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

“A DISCOURSE … Preached … In Cammemoration of the MASSACRE at BOSTON.”

In March 1775, residents of Boston once again participated in an annual commemoration of the Boston Massacre, marking its fifth anniversary.  Joseph Warren delivered the oration, just as he had done three years earlier.  As had been the case in years past, local printers published and marketed copies of the address.  Printers in other towns also produced and advertised their own editions of Warren’s oration, helping to keep its memory alive as colonizers dealt with the effects of the Coercive Acts that Parliament imposed in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party.

Colonizers in other towns joined in commemorating the Boston Massacre and critiquing Parliament.  Oliver Noble, “Pastor of a Church in NEWBURY,” delivered a sermon that did so, “PREACH[ING] AT THE REQUEST of a Number of Respectable Gentlemen of said Town.”  In turn, Noble partnered with Ezra Lunt and Henry-Walter Tinges, the printers of the Essex Journal, to publish the sermon “at the General Desire of the Hearers.”  The extensive title, which doubled as the advertising copy, gave an overview of its contents and purpose: “SOME STRICTURES upon the sacred Story recorded in the Book of ESTHER, shewing the Power and Oppression of State Ministers, tending to the Ruin and Destruction of GOD’s People:– And the remarkable Interpositions of Divine Providence in Favour of the Oppressed; IN A Discourse … In Cammemoration of the MASSACRE at BOSTON.”  An advertisement ran in the March 29 edition of the Essex Journal, encouraging colonizers to acquire their own copies.  Those who had heard Noble preach could experience the sermon again every time they read it, remembering how the minister delivered each “STRICTURE” and how other “Hearers” reacted.  Others who had not been fortunate to be present for the commemoration did not have to miss it entirely if they purchased and read Noble’s Discourse.

Relations between the colonies and Britain had deteriorated to the worst point yet during the imperial crisis.  Although they did not know it, a war would start within weeks of Noble preaching his sermon in commemoration of the Boston Massacre and advertising it in the Essex Journal, a war that began because colonizers wanted redress of their grievances and eventually became a war for independence.  Commemoration and commodification of the events that were part of that conflict began before the fighting started.