his widow revised the colophon to read: “WILLIAMSBURG: Printed by CLEMENTINA RIND, at the NEW PRINTING OFFICE, on the Main Street.” Clementina continued her husband’s practice of using the colophon as an advertisement for subscriptions and advertising. “All Persons may be supplied with this GAZETTE,” the colophon continued to inform readers, “at 12s6 per Year. ADVERTISEMENTS of a moderate Length are inserted for 3s. the first Week, and 2s. each Time after; and long ones in Proportion.” A thick border, indicative of mourning, separated the colophon from the rest of the content on the final page. Similarly, mourning borders appeared in the masthead as well, alerting readers of a significant loss.
Due to a variety of factors, the death notice in digitized copy of Rind’s Virginia Gazette is not fully legible. His fellow printers, Alexander Purdie and John Dixon, however, ran an even more extensive tribute to their former competitor in their own Virginia Gazette, though lacking mourning borders. They first described William as “an affectionate Husband, kind Parent, and a benevolent Man” before lauding his work as “publick Printer to the Colony.” Purdie and Dixon memorialized a colleague whose “Impartiality on the Conduct of his Gazette, by publishing the Productions of the several contending Parties that have lately appeared in this Country, cannot fail of securing to his Memory the Estee, of all who are sensible how much the Freedom of the Press contributes to maintain and extend the most sacred Rights of Humanity.” Purdie and Dixon underscored the important contributions of all printers in paying their respects to the departed William. They also gave an extensive account of the funeral rituals undertaken by “the ancient and honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons” in memory of “so worthy a Brother.”
Clementina printed the Virginia Gazette for thirteen months. Following her death on September 25, 1774, John Pinkney became the printer. Clementina was not the only female printer producing and distributing a newspaper in the colonies at the time. In Annapolis, Anne Catherine Green and Son published the Maryland Gazette. The widow of Jonas Green, Anne Catherine printed the newspaper upon his death, sometimes as sole publisher and sometimes in partnership with a son. The Adverts 250 Project has also traced some of the work of Sarah Goddard, printer of the Providence Gazette in the late 1760s. Female printers joined their male counterparts in contributing to the dissemination of information (and advertising) during the era of the American Revolution.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (April 8, 1773).
“He will open a Place for Sale of Goods to be known by the Name of The Silent Auction-Room.”
When he established the “Silent Auction-Room” in Boston in the spring of 1773, A. Bowman did not even pretend politeness toward his competitors in his advertisements. In a notice that he placed in the April 8 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, he mocked the advertisements placed by three of his competitors. All three advertisements appeared in that issue, making for easy reference for readers, though Bowman previously encountered them in other newspapers.
The auctioneer stated that he would “receive and sell all Sorts of Merchandise, House-Furniture,” and other goods. However, “‘Houses, Lands and Shipping,’ he does not pretend to sell,” he snidely comments, “because he is apprehensive it would be very difficult to get them up Stairs.” Bowman quoted directly from William Greenleaf’s advertisement. His rival stated, “In the Sale of Houses, Lands, Shipping, Merchandize, Household Furniture, &c. &c. my Employers may depend on my exerting myself for their Interest.”
The cantankerous auctioneer then declared that “Goods from ‘Servants and Minors’ will be received if they are properly authorized to deliver them.” In this instance, he taunted Martin Bicker, a broker who handled “all sorts of English and Scotch Goods [and] Household Furniture … to as good Advantage as can be done at any Auction whatever.” Bicker proclaimed that “the Public may rest assured, that no Goods will be received by him of any Servants or Minors.” Bowman established a different policy for his “Silent Auction-Room.” He took another jab at Bicker when he asserted that “His ‘Books’ shall be kept in good Order, so that it gives him no Concern whether they are ‘liable to Inspection,’ or not.” Before noting that he did not accept goods from servants or minors, presumably to avoid peddling stolen items, Bicker confided that “his Books are not liable to Inspection.” Bowman treated such lack of transparency with skepticism.
