Patriotism

July 2

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-York Journal (June 29, 1775).

“Artillery Company.”

One advertisement in the June 29, 1775, edition of the New-York Journal seems to stand out from the others, at least to this reader perusing that issue 250 years later.  The colonizers who placed the advertisement no doubt hoped that readers would take note and heed its call, intending that the headline, “Artillery Company,” would resonate differently with readers than the headlines for other notices that promoted goods and services, such as “FURRS,” “CLOCKS,” “WATCHES,” and “PUBLIC AUCTION.”  This advertisement certainly served a different purpose once the imperial crisis boiled over into the battles at Lexington and Concord and the siege of Boston that followed.  It may have seemed even more urgent and imperative appearing in the same issue as an “account of the engagement between the Provincials and Regulars on Saturday the 17th,” now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.

That issue also featured an “Address of the Provincial Congress of the Colony of New-York. To his Excellency GEORGE WASHINGTON, Generalissimo of all the Forces raised, and to be raised, in the Confederated Colonies of America.”  The advertisers sought to do their part in raising forces to defend against British troops.  “[A]n atmosphere of patriotic fervor,” Alan C. Aimone and Eric I. Manders argue, “brought forth a spate of volunteer companies” in the spring and early summer of 1775, companies that “were to be the city’s independent militia.”  Some volunteers had previous experience serving in the colonial militia.  “A Considerable number of inhabitants have proposed to form a Company of Artillery, under the command of Captain Anthony Rutgers,” the advertisement reported.  Aimone and Manders note, “Membership in the independent companies was restricted.  All new volunteers were prosperous city men.”[1]  The advertisement stated other qualifications.  The ranks of this company would be limited to “only … such persons who have steadfastly shewn their attachment to the cause of American Liberty.”  Accordingly, “Such of our fellow citizens as incline to serve in this company, are invited to attend at a general meeting … to determine upon such articles as may be judged necessary for the regulation and discipline of the company.”  Several other independent companies had formed in the city by the time this advertisement appeared in the New-York Journal, yet updates about events unfolding in New England underscored the need to continue recruiting “fellow citizens” devoted “to the cause of American Liberty.”

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[1] Alan C. Aimone and Eric I. Manders, “A Note on New York City’s Independent Companies, 1775-1776,” New York History 63, no. 1 (January 1982): 59, 61.

June 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Maryland Gazette (June 29, 1775).

“THE manufactory of snuff of various sorts is now carried on by me at this place.”

On the eve of the American Revolution, Richard Thompson attempted to establish a market for snuff produced in Virginia.  In “The Beginnings of Tobacco Manufacture in Virginia,” Jacob M. Price argues that “there is not even a hint of a local manufacture” of snuff in Virginia from the middle of the 1730s through the late 1760s.  Most of the snuff came from Great Britain with  occasional “bottles, boxes, and kegs of snuff … appear from time to time in notices of arriving cargoes from Antigua, Boston, New York, and Salem.”  According to Price, Thompson “moved his business from Bladensburg [Maryland] to the falls of the Potomac and tried to crash the Virginia market in 1772,” placing a lengthy advertisements in the October 8 edition of William Rind’s Virginia Gazette.  “Little more is known,” Price continues, “of this early Maryland industrial pioneer and of his seemingly premature efforts to introduce a ‘patriotic’ tobacco and snuff manufacture into the Chesapeake.”[1]

