Skip over navigation

Introductory Essay

What we now call carriers' addresses were printed pieces, usually broadsides, that Carriers of newspapers distributed on New Year's Day to extend greetings, usually in the form of verse, to their customers and to solicit a gift in reward for the dependable delivery of newspapers during the previous year. The carriers were frequently the printer's apprentices, or printer's devils as they were known in the eighteenth century, who generally served only for room and board. Later, carriers were paid, but only meager salaries at best. Carriers therefore eagerly awaited this annual tip, and customers obliged. Newspaper carriers were not the only tradesmen to attempt to convert verse into a cash gift at year's end. In the later decades of the eighteenth century, American watchmen, carters, street sweepers, bootblacks, lamplighters, and baker's' apprentices started to follow the lead of newspaper carriers in producing. annual messages. Never as numerous as carriers' addresses, these verses appeared sporadically in urban areas through the nineteenth century. A number of carriers left testimony to the significance of their New Year's windfall. The noted editor Joseph T. Buckingham recalled distributing to thirty or thirty-five subscribers to the Greenfield (Mass.) Gazette an address written by Samuel Elliot in 1797, when Buckingham was seventeen. Buckingham remembers his youthful elation with the results of his New Year's appeal: '0 Croesus! how mean and insignificant was thy grandeur. ... I counted my wealth, — six dollars and seventy-five cents, — all in quarters and eighths of a dollar, — and locked it in my chest! Never before had I been the owner of so much money, — never before so rich.' Likewise, Samuel Woodworth, the author of the 'Old Oaken Bucket,' served an apprenticeship at the Columbian Centinel in Boston. In a letter written to his family when he was seventeen, he listed items purchased with the ten dollars he received in tips on New Year's Day in 1802: a pair of candlesticks and an almanac for his parents and clothing for himself. The lines devoted to graphic depictions of the carrier as the poor but honest youngster who endured many a hardship as he delivered the news in all sorts of weather are not only touching but informative about the lives of these apprentices.

Who could deny a generous tip to the youngster whose New Year's verse greeting recounted the hardships undergone by the faithful carrier in winter weather:

Bedouins of the street are they, tenting anywhere
Pitching camp upon the cobblestones
Braving rain and snow and sleet and winter's chilly wind;
Lighting fires to warm their frozen bones.

Moreover, the customary plea at the end of one address revealed that the delivery of newspapers was not exclusively a male preserve. The greeting in the American Telegraphic of Newfield, Connecticut, in 1799 was written by Polly:

To you, generous patrons, see Polly appear,
To congratulate you on the birth of a year.
A song-a mixture of humor and folly,
At a season like this, is expected from Polly.
For carriers must sing, whether female or male,
On New Year's Day, or their purses will fail.

This pleasant custom of carriers' New Year's broadside greetings persisted in America for roughly two hundred years, from 1720 to its decline after 1900. Still, as late as the 193Os, carriers from the Providence (R.I.) Journal were extending the traditional New Year's verse to their customers. Other examples can be found even later, such as the 1942 Grand Rapids (Mich.) Herald newspaper greeting in the form of a pamphlet, and calendars presented by Chicago papers in 1957 and 1959. Gerald D. McDonald was the first and foremost investigator of these ephemera. In his 'New Year's Addresses of American Newsboys,' in Bookman's Holiday (New York: New York Public Library, 1943) McDonald traces the origin of the custom to England. On Boxing Day, December 26, apprentices in the various trades carried boxes from house to house to collect donations from the master's customers. McDonald declares that as early as 1666, a London bellman (i.e., a watchman) presented a printed broadside of verses to the people of his district. Both Clarence S. Brigham, in his Journals and Journeymen: A Contribution to the History of Early American Newspapers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), and McDonald concur that English newsboys' verses appeared later. Brigham states that none can be found before 1720. McDonald also pointed out that, in America, Aquila Rose, a Philadelphia compositor and poet, first penned verses for an appeal distributed by the printer's apprentices. Although no copy of what may well be the first carrier's address (1720) is extant, the verse is included in Rose's collected works, as are his poems for New Year's Day in 1721 and 1722. The American Antiquarian Society holds the earliest surviving example of a carrier's address issued as a broadside, that of the American Weekly Mercury, a Philadelphia newspaper, for 1735. From the opening lines asserting the indispensability of the news to the closing hint for a gratuity, this early appeal set the tone for the addresses to come:

There's not an ear that is not deaf
But listens to the news; —
But, if you think my time misspent,
Then give me ne'er a penny.

