Notable for its rarity (over 90% of the ephemera processed is unique to the Phillips Library) and its diversity, the Essex County Advertising Ephemera Collection represents over 300 years of design, printing, advertising, and social history. The bulk of the ephemera dates from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, with particular strength in late nineteenth-century materials. The majority of the materials originated in Salem, but the collection includes ephemera from about forty distinct cities and towns in Essex County, Massachusetts. The material types vary greatly. Though the collection is largely constituted of more traditional advertising ephemera, such as billheads, trade cards, and trade catalogs, there are many other items that are not readily sorted into more traditional advertising ephemera types.

The collection is arranged into forty-seven topical series. Each series is further divided into two geographic subseries, “Salem” and “Other Essex County.” Much of the original order of the collection has been preserved, though adjustments for clarity, including the consolidation or creation of topical series, have been made. Included alongside the collection’s finding aid is an appendix that provide a fully-searchable, item-level inventory of the collection, divided by size and organized by topic (see Appendix I). Please note that the dates included in the finding aid are bulk rather than inclusive, and individual items’ dates can be found in Appendix I. Appendix II contains a list of topics represented in the collection of Essex County trade cards.

The Essex County Advertising Ephemera Collection makes up just part of the Phillips Library’s broader Ephemera Collection, which includes other advertising materials, social ephemera, and cultural ephemera from Essex County and beyond. The rest of this collection is still in the process of being made accessible; to request materials, please contact the library by email at research@pem.org.