What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“LOST at the Fire on Wednesday Night last … the following Pieces of Merchandise.”
The October 11, 1774, edition of the Essex Gazette included coverage of a fire in Salem on October 6. The conflagration destroyed the homes of several families as well as the shops and stores of more than a dozen merchants and shopkeepers. In addition, the fire consumed a meeting house and the customs house. Samuel Hall and Ebenezer Hall, the printers of the Essex Gazette, lost their printing office. Just below the article about the fire, they inserted a notice alerting the public that they had relocated. The Halls also reported that “Great Quantities of Goods, House Furniture and Papers of Value were lost, stole and destroyed in the Confusion and Destruction occasioned by the Fire; but it is impossible to obtain Accounts from the several Sufferers, sufficiently accurate to publish at this Time.”
That did not prevent others from publishing more information about the fire, either as letters to editors or by taking out advertisements that supplemented the coverage provided by the Halls. One letter, for instance, noted that “the Sufferers in the late Fire in this Town, and others whose Goods were removed, still miss great Quantities of their Furniture and Goods.” Such items clearly had not been misplaced and would soon be recovered as the confusion subsided and the town recovered; instead, the anonymous author asserted that goods and personal property “were stolen by the hardened Villains who ever stand ready to make their Harvest at such Times of Danger and Distress.” Furthermore, those “Miscreants, in the Form of Pedlars, will doubtless be hawking these Goods about the Country,” capitalizing on the misfortune of others. The letter concluded with a call for “well disposed People” to identify and imprison the thieves and encouraging justices of the peace to invoke existing laws to regulate peddlers to make sure they did not sell stolen goods when they “stroll[ed] about the Country.”
Nathaniel Sparhawk was among those with missing goods following the fire. In an advertisement, he listed and described “Pieces of Merchandise” he “LOST at the Fire.” He offered a reward to “Whoever will bring the above Articles or any of them” to him. In a nota bene, he added, “No Questions will be asked.” In other words, he only sought to recover goods apparently looted during the fire, choosing to give the benefit of the doubt that they had been removed to save them. In exchange for that polite fiction, he would not prosecute anyone whose conscience (or the reward) prompted them to return the items. He hoped that a reward given without questions or the possibility of prosecution would seem more attractive than whatever thieves might earn if they risked selling or fencing the stolen items.
Other advertisements also provided additional information about the fire. One offered “300 Dollars Reward” to anyone who “will give Information” that the fire “was kindled with Design.” Many residents believed the fire had been set intentionally. Anyone who could prove that was the case would receive the reward “on Conviction of the Perpetrator or Perpetrators.” Henry Putnam, who lost his shop in the fire, feared that he was a suspect. In his own advertisement, he reported that “some ill-minded Person or Persons” spread “false Reports … intimating that there was reason to suspect that I had been guilty of the horrid Crime of being the Occasion of the late terrible Fire.” Doing what he could to combat such gossip, he harnessed the power of the press to inform the public, especially “People at a Distance” who might hear such rumors, that “the People of this Place are fully convinced that the Reports are false and groundless.” Putnam defended his reputation in print, hoping to reach people who heard tales that spread by word of mouth.
Readers of the Essex Gazette pieced together a more complete account of the fire and its aftermath when they consulted the coverage written by the printers, the letter to the editors, and the advertisements. As was often the case in colonial newspapers, advertisements delivered news that supplemented information that appeared elsewhere. In this instance, the advertisements appeared in the next column, immediately to the right of the news, helping readers to make connections among the different kinds of reporting.
