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The Stuff of Legends… Paul Revere and his ride into near-mythical status…
August 8, 2022 by LauraH · Leave a Comment
Whether it is an Ian Flemming Novel or one by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there is something about cloak and dagger … slinking through the shadows or breath-catching action which captures the imagination. If one is able to combine these with a real-life story, all the better! I would argue such is the case with The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Inspiring both children, from their earliest years in school, to great poets and artists in their time, Paul Revere exhibited both courage and savvy to evade the British in passing along his critical cry of warning. On December 5, 1795, The COLUMBIAN CENTINEL Boston, gives the account of Paul Revere’s legendary ride on the eve of the battle of Lexington and Concord. The best spy account in American History? I’ll let you decide.
Journalism from Early America to the Digital Age… Election Fraud and more…
June 10, 2022 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
Someone recently brought to my attention an article posted on the website “Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas”. While scanning the article I was intrigued by the presence of illustrations of newspapers we have or have previously offered. One in particular which caught my attention was the timely political cartoon by Thomas Nast found in the Oct. 7, 1871 issue of Harper’s Weekly. While a degree of election fraud is (unfortunately) part-and-parcel of the election process, I was inspired to read through the entire article, and in so doing, found it to be quite informative… and wondered if the friends of Rare & Early Newspapers might also find it interesting. Hopefully you will also enjoy reading it:
“Journalism from Early America to the Digital Age”
Newspaper Curiosities in 1867 from the Harper’s New Monthly Magazine…
February 28, 2022 by Stephanie Williams · Leave a Comment
In a strange twist within this unique collecting niche, I came across a nine-page essay within the Harper’s Monthly of September 1867. Imagine my interest in uncovering the following opening:
The history of newspapers has been frequently, but perhaps never yet fully, written. However, that may be, the history of the press of this country is very far from being complete. Many important facts are wrapped in obscurity, requiring incredible industry to bring them to light; and he would be a benefactor to literature who should reveal them in naked simplicity.
The author (whose name I cannot discern recorded within the volume) begins with the first press, “established in Cambridge, Massachusetts, eighteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims, where it was operated for forty years without a rival in America.” He goes on to say that 1644 marked the appointment of “censors of the press”, and that Boston saw its first press thirty years later, and that the Boston News-Letter reported the news from Europe — thirteen months after the fact. There are many interesting details quoted concerning the earliest days of colonization, followed by the appearance of the New England Courant, the American Weekly Mercury, the Pennsylvania Gazette, the Boston Evening Post and the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, all of which preceded the dailies begun with the Pennsylvania Packet in 1794.
One appealing aspect of this article, beyond the timeline which includes excerpts from most of the earliest papers, is the outside perspective. The writer acknowledges that all we can know is limited to the information reported, subject to a selection process influenced by the motivation/perspective/experience of the editor. Thus it has always been, and likely will always be.
They put it in print – an 1877 opinion of The Press…
January 6, 2022 by LauraH · Leave a Comment
Sometimes a picture says it all. The illustration below was printed in a Harper’s Weekly dated June 2, 1877, but left undated some might think it is a recent print. Do these “1000 words” from the 19th century, in fact, have staying power? You decide.
I’m New Here: A Few Changes…
January 31, 2020 by Stephanie Williams · Leave a Comment
This week has gone by in a blur. The (exciting) new catalog ships out tomorrow, and all the attendant hoopla has filled our schedules. It’s always a juggling act to maintain regular work around special projects, because there is plenty of the latter to pack our days.
A seasoned collector was filling gaps prior to an approaching exhibit, and he called to have me check a New York Times obituary in 1898. 
We didn’t have the date it ran, and I exhausted all the other major papers. However, the deceased was an abolitionist who also contributed to the effort to gain the vote for women. As a last ditch effort I pulled a volume of the Woman’s Journal from Washington DC, and found a lengthy tribute to Robert Purvis. Mr. G was quite pleased, and I felt triumphant with my find, particularly as it led me to delve into my favorite category – publications in which women played an important role. Although much content pertains to suffrage, there seems to have been an effort to provide a platform for intelligent discussion that encompassed many other aspects of life in the 1800’s. These journals are a valuable resource for a look into the 19th Century, and I am always glad to fulfill an order with one of these gems.
As I begin this second year here at Rare & Early Newspapers, I am planning to dedicate my last post each month to a look at our titles, beginning with the Woman’s Journal. Hopefully, I can unearth enough nuggets that you will all start to consider that a collection cannot possibly be complete without containing at least an issue or two from the Woman’s Tribune, The Woman’s Journal, The North Shore Review, the Ladies Magazine or Womankind.
Thank you for the kind comments and encouragement in this first year. I beg your continued forbearance as I wade more deeply into the water.
Cheers!
I’m New Here: Week Forty-Three…
January 3, 2020 by Stephanie Williams · Leave a Comment
Recently, a collector asked me to verify the presence of a continuing report within the Gazette of the United States – the Davila Discourse, which discusses political implications of a republican form of government, as perceived by John Adams in the early days of the young country. Mr. K offered the information that the section title printed within the sub-heading was not accurate, but a misidentification on the part of the publisher. Instead, he referenced an outside scholarly source to identify the sequence of text.
