Pennsylvania Gazette

The Pennsylvania Gazette: Containing the Freshest Advices Foreign and Domestic.

March 25, 1742

Issue 693

The first strange thing I noticed about the Pennsylvania Gazette was how the S’s were maid to look like odd F’s. It had day to day accounts of what was happening in London and Madrid and Naples according to letters. It had death tolls from the Hungarian troops moving towards Bohemia. There was a lot of international affairs written about in the Pennsylvania Gazette.

There was an entire letter written to Mr. Franklin written in German from someone with the initials J.W. Which I find odd, because it’s in the newspaper. How many people in Pennsylvania can read German- maybe at this time some of them could because they were recently immigrated from Germany, but nowadays, there would never be an entire column of a newspaper in another language.

I enjoyed the Notice given to all persons indebted to William Clymer threatening to put them away if they didn’t pay their federal obligations by June. “Very good Rum to be sold” at the end seemed funny.

There are a lot of indebted callings in this issue of the paper. Also, many small articles that seem like obituaries aren’t remembrances of people, but casting off of their land or estate to others. It wasn’t about grieving the losses of people, but what would happen with what was left. That was interesting to me. It makes sense because of the time, but nowadays we want to be comforted in remembering the lost loved one, not just selling their land and moving on with reality.

The paper also listed items from Europe for sale instead of today’s papers having pictures. They were efficient for the people to know their inventory and what was in stock and what wasn’t. I liked that way of doing it. It showed that they were buying to use not buying to buy, for consumer’s sake.

Over all it was a good paper that told what needed to be told. I didn’t understand why so much foreign news was being told, or letters back and forth, but I suppose I don’t really understand why that happens now either.