Generally printed on single sheets of paper, carriers' addresses were vulnerable to damage and loss. A few were printed on white or colored satin, perhaps to be given to the wealthiest customers. The Salem(Mass.) Gazette in the early 1800s often printed the same address on both paper and silk. And the Quebec Gazette, which contained by English and French-language verse, seems to have produced two printings on occasion, with a copy of the French verses printed separately on satin. But whether on paper or silk, on single sheets or in pamphlet form, it is amazing how many of these ephemera have survived. Many were slipped or tipped into bound volumes of the newspapers, others were framed, therefore surviving the ravages of time. As the verses grew in popularity and as subscribers to newspapers lived farther from the city of publication, newspaper publishers began to print the carriers' greetings not only as broadsides but in the pages of their regular issues immediately following New Year's Day. The Boston Gazette of January 5, 1809, explains: 'The following address was on Monday last, presented by our faithful carriers, to the patrons of the Gazette, in town. That their merits both as poets as well as post-boys, may bekn'own to our distant as well our neighboring friends, we have been induced to place their well-written address in the columns of this paper.' Frequently carriers' addresses were picked up by other papers in the same or distant cities and reprinted, sometimes with textual changes. For example, the Massachusetts Centinel in Boston printed a carrier's address on January 7, 1789, but credited it to the American Mercury of Hartford of that year.

One reason for creating an elaborate finding aid for carriers' addresses is to provide a scholarly access to a substantial body of local American poetry. Although most of these verses were published anonymously, they are important as cultural artifacts and deserving of study. Unfortunately, most addresses provide no clues to authorship. The style of some indicate that they were written by educated individuals — a local poet perhaps or the newspaper editor. Those that are shorter and simpler may have been written by the carrier. Some authors enjoyed expounding on varied topics, others composed the verse in slapdash fashion. We find carrier Lawrence Swinney's name printed as the author of the 1767 address of the New-York Gazette, while Daniel Jones appears to be the writer, as well as the carrier, of the (Boston) Disciple and Theological Review address of 1816. Some well-known authors wrote addresses on behalf of the carrier and apprentices. Brigham, in Journals and Journeymen, declared it reasonable to assume that Benjamin Franklin wrote many of the pre-Revolutionary War verses for the Pennsylvania Gazette. Philip Freneau contributed addresses to twelve papers in Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, and Charleston between 1783 and 1798. Theodore Dwight, Richard Alsop, Lemuel Hopkins, and Joel Barlow, members of the group known as the 'Hartford' or 'Connecticut Wits,' turned out many political satires that were popular as carriers' addresses. William Cobbett wrote addresses for his paper, Porcupine's Gazette in Philadelphia. William Biglow contributed verse for Boston and Salem papers, and Samuel Woodworth was a frequent contributor of addresses for various New York papers. McDonald reveals that Daniel Webster wrote the New Year's address for the Dartmouth Gazette (Hanover, N.H.) in 1803, signing the piece 'Icarus.' Most often, the subject matter of the verses provides a survey of the social and cultural events of the previous year. Moreover, the verses express the candid opinions of their authors, frequently from the perspective of the common man. Verse content ran the gamut from odes to the old and new year, to commendations of civic virtue, or the recitation of some local scandal. The verses often included praises for the newspaper, reports of political campaigns, pleas for temperance, complaints about taxes, invocations of heroes, commemorations of battles, and discussions of fashions or new inventions. Thus any conceivable topic was fair game for the New Year's rhymer, but somewhere in the verse there was usually the request for a gratuity for the faithful carrier. The following selections exhibit some of the variety of the carriers' addresses. The (philadelphia) Pennsylvania Gazette in 1771 extended this praise for Britain's stance for liberty in a conflict with Spain over the Falkland Islands:

But gracious George, to whose blest Scepter's giv'n
Bright Mercy's Ray, prime Atttibute of Heav'n
With Ear paternal hears their mournful Cries,
Up to his Throne in piteous Accents rise.

