June 12

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Journal (June 12, 1776).

“THE engagement between the Row-Gallies of this city, and the Roebuck and Liverpool English men of war.”

John Norman, an engraver from London, sold prints at his shop on Second Street in Philadelphia.  He also gained acclaim as the publisher of American editions of architectural manuals for which he engraved the images, but it was the prints available at his shop that he advertised in the June 12, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Journal.

One print showed the “engagement between the Row-Gallies of this city, and the Roebuck and Liverpool English men of war.”  It depicted a recent battle familiar to residents of Philadelphia and its hinterland.  In March, the Roebuck and the Liverpool blockaded the mouth of the Delaware Bay, eliminating access to the Delaware River and Philadelphia.  The American Revolution’s first battle on the Delaware River occurred on May 8 and 9 when the British frigates sailed up the river.  Thirteen row galleys built by the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety in 1775 repulsed the Roebuck and the Liverpool, demonstrating that the smaller yet agile boats could hold their own against the warships in shallow waters.  The outcome boosted the morale of Patriots in Philadelphia and beyond.  Norman proclaimed that the print was “JUST PUBLISHED” and available for sale (for two shillings and six pence plain or for three shillings and nine pence “elegantly coloured”) less than five weeks after the battle.  He likely did the engraving himself.

He did not, however, engrave “the Bostonians paying the excise-man, or taring and feathering” and many others from the “variety of elegant pictures” he sold.  Instead, he imported most of those.  The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring & Feathering was one of five satirical prints engraved by Philip Dawe, printed by Robert Sayer and John Bennett, and sold in both England and the colonies.  The series included The Alternative of Williams-Burg, The Bostonians in Distress, The Patriotick Barber of New York, of the Captain in the Suds, and A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina.  Although some supporters of the American cause may have embraced these images, Dawe included details that critiqued or mocked their acts of resistance.  The depictions of the women signing a nonimportation agreement in A Society of Patriotic Ladies, for instance, demeaned them as silly, stupid, or disturbingly masculine.  An unattended child dumps a platter of food on the floor as a dog licks its face and urinates on a tea canister, suggesting that the women abandoned their appropriately feminine roles to participate in politics they did not understand.  In Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man, five men dumping tea into the harbor can be seen in the background as Patriots force tea down the throat of John Malcom, a Loyalist tax collector, beneath the city’s Liberty Tree.  A noose hangs from one branch, commenting on the brutality of the Patriots and their methods.  Yet not all viewers necessarily agreed that the Patriots had gone too far.  Some of Norman’s customers in Philadelphia may have appreciated that image of the Boston Tea Party and subsequent events, just as they celebrated the row galleys forcing the Roebuck and the Liverpool to retreat.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 12, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Constitutional Gazette (June 12, 1776).

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Maryland Journal (June 12, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (June 12, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (June 12, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (June 12, 1776).

June 11

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Evening Post (June 11, 1776).

“I thus publicly deny ever carrying any such papers, or being privy to the carrying of them.”

As the printer and editor of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, Benjamin Towne made decisions about the news that appeared in his newspaper.  In the June 11, 1776, edition, for instance, he selected an open letter “To Mr. JAMES RANKIN, one of the Representatives for the country of York, in the province of Pennsylvania” from “A FREEMAN,” updates from Watertown, Massachusetts; New London, Connecticut; and New York, and local news from Philadelphia.  Yet that was not all the news that appeared in that issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Advertisers also played a role in choosing which news to disseminate, paying for the opportunity to do so.  Hamilton and Leiper announced the dissolution of their partnership in yet another newspaper, Captain Thomas Houston alerted the public about four men who “DESERTED … from on board the Provincial armed galley Warren,” and “Dr. L. BUTTE, Surgeon-Dentist,” advised the public of his new location on Chestnut Street.

Thomas Cumpston also placed an advertisement with the intention of spreading news that was especially important to him.  “WHEREAS a report has been propagated about this city,” he declared, “that I carried certain Remonstrances to York Town in order to get them signed, therefore in justice to myself, I thus publicly deny ever carrying such papers, or being privy to the carrying of them.”  To make it clear, he asserted that “the report is groundless, and without foundation.”  The open letter to Rankin from “A FREEMAN” that filled the entire first page and spilled over onto the second concerned the circulation of the “certain Remonstrances” that Cumpston supposedly carried to York to gather signatures,” though “A FREEMAN” did not mention Cumpston.  That letter was a response to Rankin’s own open letter “To the WORTHY INHABITANTS of YORK COUNTY” in the June 8 edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  It also filled the entire first page and overflowed to the second page.  Rankin stated that he had been “injuriously treated by a Resolve of your County Committee, published in the several newspapers.”