An advertisement in the June 29, 1775, edition of the Maryland Gazette, published in Annapolis, reveals that Thompson continued to produce snuff at “George-town, on the Potowmack” at that time.  The “manufactory of snuff of various sorts is now carried on by me at this place,” Thompson proclaimed, “where I can furnish it either in wholesale or retail, at reasonable rates.”  In addition, Thompson had “manufactured tobacco for sale, viz. shag and saffron, and shall shortly begin and continue to manufacture it in all the different forms, if I receive proper encouragement.”  According to the date on the advertisement, Thompson first asked for that encouragement on December 27, 1774, no doubt hoping that the Continental Association, a nonimportation agreement devised by the First Continental Congress in response to the Coercive Acts, created favorable conditions for snuff produced in the colonies.  Patriotic colonizers had an obligation to support his enterprise, to give him that “proper encouragement,” but they did not have to settle for a product inferior to snuff produced elsewhere in the colonies.  In a nota bene, Thompson declared, “I will now say, and with some degree of confidence, that at present I have by me, (and shall continue to make) as good snuff as is manufactured on this continent.”  Even if his business got off to a rocky start, as Price suggests, Thompson asserted that he made improvements over time.  He composed his advertisement less than a month after the Continental Association went into effect (and a notation, “3m,” indicated that it would appear in the Maryland Gazette for three months), yet apparently decided that the time was right to revive it more than six months later after learning of the battles at Lexington and Concord.  Those battles and the events that followed meant that friends of the American cause, after all, had even more reason to support his endeavor.

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[1] Jacob M. Price, “The Beginnings of Tobacco Manufacture in Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 64, no. 1 (January 1956): 9, 12, 14.

June 19

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

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

Postscript to Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (June 19, 1775).

“A NEW AMERICAN MANUFACTORY.”

As summer arrived in 1775, Ryves and Fletcher took to the pages of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet to inform the public that they established a “NEW AMERICAN MANUFACTORY” where they made and sold “all kinds of PAPER HANGINGS” (better known as wallpaper today).  The eighth article of the Continental Association, the nonimportation pact devised by the First Continental Congress in the fall of 1774, called for “promot[ing] Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country” as alternatives to imported goods.  That charge had even greater urgency following once colonizers heard about the battles at Lexington and Concord and the ensuing siege of Boston.  When Ryves and Fletcher ran their advertisement two days after the Battle of Bunker Hill, word of that engagement had not yet arrived in Philadelphia.  When it appeared again in July, readers had even more information about momentous events in Massachusetts that likely shaped how they reacted to Ryes and Fletcher marketing paper hangings made in America.

The “PAPER STAINERS,” as Ryves and Fletcher described themselves, asserted that they “are the first who have attempted that manufacture on this continent.”  Perhaps they were not aware that Plunket Fleeson made, advertised, and sold “AMERICAN PAPER HANGINGS” in Philadelphia in 1769, though they may have conveniently overlooked that enterprise in their efforts to promote their own.  Ryves and Fletcher made significant investment in procuring both workers and materials, noting in particular that their undertaking “consumes a large quantity of the paper of this country.”  In return for their dedication to the patriot cause, they “are therefore induced to hope for the countenance and protection of all well wishers to the infant manufacturers of America.”  They did their duty as producers, but that was not enough; consumers now had an obligation to purchase the paper hangings that Ryves and Fletcher made.  The paper stainers launched a “Buy American” campaign at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.  As part of their marketing efforts, they emphasized quality, extolling the “neatness of patterns and elegance of colour,” and price, pledging that “they will sell on much more reasonable terms than any paper can be disposed of which is imported into America.”  Ryves and Fletcher were among the first to produce and market paper hangings made in America, helping establish a new industry during the era of the American Revolution.

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I provide a brief case study of patriotic advertisements for paper hangings in Carl Robert Keyes, “A Revolution in Advertising: ‘Buy American’ Campaigns in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Creating Advertising Culture:  Beginnings to the 1930s, vol. 1, We Are What We Sell:  How Advertising Shapes American Life … And Always Has, eds. Danielle Coombs and Bob Batchelor (New York:  Praeger, 2013), 1-25.

April 7

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

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

Pennsylvania Mercury (April 7, 1775).

“DR. HILL’S AMERICAN BALSAM.”

