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

“Occasional HAND-BILLS, to contain all the interesting and important Intelligence of the Country.”

A broadsheet bearing the title A New-Hampshire Gazette carried only two advertisements.  A notice from Robert L. Fowle, the printer filled half of the first column on the first page.  A brief advertisement, only three lines, completed the final column on the other side of the sheet.  It announced, “A few Copies of Common Sense, and sundry other Pamphlets, BLANKS, &c. &.c &c. sold at the Printing-Office in Exeter.”

The notice, dated at “Exeter, May 22, 1776,” informed the public that Fowle “removed his Printing-Office from Boston, to this Town, the present CAPITAL of the Colony of New-Hampshire.”  He solicited job printing and advertisements, though he may have meant broadsides and handbills rather than newspaper notices since he had concerns about the prospects of establishing a “regular News-Paper in the present disord’d Times” because “it is presum’d [it] would not be properly supported.”  Instead, he proposed printing and distributing “occasional HAND-BILLS, to contain all the interesting and important Intelligence of the Country” if “this and the near Towns will take off a few Hundred Copies weekly.”  Fowle planned to charge three pence for each handbill-newspaper “with an Allowance” or appropriate discount for “any suitable Person or Persons that will take them by the Hundred weekly, and ride round the Country.”  In addition, he requested that the “Innholders in this Colony … put up this Advertisement in their Houses” to help publicize the proposed handbill-newspapers.

Fowle indicated that the “following Articles [were] the last Advices from England” and another of the “occasional HAND-BILLS” “perhaps will appear next Monday.”  In his monumental History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, Clarence S. Brigham states that Fowle established his New-Hampshire Gazette with a prospectus in the form of a handbill on May 22, 1776, with another handbill “promised for May 27, although no copy has been located.”  The first regular issue of the New-Hampshire Gazette, or, the Exeter Morning Chronicle, Brigham continues, appeared on June 1, “was numbered vol. 1, no. 3, and referred to the two ‘Hand-Bills’ previously published.”  That issue and most subsequent ones were “single sheets and without the name of the publisher in the imprint.”[1]

I believe that Brigham misidentifies the handbill-newspaper in the collections of the collections of the American Antiquarian Society as the first of the handbills rather than the second.  The date on Fowle’s notice, May 22, appeared immediately below the masthead, but that entire notice likely had been reprinted without revision from the first handbill-newspaper.  The “Fresh Advices” that followed on the first page relayed news from Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, not “the last Advices from England.”  The news on the other side of the sheet had “EXETER, May 27th, 1776,” for the dateline, though some of that content relayed “Advices by Friday’s Post from Boston.”  With news dated May 27, this handbill could not have been printed on May 22.  In addition, May 27 was a Monday, the day that Fowle indicated “another [handbill-newspaper] perhaps will appear.”  All this evidence suggests that no copy of the first handbill-newspaper has been located.  The known copy should be properly dated as May 27, 1776.

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[1] Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 454.