My son was old enough during the 2000 presidential election to be fascinated with the process. At his request, his grandmother kept every newspaper from the week before, through the many days following that strange Tuesday in this nation’s history. Most notable in his collection, however, is the issue that proclaimed Al Gore as the winner. This week I began thinking about the erroneous publication of “news” at historically crucial times.
Various reports of death have been “grossly exaggerated” – in fact, Wikipedia has alphabetically indexed 14 pages of such premature obituaries. In the Rare and Early Newspaper world one of the most well-known gaffes is the Chicago Tribune “Dewey Defeats Truman”. As I am new and just learning of these, I am appalled to find yet another winding road away from the details I am supposed to be taking care of during my working day.
Ultimately, a thing is not true just because it appeared in print. However, an editorial error can be quickly identified by reviewing the publishing context. Those of this community who have a more seasoned perspective might enjoy sharing some favorite errors with me via this blog, in case an opportunity arises to do a little wandering in my second year…
I’m New Here: Weeks Fourteen & Fifteen…
May 24, 2019 by Stephanie Williams · Leave a Comment
Last week I didn’t post because I was involved in a local amateur production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Consequently, I returned to work with many dramatic musical numbers dictating the soundtrack of my mind. Perhaps that influenced my interest in an assigned hunt for a title that reported on the death of the “Leather Man” in 1839.
I found it, and duly replied back to the collector. But I also took a little bit of a break to search out the meager story of this individual who was a vagabond for 32 years of his life. The inscription on his tombstone describes a man, “who regularly walked a 365-mile route through 
Westchester and Connecticut from the Connecticut River to the Hudson living in caves in the years 1858–1889.” Like clockwork, apparently, he completed his circuit every year and was greeted and given hospitality by many along the way who would normally reject any other vagrant. The internet provides an intriguing image of this leather patchworked fellow in his exile from the rhythms of normal life.
And, with the tortured song of the male lead sounding in my head, I wondered at the days preceding his arrival; what made him the man who came to be known this way?
Was he tormented and driven to trudge through the days, or was this a happy occupation for a human being – leaving behind the established cares of civilized life, content to cover so much ground in so many hours for the prescribed revolutions of the sun? Either way, or something in-between, he made it to the second page of The New York Times. For all the documentation housed here, how many millions of unread or even untold stories must there be?
Anyway, I am back at work, tracking down first, second and third day accounts of the original murder that inspired Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and pulling the obituary for a man who had no known name or history of origin. Next week I am determined to look at these territory papers that are so desirable, and maybe delve into the popular Gentleman’s Magazines with their coveted battle maps.
All of which remind me of one theory concerning the Leather Man: that he was an ex-French soldier. Perhaps that’s true, and all the years of marching over fields and sleeping rough became a way of life he ultimately could not break. Whatever compelled him, day after day, I’m fairly certain a tragic musical score is appropriate.
Revisiting “The Crime of the Century” through the reporting of the Chicago Tribune…
December 20, 2018 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
Question: What do you get when you cross The Chicago Tribune with “The Crime of the Century”?
The Chicago Tribune, self-described as “The World’s Greatest Newspaper,” earned a reputation for having dramatic, timely headlines. In this regards, they are perhaps 2nd to none. However, they are also well-known for what may very well be the greatest mistake in front-page headline news: “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” While certainly the most recognized, it was not the Chicago Tribune’s 1st major faux pa. Approximately 16 years earlier, in an effort to be at the forefront of breaking news in regards to “The Crime of the Century,” they printed the dramatic headline: “REPORT ‘LINDY BABY HOME’.” Sadly this would prove to be a false, unsubstantiated report (aka, “fake news”) – as the Lindbergh baby would be found dead a little more than a month later. It sure goes to show how even the “best of the best” can make mistakes – a good lesson in humility for all of us.
Snapshot 1927… Several are killed and they’re worried about the score???
September 14, 2018 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
The following snapshot comes from The Leominster Daily Enterprise dated January 27, 1927…
Perhaps the editor should have picked up on this double entendre tainted headline?
The Traveler… inhumanity at its worst…
August 21, 2017 by The Traveler · Leave a Comment
Today’s travels took me to Gloucester, England by the way of The Glocester Journal dated August 17, 1767. I found a very horrific report on the barbaric treatments that Elizabeth 
Brownrigg did to the girl apprentices. She had beaten the one girl so viciously that, even though she had been found, the doctors were not able to save her life. “On Sunday morning one of the unfortunate girls who were cruelly beaten, and otherwise most barbarously treated by the their mistress… of the wounds she received from there said inhuman mistress… when it appeared by the evidence of the of the surviving girl, that, about a year and a half ago, the deceased was put apprentice, and was upon trial about a month, during which she eat and drank as the family did; that soon after her mistress, Elizabeth Brownrigg, began to beat and ill-treat the deceased, sometimes with a walking-cane, at other times with a horsewhip or a postillion’s whip… and beat her with a whalebone riding-whip on several parts of her body, and with the butt-end, divers times about the head, the blood gushing from her head and other parts of her body;…” A neighbor hearing noises from the lower area of the house had her journeyman investigate it and that is how she was found.
~The Traveler