Enoch Story and Daniel Humphreys began distributing subscription proposals for a new newspaper, the Pennsylvania Mercury and Universal Advertiser, in the middle of January 1775.  They began promoting their newspaper at the same time that James Humphreys, Jr., commenced publication of the Pennsylvania Ledger and Benjamin Towne established Philadelphia’s first tri-weekly newspaper, the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Those two newspapers brought the total in the city to six, joining Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, the Pennsylvania Gazette, the Pennsylvania Journal, and the Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote.  As the imperial crisis intensified, the number of newspapers published in the largest city in the colonies increased … but did a market exist for yet another?  Could Story and Humphreys attract enough subscribers and advertisers to make a go of the Pennsylvania Mercury?

They decided that they could.  On Friday, April 7, they published the first issue.  In a note to “Subscribers and the Public” on the first page, they explained that they deviated from the conditions in their proposals only slightly, distributing it on Fridays instead of Saturdays, because “one of the eastern mails is now dispatched from Boston, in such time as to arrive here on Thursday (instead of Saturday as formerly).”  That meant that Story and Humphreys could distribute “the most early intelligence from that interesting quarter.”  That meant that the Pennsylvania Mercury scooped the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the Pennsylvania Ledger, both published on Saturday.  The printers also proclaimed that “the TYPE with which THIS Paper is printed are of AMERICAN manufacture,” signaling their support for the article in the Continental Association that called for supporting domestic manufactures, and asked for “every patriotic allowance” if the quality did not give “entire satisfaction to the judicious and accurate eye.”  It was, after all, a small sacrifice.  “[W]e flatter ourselves,” the printers declared, “that the rustic manufactures of America will prove more graceful to the patriotic eye, than the more finished productions of Europe.”

Story and Humphreys also managed to line up advertisers for the first issue of the Pennsylvania Mercury, an importance source of revenue for any newspaper.  In addition to their notice, two advertisements appeared on the first page, including one for “DR. HILL’S AMERICAN BALSAM.”  Advertising filled more than a column on the third page and nearly twice as much on the last page.  In total, paid notices accounted for one-quarter of the content of the inaugural issue.  The colophon encouraged readers to submit advertisements to the printing office in Norris’s Alley near Front Street.  The success of Philadelphia’s newest newspaper would depend in part on advertisers choosing to insert their notices in it.

March 27

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

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

Newport Mercury (March 27, 1775).

“Worth the Perusal of each TRUE SON OF LIBERTY.”

In the years after British soldiers fired into a crowd of protestors and killed several colonizers on March 5, 1770, the residents of Boston staged an annual commemoration of the “horrid MASSACRE.”  They called on a prominent patriot to give an “ORATION” about what occurred and the dangers of having British soldiers quartered in urban ports during times of peace.  Colonizers did not need to be present for the oration to experience it for themselves.  Each year, printers published and marketed the oration, commodifying an event that played an important role in the imperial crisis becoming a revolution.

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 27, 1775).

In the first several years, printers in Boston published the oration and newspapers in Massachusetts carried advertisements for it.  In 1775, however, printers in other colonies produced their own editions of Joseph Warren’s oration commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre.  Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the printers of the Boston-Gazette, and Joseph Greenleaf, the publisher of the Royal American Magazine, partnered in printing and advertising a Boston edition.  Not long after, Solomon Southwick, the printer of the Newport Mercury, advertised his own edition, giving the notice a privileged place as the first item in the first column on the first page of the March 27 edition of his newspaper.  On that same day, John Anderson inserted a notice in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury to alert readers of the imminent publication of a local edition undertaken “At the particular Desire of a Number of respectable GENTLEMEN.”  Patriots expressed intertest in obtaining their own copies of Warren’s oration; in turn, printers believed they could generate even greater demand.  To that end, Anderson declared, “The genuine Spirit of Freedom which breathes in every Line of this inimitable Performance, renders it worth the Perusal of each TRUE SON OF LIBERTY.”

The political climate had shifted since printers in Boston disseminated John Hancock’s oration commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre.  Since then, colonizers experienced how Parliament reacted to the destruction of tea during what has become known as the Boston Tea Party.  The Coercive Acts, including the Boston Port Act that closed the harbor until residents paid restitution, prompted delegates from throughout the colonies to gather in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress in the fall of 1774.  They adopted a nonimportation agreement, the Continental Association, that remained in effect in the spring of 1775.  Given the events that transpired in 1774 and early 1775, it made sense that the anniversary of the “BLOODY TRAGEDY of the 5th of MARCH, 1770” garnered greater attention beyond Massachusetts.