The final portion of Bowman’s advertisement, a short poem, most directly addressed the source of his anger and frustration. Joseph Russell, the proprietor of an auction room on Queen Street, previously published an advertisement that concluded with a poem that promoted his own business and mocked the demise of Bowman’s auction house. In addition to the poem, Russell announced that he “received a License from the Gentlemen Select-Men, to be an Auctioneer for the Town of Boston, conformable to the late Act for that Purpose.” Similarly, Greenleaf trumpeted that the “Gentlemen Select-Men … approbated me to officiate as one of the Vendue-Masters [or auctioneers] for this Town.” Bicker carefully described himself as a broker and made clear to prospective clients that his services rivaled those offered by auctioneers.
Boston Evening-Post (March 29, 1773).
Bowman apparently did not receive a license. In advertisements in the Boston Evening-Post and the Boston-Gazette on March 22 and in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter on March 25, he referred to his business as “BOWMAN’s Dying Auction-Room.” His advertisement in the March 29 edition of the Boston Evening-Post featured a thick black border, a symbol of death and mourning in early American print culture. Bowman lamented that his auction room “is soon to be sacrificed for the Good of the Province” and that he will be legally dead, (the taking away a Man’s Bread or his Life being synonymous) before another News-Paper comes out.” That advertisement appeared in the Boston-Gazette on the same day, though without the mourning border that clearly indicated how Bowman felt about the situation. That explains why Bowman described himself as the “late Auctioneer” at the “Dead Auction-Room” in his advertisement in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter on April 8. That he proposed opening a “Silent Auction-Room” suggests he identified some sort of loophole to defy the licensing act, perhaps as a broker rather than an auctioneer. In subsequent advertisements, he noted that he sold goods on commission.
Russell observed Bowman’s commentary in his advertisements, prompting him to allude to it in the poem he included in his own notice: “While some this Stage of Action quit, / And Dying advertise; / For Cash the Buyers here may meet / With constant fresh Supplies.” Not done with his own editorializing about his competitor, Russell added another stanza: “For Favors past, due Thanks return’d; / New Bargains, cheap and dear, / At the Old Place may still be found / J. RUSSELL, Auctioneer.” Russell pointedly declared that his business continued at a location familiar to residents of Boston.
In response, Bowman published his own poem at the end of his advertisement. “A License granted! pray for what? / To show their Parts in Rhyme; / But hear the Tale the Dead will rise, / And that in proper Time.” Bowman did not think much of Russell’s poetry nor his abilities as an auctioneer. At the same time, he pledged to revive his business, a footnote indicating that the public could anticipate that happening “When the expected Ships discharge their Cargoes.” Bowman critiqued the licensing act in a final stanza: “Fair LIBERTY thou Idol great, / How narrow is thy Sphere! / Ye Men of Sense say where she dwells, / For sure she reigns not here.” As colonizers in Boston debated the extent that Parliament infringed on their liberties, Bowman asserted that the new act, a local ordinance, curtailed liberty in the city.
By and large, auctioneers and other advertisers usually ignored their competitors. The angry and defiant Bowman, however, did not do so. Instead, he mocked several of the auctioneers and brokers who advertised in Boston’s newspapers, parroting their notices when he taunted them. He also continued to protest the new licensing act that caused him to close his auction room. In addition to promoting his next endeavor, the “Silent Auction-Room,” he used advertisements as a means of disseminating his commentary on the state of affairs in Boston.
“A TRACT of six hundred acres, including about two hundred of cleared land.”
George Washington possessed a “TRACT of six hundred acres … lying on the north side of Rappahannock river, opposite to the lower end of Fredericksburg” that he wished to sell, rent, or exchange “for back lands in any of the northern counties” of Virginia in the fall of 1772. To that end, he ran advertisements in the Virginia Gazette published by Alexander Purdie and John Dixon and the Virginia Gazette published by William, calling on interested parties to “enquire of Col. Lewis in Fredericksburg” or himself in Fairfax.
