Help reading a 1735 Boston newspaper

[Nathaniel Sharpe]

Yes, I checked the page as well and agree that the last letter is most
likely "s."

The second letter is a bit more iffy, but closer to "o" than "e," in my
opinion.

As "Coos" seems the likeliest candidate, here's some more history on the
name's connection with New Hampshire:

(http://homepages.sover.net/~donnl/Osgood/osgood.html)
A bit of geography; Coos (pronounced k´· oös) originally Cohos or
Cohoes, and sometimes Coös---even Cowass---is now the name of the
northernmost county in New Hampshire. Haverhill, incorporated in 1763,
was the original county seat. Before the final county boundaries were
drawn in 1803, the entire area along the Connecticut River, from
Charlestown, or Fort #4---the first settlement in New Hampshire---in the
south to an undefined area in the north was known as Coos.

The earliest instance of Coos as a geographic location that I saw was
from January 24, 1766 in the New-Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth, NH),
talking of "making a Road or High-way from Durham to Coos, in this
province."

Nat


On 2/10/2013 6:18 PM, John McChesney-Young wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       John McChesney-Young<jmccyoung at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Help reading a 1735 Boston newspaper
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Could it be "Coos," as in Coos County, New Hampshire? The word on that
> page in the _Boston Gazette_ looks to me like either that or "Ceos";
> the right side of the second letter is so faint it's not clear which,
> but the last letter looks more like an "s" to me than a "t." See:
>
> http://archive.org/stream/gazetteerofstate00merr#page/106/mode/2up
> (_Gazetteer of the state of New-Hampshire_, 1817)
>
> for Coos County's entry.
>
> I see nothing promising in Massachusetts at:
>
> http://www.capecodhistory.us/Mass1890/MassachusettsGazetteer.htm#C
>
> John
>
> On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Joel S. Berson<Berson at att.net>  wrote:
> ...
>> I ask for help from those with access to EAN in reading a dateline in
>> the Boston Gazette of 1735 Oct. 6.  On page 4, col. 1, is the end of
>> a letter signed and dated --
>>
>> ????, -------- 1735                     ESCULAPIUS
>>
>> I am at a loss for the first four characters, which look a little
>> like "Ceot" but might be otherwise; and therefore also for a possible
>> meaning.  Normally, I would expect a place name, in this case in
>> Massachusetts or (less likely, from the text of the letter) New Hampshire....
> --
> John McChesney-Young ** Berkeley, California, U.S.A.
> JMcCYoung~at~gmail.com ** http://gplus.to/jmccyoung
>
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