In contrast, four years later, in 1775, the author of the carrier's greeting of the Pennsylvania Journal of Philadelphia pictures Britain as the oppressor of its children's rightful legacy of liberty:

When Britain first at Heaven's Command,
Arose from out the azure Main,
This was the Charter of the Land,
And guardian Angels sung the Strain
'Rule Britania, Britania rule the Waves,
Britons never will be Slaves.'
But now what guardian Angel will,
Sing this once favor'd Strain to thee,
Whose greatest Pleasure is to Kill,
Thy children's hopes of Liberty:
Vain is their Empire o'er the Waves,
Who'd sink their Subjects into Slaves.

Though a serious tone usually prevailed, the greeting could be satiric, humorous, patriotic, or sentimental. For example, the deep sense of loss and anguish upon the death of George Washington finds expression in these elegiac lines from Hartford's Connecticut Courant in 1800:

O widow'd country! what protecting form,
Shall ope thy pathways thro' the gathering store!
What mighty hand thy trembling barque shall guide
Thro' faction's rough, and overwhelming tide!
The hour is past-thy Washington, no more.

Authors frequently criticized city fathers, as in the address of the Mercantile Advertiser of New York in 1819.

In pairs, in herds, the swine we meet
Dispersed o'er alley, land and street
Rolling in filth of ev'ry name
And flushing every cheek with shame!...
To witness a disgusting sight....

Indeed, the New Year's broadside addressed any and all topics of the day, from pestilence to slavery or war. When a fever raged in Philadelphia in 1807, Poulson's American Daily Advertiser articulated the fears engendered by the disease in a graphic personification:

Dread Pestilence with lurid eye
And heart consuming breath
Deep horror lurking in his sigh
His touch the stroke of Death.

As early as 1820, slavery aroused foreboding in the newsboys' greetings. Verses in Poulson's American Daily Advertiser expressed passionate feelings:

Slavery, the bane and curse of every land,
The foulest stain upon the Christian hand,
Freeman and Christians, check the monstrous claim,
Fraught with your ruin, infamy and shame.

The format of the address was generally straightforward, although variations did occur. The address of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter for 1769 was in the form of a dialogue between two newsboys. Occasionally, the address appeared in prose. The author of the address in the (New Haven) Connecticut Journal of 1795 admitted that 'the muses have absolutely refused me their aid, and I am doomed to silence, or to address you in prose.' Not all of the addresses were presented in English. The earliest French Canadian address recorded here is that of the Quebec Gazette of 1767. German-language broadsides had a long tradition, particularly in the Pennsylvania counties of Lebanon and Lancaster. The earliest German address listed in this bibliography appeared in the 1765 Wochentlichte Philadelphische Staatsbote. As printing techniques improved, the single sheets of the addresses became increasingly elaborate. Decorative borders of type furnished the earliest ornamentation, followed by simple woodcuts, then initial block letters and tailpieces; typographic elements sometimes ran riot over the page. The attractiveness and exuberance may have ensured the survival of some of these ephemera. Some clearly reflect current taste in the graphic arts. In their day, the addresses served a purpose, bringing, on a very personal level, warm greetings at the beginning of the New Year from the newspaper carriers to their customers. To treat the carrier's address as a curiosity or merely as a desirable collector's item is to miss the true significance of what the contents tell us about the times. The widespread appeal of the verses and their popularity over a long period provide a spontaneous and contemporary perspective on historical, political, and social events in the various regions of the country. Since the greeting included a review of local and national events, it served to broaden the horizons of its readers, while appealing at the same time to feelings of civic pride and patriotism. Because they provide a view of the preceding year from the vantage point of a particular locality, these addresses can serve the social historian. In addition, the style and themes of the verse furnish material for the literary scholar. For the printing historian, they are a source revealing changes in American journalistic styles, tastes in design, and technological advances, such as in the methods and techniques of printing, illustrations, typography, and the use of color. The poetic remnants of these ephemeral New Year's greetings thus present a fascinating record of the country and its people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Perhaps suspect as exact history, the carrier's address nevertheless invites us to share the fears, hopes, and dreams of past eras. As Gerald McDonald so aptly wrote, 'Collectively, these addresses are a march of time with the history of one hundred years done in meter.'
— Mary T. Russo, August 1991

Reproduced from the Introduction to:
McDonald, Gerald D., Stuart C. Sherman, and Mary T. Russo. A checklist of American newspaper carrier's addresses, 1720-1820. Worcester, MA : American Antiquarian Society, 2000.
Courtesy of American Antiquarian Society.