Thick black lines appeared on either side of Washington’s advertisement in the November 19 edition of Rind’s Virginia Gazette, but those lines had nothing to do with the advertisement itself. Instead, those lines adorned all four pages of that issue, separating columns of news and advertising on each page. Readers recognized them as mourning borders, a common practice among eighteenth-century printers upon the deaths of prominent and influential people. When readers first glimpsed the front page of the newspaper, they would have known that it contained news about the death of someone important. In addition to the black borders between the columns, Rind also inserted thick black borders into the masthead. Similar borders helped readers find news of the death of “the Honourable WILLIAM NELSON, Esquire, President of his Majesty’s Council of Virginia” when they turned to the second page. Those borders ran above and below the announcement of Nelson’s death. In contrast, a shorter item about the death of William Templeman, a merchant in Fredericksburg, did not feature mourning borders above and below, only to the sides like the rest of the contents of that edition. Many readers in Williamsburg, the capital of the colony and the site of the printing office, would have heard the news before receiving the newspaper, but for readers at a distance the mourning borders immediately alerted them to peruse the issue for a certain kind of news.
In that issue of the Virginia Gazette, the news of Nelson’s death had an impact on the appearance of Washington’s real estate notice and every other advertisement. Even readers who had previously heard the news could not read any of the notices without encountering a reminder of that significant event.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Massachusetts Spy (March 5, 1772).
“MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS … At the Head of the Long-Wharf, King-Street, BOSTON.”
Thick black mourning borders enclosed the columns of the March 5, 1772, edition of the Massachusetts Spy. Isaiah Thomas, one of the most ardent patriots among the printers in Boston, commemorated the second anniversary of the Bloody Massacre, the Massacre in King Street, better known today as the Boston Massacre. Colonial printers most often used mourning borders when announcing the death of an official (including Francis Fauquier, lieutenant governor of Virginia, in March 1768) or a prominent figure (including George Whitefield, a minister associated with the revivals now known as the Great Awakening, in September 1770), but in the 1760s and 1770s American printers also deployed mourning borders to lament the death of liberty, doing so in response to the Stamp Act and the “HORRID MASSACRE! Perpetrated in King-street.”
On the second anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Thomas did more than frame the content of the Massachusetts Spywithin mourning borders. A woodcut depicting a skull and bones, familiar from the Stamp Act protests, appeared near the top of the first column on the front page, just below several lines about massacre that Thomas attributed to Shakespeare. The printer also inserted a letter written on the occasion of the anniversary of the “fifth of March … to appear with the labours of those able and assiduous patriots, who have rendered the Spy the terror of tyrants, the scourge of traitors, and expositor of the violent and fraudulent usurpations of a set of villains partaking largely the nature of both.” Thomas also published a memorial to “FIVE of your fellow countrymen, GRAY, MAVERICK, CALDWELL, ATTUCKS and CARR … most inhumanly MURDERED … By a Party of the XXIXth Regiment, Under the command of Capt. Tho. Preston.” The memorial linked the Boston Massacre to the murder of Christopher Seider, an “innocent youth,” by Ebenezer Richardson, “Informer, And tool to Ministerial hirelings,” on February 22, 1770, just two weeks before the events in King Street. The memorial expressed dismay that even though Richardson “was found guilty By his Country On Friday April 20th, 1770,” he “Remains UNHANGED” on “This day, MARCH FIFTH! 1772.” The memorial concluded with a proclamation that “the PRESS” should “Remain FREE” as “a SCOURGE to Tyrannical Rulers.”
The mourning borders did not enclose just the memorial, editorials, and other content related to the Boston Massacre. Instead, they appeared on all four pages, enclosing even the advertisements for cookbooks, “ENGLISH GOODS,” almanacs, and mathematical instruments. Even if readers chose to skip over the dense essays that appeared elsewhere in the newspaper, they could not miss the mourning borders when they perused the advertisements. Merely reading the advertisements on the final page of the Massachusetts Spy required colonizers to engage with the politics of the period.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Essex Gazette (March 5, 1771).
“Sermons on the Death of Mr. WHITEFIELD.”