March 17

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

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (March 17, 1775).

“AN ORATION … to commemorate the bloody Tragedy of March 5th 1770.”

In the spring of 1771, patriots marked the first anniversary of the “BLOODY TRAGEDY” now known as the Boston Massacre with “AN ORATION Delivered … at the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston … By JAMES LOVELL.”  That started an annual tradition, with Joseph Warren giving the oration in 1772, Benjamin Church in 1773, and John Hancock in 1774.  Gathering for the oration became an annual ritual.  So did publishing and marketing it.

For the fifth anniversary, the “ORATION … to commemorate the bloody Tragedy of March 5th 1770” was once again “delivered by JOSEPH WARREN.”  Less than two weeks later, advertisements in the March 17 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter informed readers where they could acquire copies.  One indicated that Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the printers of the Boston-Gazette, sold the oration, implying that they also published it.  According to the imprint, Edes and Gill printed the address in partnership with Joseph Greenleaf, the proprietor of the Royal American Magazine.

Another advertisement gave readers another option: “In the MASSACHUSETTS SPY, of this Day is published, the WHOLE of the ORATION, delivered by JOSEPH WARREN, Esq; on March 6th , 1775, to commemorate the bloody Tragedy of March 5th, 1770.”  Isaiah Thomas, the printer of the Massachusetts Spy, did indeed devote three of the four columns of the third page of his newspaper to Warren’s oration.  In an introduction, he reported that it was “this day published, in a pamphlet” and available for sale in addition to appearing in the newspaper.  The printer offered multiple ways for readers to engage with the oration.  He (and Edes and Gill and Greenleaf) also offered consumers an opportunity to purchase a commemorative item.  Readers who previously purchased the orations by Lovell, Warren, Church, and Hancock on previous anniversaries may have been motivated to add to their collections.

The printer of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter gave the advertisements a privileged place, likely intended to increase the chances that readers took note of them.  They appeared one after the other immediately after the weekly account of local marriages and deaths.  That meant that the advertisements served as a transition between news items and paid notices.  Readers who perused the news yet merely glanced through the advertisements may have been more likely to take note of these first notices as they realized that the remainder of the page featured advertising.  A manicule also helped call attention to them, signaling their importance in a town experiencing the distresses of the Boston Port Act and the other Coercive Acts.

January 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Boston Evening-Post (January 16, 1775).

“Those noble Supporters and Defenders of the Liberties of their Country, who have signed the League and Covenant.”

The decorative border around Cyrus Baldwin’s advertisement in the January 16, 1775, edition of the Boston Evening-Postdrew attention to it … and the shopkeeper wanted the entire community to see what he had to say about the “great Variety of English, India and Scotch Goods” that he offered for sale “at his Shop in Cornhill, Boston.”  It was a message not only for “his good Customers” but “especially those noble Supporters and Defenders of the Liberties of their Country, who have signed the League and Covenant.”  Baldwin could have invoked the Continental Association that went into effect on December 1, 1774, but made an even stronger statement about fidelity to the American cause demonstrated by some of his customers.

As summer approached in 1774, the Boston Committee of Correspondence disseminated the Solemn League and Covenant, a nonimportation agreement drafted by Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren in response to the Boston Port Act.  Colonizers in Boston and throughout Massachusetts debated the measure, some enthusiastically signing and others arguing that they should wait to engage in a coordinated effort that spanned the colonies.  When the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in September and October, the delegates devised a nonimportation pact, the Continental Association, to achieve that unified response.  Newspapers carried details in their coverage of the meetings, printers published and sold pamphlets that included the Continental Association along with other “EXTRACTS FROM THE VOTES AND PROCEEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CONGRESS,” some printers published broadside versions of the Continental Association for easy reference in homes and offices, and advertisements documented goods surrendered and sold under the conditions of the tenth article of the Continental Association.

