Click on the image to enlarge. You can then click on the image again to zoom in on the text.
After a storm-related and then vacation-related hiatus, we are happy to be back to bringing you news of the weird and the wonderful from the UTC Special Collections. Steve has not written for the blog in quite some time, but ran across a fascinating item this week and wanted to share it with our readers:
An unusual item from our repository that has always intrigued me is a newspaper (pictured above) from 1770, the Boston Gazette and Country Journal. This newspaper existed for much of the 18th century, from 1719-1798, under a variety of names. An early publisher of this newspaper was James Franklin (1697-1735), older brother of Benjamin Franklin. This newspaper is interesting due to the fact that it is printed on hand-made paper (like all paper prior to 1800) and uses the archaic style of lettering that used the long “S” (which resembled the letter “F”) in certain instances. There were certain rules to this practice, but too detailed to go into here. This makes reading it today a bit of a challenge, but you get used to it fairly quickly. Newspapers were ephemeral, in that they were not made to last much beyond their initial use, so surviving newspapers that old are quite rare. Since this copy dates to the time before we gained our independence, the news on the front page is mostly from London.
The image above is only of the front page of the paper. There are an additional 3 pages that may be viewed in the Special Collections. We would love for you to pay us a visit!