Both content and typography of this early advertising were rudimentary. Type faces were unattractive, from present-day standards, and there were no borders. Advertisement-writing was obviously in its infancy, and once an ad was in type it seemed quite impossible either to get it out of the paper or to change any part of it.[1]
Among the interesting bits in the first issue of the Spectator are little ads for the Oregon Milling Company and for a hat manufactory, early Oregon industrial concerns, and the first real estate advertisement of a long line that have come down from pioneer times. In this ad C. E. Pickett, City Hotel, Oregon City, was advertising "Town Lots for Sale", informing prospective buyers that the lots were just at the foot of Clackamas rapids.
It has been said that the advertising of early days gave a better picture of living conditions than anything that appeared in the sparse news columns. This seems true in connection with the things that people ate and wore. The following 1846 Spectator advertisement, for instance, is perhaps more valuable as a glimpse of the life of the time than as an example of pioneer advertising art:
The Red House, Portland
Just received, per Toulon of New York, on consignment, the following goods, viz.:
- 20 cases wooden clocks, 20 barrels dried apples;
- 3 saw mills; 1 doz. cross cut saws; mill saws and saw sets; mill cranks, plough shares and pitchforks ;
- 1 winnowing machine; 100 casks cut nails;
- 50 boxes saddlers' tacks; 6 boxes carpenters' tools;
- 12 dozen hand axes; 20 boxes manufactured tobacco;
- 5,000* cigars, 50 kegs white lead
- (*changed in next issue to 50,000 and thus continued)
- 100 kegs paints; ½doz. medicine chests;
- 50 bags Rio coffee; 25 bags pepper;
- 200 boxes soap;
- 50 cases boots and shoes; 6 doz. slippers;
- 50 cane seat chairs ; 40 doz. wooden seat do.
- 50 dozen sarsaparilla ; 10 bales sheetings;
- 4 cases assorted prints;
- 1 bale damask Tartan shawls
- 5 pieces striped jeans; 6 doz. cotton do. do.
- 12 doz. linen duck pants; 10 doz. satinett jackets;
- 12 doz. red flannel shirts;
- 200 doz. cotton hdk'fs; 6 cases white cot. flannels;
- 6 bales extra heavy indigo blue cotton ;
- 2 cases negro prints ; 1 case black velveteen ;
- 4 cases Mackinaw blankets;
- ↑ See article by Miss Edith Dobie, University of Washington history staff, in Washington Historical Quarterly, April, 1927.