Baldwin could have made an appeal to consumers who adhered to the Continental Association.  Instead, he sought to associate his customers and his goods with the uncompromising spirit of the Solemn League and Covenant drafted as soon as the colonies received word about the Boston Port Act.  The resolve of many colonizers strengthened as news about the other Coercive Acts – the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering Act – arrived, yet Baldwin declared that many of his customers had been unwavering in their determination to take action before receiving dispatch after dispatch about new abuses perpetrated by Parliament.  Even those who had not signed the Solemn League and Covenant could ameliorate their regrets, Baldwin suggested, by making purchases alongside others who had been “noble Supporters and Defenders of the Liberties of their Country” months before the Continental Association.  As the imperial crisis intensified, he offered consumers an opportunity to revise how they remembered their participation in resistance efforts.

November 10

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

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

Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (November 10, 1774).

“A WOOLEN and WORSTED MANUFACTORY … American manufactures.”

As John Pinkney published updates from the First Continental Congress in the Virginia Gazette in November 1774, Elisha White and Robert White ran an advertisement to announce that they were “engaged in the erection of a WOOLLEN and WORSTED MANUFACTORY” that they anticipated would meet with great success.  They had already been “encouraged by many of the most patriotic gentlemen of the country,” yet sought even greater support for “so beneficial an undertaking” among the public.  In other words, they sought investors to defray the costs of this endeavor, addressing those “who may incline to promote American manufactures” as alternatives to goods imported from Britain.  The Whites had already gone to some expense, recruiting “a number of the best workmen,” though they still needed to “compleat the works, and procure the necessary utensils.”  Their enterprise would have even greater urgency as colonizers learned more about the Continental Association, a nonimportation pact, adopted by the First Continental Congress.

To raise the necessary funds to make their “MANUFACTORY” viable, the Whites established a subscription and designated local agents in several towns who collected the money on their behalf.  They also outlined their scheme for repaying these loans: “Half the price of our work to be received in cash, the other half, from time to time, is to be placed to the credit of our generous benefactors, till the whole is repaid.”  In case that seemed like too much of a gamble, the Whites appended a note from some of those “most patriotic gentlemen” to offer assurances.  Samuel Meredith, Barrett White, John Stark, and Richard Chapman pledged that they “will be responsible to the gentlemen who have or may subscribe for the encouragement of Elisha and Robert White’s WOOLLEN MANUFACTORY.”  If the project did not succeed, those four men “shall return the subscribers their money.”  That promise reflected their confidence in the Whites’ ability to “carry on their business with life and spirit” while simultaneously underscoring that civic duty called for supporting the “MANUFACTORY” through investing in it and, eventually, purchasing the goods produced there.  Political principles guided participation in both production and consumption of “American manufactures” as the imperial crisis intensified in 1774.

October 23

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

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

Supplement to the New-York Journal (October 20, 1774).

“This being the safest and most efficacious method of convincing the Ministry of Great-Britain of their errour.”

John Keating frequently advertised the “FIRST Paper Manufactory Established in the city of New-York” in the late 1760s and early 1770s.  He often updated his advertisement, yet he incorporated familiar themes about patriotism and supporting the local economy.  He also encouraged readers to save linen rags to make into paper, underscoring that they could play an important role in the production of paper made in the colonies as well as its consumption.