A little more than five months following George Whitefield’s death on September 30, 1770, the commodification of that event continued in the pages of the Essex Gazette. Printers, booksellers, and others produced and marketed a variety of commemorative items dedicated to the prominent minister in the weeks after his death. The advertising for such items tapered off by the end of the year, but some notices occasionally appeared in newspapers from New England to South Carolina in 1771. On March 5, Samuel Hall, the printer of the Essex Gazette, informed prospective customers of “Dr. Whitaker’s and Mr. Parsons’s Sermons on the Death of Mr. WHITEFIELD, with Mr. Jewet’s Exhortation at the Grave, annexed to the latter” available at his printing office in Salem.
This particular advertisement included thick black bands on both sides, a common symbol of mourning in early American print. Whitefield’s death, however, was not the reason that Hall included that symbol in the March 5 edition. The borders ran throughout the entire newspaper, enclosing every column on all four pages, to mark the first anniversary of “Preston’s Massacre–in King-Street–Boston, N. England–1770. In which Five of his Majesty’s Subjects were slain, and Six wounded, By the Discharge of a Number of Muskets from a Party of Soldiers under the Command of Capt. Thomas Preston.” Hall devoted the entire front page to commemorating the Boston Massacre, first in a “solemn and perpetual MEMORIAL Of the Tyranny of the British Administration of Government” that extended across all three columns and filled half of the space below the masthead. A letter reprinted from the New-Hampshire Gazette accounted for the remainder of the page. In it, an anonymous author, “CONSIDERATION,” encouraged residents of every colony to designate a day to commemorate “the Massacre of 5 Americans” and, more generally, reflect on “the most important Events that have happened relative to the Government and Liberties of the Country.” Unless colonists set aside a day for “delivering Discourses upon Government, the fundamental Laws of the Land, [and] the Advantages of civil and religious Liberty,” Consideration feared that “People will grow inattentive to those Concerns” and tyrants would prevail. The black bands around Consideration’s essay underscored the gravity of the proposal. Consideration issued a call to action, one endorsed by the printers of the New-Hampshire Gazette when they inserted it in their newspaper and endorsed once again by Hall when he reprinted it.
Two of the most momentous events of 1770, the Boston Massacre and the death of George Whitefield, converged in the March 5, 1771, edition of the Essex Gazette. Both events fueled acts of commemoration, sometimes mediated through commodification. Vigilant printers played an important role in keeping those stories familiar among the general public, through news accounts, editorials, and advertisements.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
New-Hampshire Gazette (October 5, 1770)
“[illegible due to ink bleeding through from other side of sheet]”
Like many other eighteenth century newspapers, the masthead for the New-Hampshire Gazette proclaimed that it “CONTAIN[ED] the Freshest ADVICES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.” In other words, it carried current news from the colonies and abroad. Those “ADVICES,” however, were not confined to the news articles and editorials; advertisements also delivered news to readers, sometimes about commerce and consumption, sometimes about politics, and sometimes about current events. Advertisements relayed an array of valuable information to readers, supplementing contents that appeared elsewhere in the newspapers.
Advertisements sometimes provided additional information about articles that ran in the same issue, but in the case of some advertisements in the October 5, 1770, edition of the New-Hampshire Gazette the news bled through, literally, in a very different way. George Whitefield, one of the most influential ministers associated with the religious revivals known as the Great Awakening, died on September 30. The October 5 edition, the first published following Whitefield’s death, included a lengthy notice on the third page. As was the custom in eighteenth-century newspapers, thick black borders denoting mourning enclosed the news, honoring Whitefield and attracting the attention of readers.
So thick were those borders and so firm the impression of the hand-operated printing press that ink bled through from the news item on the third page to the advertisements on the fourth page. Among them, Neal McIntyre’s advertisement for tobacco from Virginia featured a faint unintended border. The first lines of a notice that “the GENERAL ASSEMBLY of this Province is now Prorogued” were partially obscured by ink from the other side of the page. Even when readers moved past the most significant news article of the October 5 issue, word of Whitefield’s death continued to reverberate in other items as the result of the printing technologies of the time. In any newspaper, news and advertising were not delivered separately from each other. In this particular instance, news left a very visible mark on several advertisements.
