The Details:
Job Weeden. Job Weeden, Salem News-Boy, Begs Leave to Present the Following Lines… Salem, Massachusetts: Samuel Hall, 1771. [catalog record]
Elisha Rich. A Poem on the Late Distress of the Town of Boston…Chelmsford, Massachusetts: Nathaniel Coverly, 1776. [catalog record]
Both gift of Matt B. Jones, 1930s.
The Story:
Matt B. Jones collected this newspaper carrier’s address and this ballad sheet as examples of printed verse. The address was authored by a fifteen-year-old printer’s apprentice for distribution on New Year’s Day. The ballad celebrates the British evacuation of Boston on March 17, 1776 and also refers to the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Stamp Act.
Jones spent his summers hunting for pre-1800 American poetry from his Maine vacation home. He wrote AAS daily with lists of potential acquisitions. Books, pamphlets, juveniles, and poetic broadsides arrived by the dozen. Jones suggested Clarence Brigham “junk” any unwanted titles, but the delighted librarian kept most of Jones’s finds.
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>> Related item:
Indignation Meeting! in Case 7