Such was the case in an advertisement in the supplement that accompanied the October 20, 1774, edition of the New-York Journal.  Keating opened with an announcement that his enterprise “is in great want of a large quantity of fine and coarse LINEN RAGS.”  He encouraged “the public in general, to be careful in saving every species of materials that are requisite to support such a useful and necessary branch of business.”  In previous advertisements, he offered instructions for collecting and saving rags as part of the rituals of household management, entrusting women in particular with supplying the resources necessary for the operation of the local paper mill and, in the process, lauding the patriotic spirit of those who heeded his call.  In this instance, he did not distinguish men and women, instead stating that when it came to choosing which paper to consume “that most of his fellow citizens will give the preference to a mill in the province … when it is considered that such a conduct will be a certain means of preventing large sums of money going out of the province.”  In addition to supporting the local economy, Keating asserted that the “present alarming situation of the colonies renders it entirely needless to point out the utility of establishing this and every other kind of manufactory among us, as soon as possible.”  Such a plan, he declared, was “the safest and most efficacious method of convincing the Ministry of Great-Britain of their error, and securing opulence to ourselves.”  Keating effortlessly connected politics, commerce, and the livelihoods and good fortune of colonizers who benefited from domestic manufactures as alternatives to imported goods.  He did so once again with a plea “that more attention will be paid to this affair in the future, both from a principle of patriotism, and frugality.”  In so doing, Keating presented a multitude of reasons for readers to support American industry and buy American products as the imperial crisis intensified.

October 9

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (October 6, 1774).

“ALMAN[A]CK … Ornamented with a large and elegant Engraving, representing the VIRTUOUS PATRIOT.”

When it came to buying almanacs, residents of Boston had many choices during the era of the American Revolution.  That meant that printers often advertised what made the almanacs they published distinctive from others on the market.  Such was the case for John Kneeland when he advertised Nathanael Low’s Astronomical Diary: Or, Almanack for the Year of Christian Aera, 1775 in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter in the fall of 1774.  The production of the almanac and its promotion resonated with current events as the imperial crisis intensified.  The Boston Port Act closed the harbor, the Massachusetts Government Act revoked the colony’s charter, and the other Coercive Acts punished the port city for the Boston Tea Party.

Kneeland informed prospective customers that this almanac was “Ornamented with a large and elegant Engraving, representing the VIRTUOUS PATRIOT at the Hour of Death.”  In addition to the usual contents, “every Thing necessary in an Almanack,” it also included a “long and sympathetic Address to the Inhabitants of Boston, with several other Pieces of Speculation, which tends to rend it not only useful, but entertaining.”  The engraving dominated the cover of the almanac.  It depicted a man, the “VIRTUOUS PATRIOT,” on his deathbed. A woman, presumably his wife, and three children kneeled in the foreground.  On the other side of the bed, a minister prayed while another man, perhaps a relative and likely another patriot, joined the family in their vigil.  Above the bed, an angel welcomed the “VIRTUOUS PATRIOT” into heaven.  A caption below the image stated, “IF Prayers and Tear th’ PATRIOT’s Life could save, None but usurping Villains Death would have.”

According to an auction catalog prepared by PBA Galleries, the “long and sympathetic Address” filled the first four pages of the almanac.  Echoing rhetoric that circulated in newspapers and pamphlets, the address “rails against the British,” assuring residents of Boston that “[Your countrymen] are sensible the heavy hand of power under which you are now groaning is designed only as a prelude to the utter abolishment of American freedom.”  The Coercive Acts, the address warned, would enslave the colonies to Britain.  (Two advertisements on the same page as the advertisement for the almanac in the October 6, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter concerned enslaved people, one presenting an enslaved woman for sale and the other offering a reward for the capture and return of an enslaved man who liberated himself by running away from his enslaver.)  The address proclaimed, “My dear brethren, the destiny of America seems to be suspended on the present controversy; and it is on your fidelity, firmness, and good conduct, for which you have so remarkably signalized yourself on all occasions, that a happy issue of it in a great measure depends.”  The advertisement for the almanac containing this address ran in the newspaper as the First Continental Congress continued its meetings in Philadelphia.  A month earlier, the colonial militia in Worcester County to the west of Boston had closed the courts and removed British authority in what has become known as the Worcester Revolution of 1774.  Six months after Kneeland advertised the almanac with the engraving and the address, a war for independence began with the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord.

Nathanael Low, An Astronomical Diary: Or, Almanack for the Year of Christian Aera, 1775 (Boston: John Kneeland, 1774). Courtesy PBA Galleries.