(Excerpt from Geo. P. Rowell and Co's American Newspaper D...)
Excerpt from Geo. P. Rowell and Co's American Newspaper Directory: Containing Accurate Lists of All the Newspapers and Periodicals Published in the United States, Territories and Description of the Towns and Cities in Which They Are Published Honesdale, Citizen, weekly. Das Journal, weekly. Wayne Co. Herald, weekly. Wayne Independent, weekly. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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George Presbury Rowell was born at Concord, Essex County, the son of Samuel and Caroline E. (Page) Rowell, and a descendant of Thomas Rowell, a seventeenth-century emigrant from England. When he was thirteen, his family settled on a farm near Lancaster, New Hampshire.
He studied at the Lancaster Academy.
During the winters of 1854-56 Rowell taught school and "boarded round. " In 1856 he secured a job in a Boston store, but lost it in the panic of 1857, and returned to teaching. The next year he started collecting bills for the Boston Post. Soon he began to sell advertising space in the paper, and was earning $14. 00 per week.
Rowell's first independent enterprise was the introduction in Boston of a scheme of theatre program advertising which he had noted in New York. The success of this plan encouraged him in 1865 to launch an advertising agency with his friend Horace Dodd. Net profits for the first year were five times the capital of $2, 000 which the partners had invested in equal shares. Their success was due to Rowell's novel list system whereby columns of space, engaged from country weeklies by the year, were retailed to advertisers at $100 for a one-inch advertisement inserted four times in 100 papers.
He soon sold out the Boston office to Dodd and set up the new firm of George P. Rowell & Company in New York, April1, 1867. Since the "list system" was by that time widely imitated, he credited the immediate success of his new venture more largely to his unique reputation for prompt payment to publishers and his assumption of responsibility for collecting from advertisers. He placed large quantities of patent medicine and lottery advertising, and at one time originated and unsuccessfully advertised Ripans Tabules, which, though advocated for various ills, were a dry form of a common household remedy--rhubarb and soda--sold at a fabulous price.
In later years, however, his views changed, and he extolled "Truth in Advertising" campaigns. In 1869 George P. Rowell and Company's American Newspaper Directory first appeared, listing geographically and by class 5, 411 United States publications and 367 periodicals in Canada. The second edition, in 1870, was considerably more ambitious, including brief histories of over fifty well-known advertisers, and an "American Newspaper Rate-Book, " but the following year the simpler form was resumed and continued with slight variations until the final edition in 1908, when it was absorbed by N. W. Ayer & Son's American Newspaper Annual.
The most significant result of its publication was the deflation of false circulation figures formerly customary among publishers. In 1871 Rowell decided to take four months of vacation every year, and did so almost invariably the rest of his life. He had sold a quarter interest in the business to Charles Nelson Kent, a boyhood friend who proved an able partner. At the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876, he erected for public use a building to house the eight thousand or more newspapers donated regularly by their publishers during the period of the fair.
In 1880 he bought "Prospect Farm" near Lancaster, N. H. , and for six years seldom visited his office. His activities during this time included an unsuccessful campaign for the state legislature, the founding of the Percy Summer Club as a fish and game preserve, and a money-losing experience as the owner-editor of the village newspaper.
At Boston in 1866 Rowell and Dodd had started a house organ called the Advertiser's Gazette which was continued in New York until sold in 1878 to an unsuccessful publisher who had soon discontinued it. On July 15, 1888, Rowell began the publication of Printers' Ink, a journal for the advertising trade. Though soon imitated by many other publications, it remained a leading periodical in its field, and representative of the best long-time interests of advertising. It fought with the Post Office Department in the interest of equitable rates for advertisers and publishers, advocated better ethics among advertisers and agencies, and successfully promoted in 1911 the statute against misleading advertising which was later adopted by a number of states.
He sold his business to his employees in 1892, was forced to resume control some years later to avert bankruptcy, and sold out finally in 1905. In that year he wrote his reminiscences in a series of fifty-two informal papers, published weekly in Printers' Ink, and later in book form under the title, Forty Years an Advertising Agent (1906). His health broke during a trip to Switzerland and Egypt in the winter of 1907-08, and in August following, at Poland Springs, Me. , he died.
Rowell was known as a founder of the "Printer's Ink", the first advertising trade magazine, in 1888. He issued the first Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory listing 5, 778 American papers. It was the first complete list of American newspapers. He included estimates of their circulation, a first step toward a standard of value of space.
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(Excerpt from Geo. P. Rowell and Co's American Newspaper D...)
On September 1, 1862, at Lancaster, Rowell married Sarah Burnside Eastman. In the autumn of 1890 Rowell was divorced by his first wife. They had one daughter, and on January 27, 1891, he married Mrs. Jeannette (Rigney) Hallock, daughter of Thomas Rigney of New York City.
