18th Century Lessons for Today’s Debt Ceiling Crisis
Same old, same old? I couldn’t help but identify similarities and connect some dots between this 18th century essay, published in the 1766 January 23 edition of THE PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL, at the height of Stamp Act resistance and the beginning of the American Revolution, to today’s debt ceiling/default crisis. Perhaps this 18th century newspaper article ...
The Massachusetts Spy Moves to Worcester, Loses Readers, Never Returns to Boston
Without any mention in the issue, the 1775 April 6 edition of Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy — featuring the famous serpent “Join or Die” cartoon in the name plate — was his last from Boston. As the colophon states, it was printed at the “South-Corner of MARSHALL’s-LANE, leading from the MILL-BRIDGE into UNION STREET,” Boston. ...
Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America
Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America, by Benjamin L. Carp, is hot off the presses and available for sale today at your local book store or from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Powell’s and Yale University Press. Some online book stores still show a publish date as October ...
The Top 10 Colonial News Sources
According to The Development of the Colonial Newspaper by Sidney Kobre (1960) colonial news came from the following sources: 1 // Private letters, containing matters of general interest, sent to residents or to the publisher 2 // Ship captains and sailors at the dock or tavern 3 // Merchants receiving or sending goods 4 // ...
John Dunlap’s Proposal for Launching a Colonial Newspaper
To help launch his colonial Philadelphia newspaper, John Dunlap turned to his brethren printers in Boston to publish “proposals for printing by subscription, a weekly news-paper, entitled The Pennsylvania Packet, And General Advertiser.” The inaugural issue of Dunlap’s newspaper was printed printed on October 28. Dunlap was the printer of the first copies of the ...
Advertising the Launch of Royal American Magazine
Supplementing his weekly Massachusetts Spy newspaper, perhaps to satisfy a demand for more hard-hitting anti-British essays and illustrations, Isaiah Thomas printed the first issue of Royal American Magazine in January 1774. The magazine was published every month until the eve of the Revolutionary War and featured Paul Revere and John Hancock among its many contributors. ...
The Distinction of 18th Century American Paper
Despite the abundance of lumber in 18th century America, the technological and chemical combination for making wood pulp paper wasn’t discovered until the mid-19th century. During the 18th century and first two-thirds of the 19th century, American newspapers were printed on paper made from linen rags. Pictured below are 10 American newspapers dated between 1750 ...
William Caslon, 18th Century Typographer
William Caslon I (1692-1766) was an English gunsmith and typographer. His typefaces, particularly his roman typeface that eventually took his own name, was an instant success. Historians have said that Caslon gave England a national typeface. By the mid 18th century, printers all across Europe and the American colonies were using the Caslon typeface to ...
Colonial Newspapers: Unsung Heroes of the American Revolution
Colonial newspapers are unsung heroes of the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War. Specifically, several newspapermen and women deserve recognition for their role in America’s founding, including: Benjamin Edes and John Gill, Boston Gazette Isaiah Thomas, Massachusetts Spy William Goddard, Pennsylvania Chronicle Peter Timothy, South Carolina Gazette Thomas Green, Connecticut Courant John Holt, New York ...
A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston
At a town meeting on March 12, 1770 — one week after the Boston Massacre — James Bowdoin, Joseph Warren and Samuel Pemberton were appointed to a committee to prepare the Patriot account of the massacre. According to John Doggett Jr.’s 1849 enhanced edition of the Patriot account, during that March 12 meeting a “report ...
Paul Revere’s “View of the Year 1765″
Paul Revere’s engraving of Boston’s “Bloody Massacre” is one of his most well known works. As of this posting, more than 60 percent of the Google image results for “Paul Revere engraving” return his engraved depiction of the Boston Massacre. A lesser known engraving by Revere is his patriotic response to the Stamp Act, titled ...
Benjamin Harris and his Publick Occurrences
On September 25, 1690, the first issue of Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick hit the streets of Boston. With that issue, Benjamin Harris published the first attempt at an American newspaper. Harris intended for his newspaper to be printed monthly. It contained four pages — three with printed news and a blank one for ...