The controversy revolved around Rankin’s reaction to the a resolution passed by the Second Continental Congress on May 15, 1776, a resolution that the “Assemblies and Conventions of the United Colonies, where no Government sufficient to the Exigencies of their affairs hath been hitherto established, … adopt such Government as shall in the Opinion of the Representatives of the People best conduce to the happiness and Safety of their Constituents in particular and America in General.”  In other words, each colony should establish its own government.  Tories and moderates took a different approach to this resolution than Patriots did.  In Pennsylvania, that resulted in both a “Remonstrance,” favored by Tories, and a “Protest,” favored by Patriots, circulating; “A FREEMAN” accused Rankin of embracing the former and ignoring the latter even though Rankin claimed that he wished to be guided by the views of all his constituents.  Rankin insisted that he acted from “love for the charter constitution of Pennsylvania” when he took into account “a Remonstrance …  sign[ed] by multitudes of the most respectable names in the city of Philadelphia, and the neighbouring counties, in opposition to the doctrines in the Protest.”  The “Remonstrance” argued that “public service has been, and might still be, carried on as vigorously by the Assembly of this province as by any other public body on the continent.”  Therefore, it was not necessary to create a new government.

Cumpston wanted no part of that controversy, at least not as an agent who circulated “certain Remonstrances … in order to get them signed.”  His advertisement served as a supplement to the news as he attempted to shape the narrative as far as his own actions were concerned.  Towne, the printer and editor, may not have had any interest in how the story that appeared on the first page of his newspaper had an impact on one resident of Philadelphia, but he did aim to generate revenue by selling advertising space.  Cumpston inserted a paid notice as a means of publishing news and rehabilitating his reputation as political debates in Pennsylvania intensified.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 11, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (June 11, 1776).

June 10

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (June 10, 1776).

“THOMAS LEIPER … manufactures in the best manner Snuff and Tobacco of the first quality.”

Two days after tobacconists Hamilton and Leiper announced that they dissolved their partnership with an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Ledger, an advertisement with identical copy ran at the top of the middle column on the front page of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet.  An editorial submitted by a readers filled the rest of the column, whereas an advertisement for the new partnership of Hamilton and Son ran immediately below the same notice in the Pennsylvania Ledger.  Hamilton and Son did insert their advertisement in the June 10, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, though it ran in the upper right corner on the third page, separated from the advertisement about the end of the partnership.

In this instance, Hamilton and Son’s advertisement appeared immediately to the right of a new advertisement from “THOMAS LEIPER, TOBACCONIST,” who made his own announcement to “the public in general and his friends in particular, that the partnership of HAMILTON and LEIPER is dissolved, and that he … manufacturers in the best manner Snuff and Tobacco of the first quality, equal, if not superior, to any heretofore imported from Europe.”  Now in competition with his former partner, Leiper proclaimed that he could sell his products “on as reasonable terms as any Manufacturer in America” and he could “execute all orders on the shortest notice.”  To make that possible, “the works he has lately formed are by far the most complete not only for expediting the business of manufacturing Snuff and Tobacco, but also doing it in the greatest perfection, of any works ever yet erected on the Continent.”  Leiper gave good reasons why the clientele that he and Hamilton had cultivated while in business together for several years should stick with him rather than take their business to Hamilton and Sons.  He also had the advantage of remaining “in the house occupied by the company,” a familiar location to both former customers and the public.

Hamilton and Son may have initially had a leg up on Leiper by publishing their advertisement with the notice about the dissolution of the partnership.  In response, Leiper disseminated a more elaborate advertisement that made even bolder claims.  He may even have made arrangements for the compositor of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet to separate the notices that appeared together in the Pennsylvania Ledger.  That the advertisements for the two new ventures appeared next to each other put them on equal footing.  Two days later, all three advertisements ran in the Pennsylvania Gazette.  The compositor placed them one after the other after the other on the third page, staring with the announcement about dissolving the company, then Hamilton and Son’s advertisements, and Leiper’s notice at the end.  Readers could peruse all the news about these tobacconists in one convenient place.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 10, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Boston-Gazette (June 10, 1776).

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Boston-Gazette (June 10, 1776).

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Connecticut Courant (June 10, 1776).

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Connecticut Courant (June 10, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 10, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 10, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 10, 1776).

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Norwich Packet (June 10, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published June 10, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Boston-Gazette (June 10, 1776).

June 9

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Pennsylvania Ledger (June 8, 1776).

“THE Copartnership of HAMILTON and LEIPER, Tobacconists, is dissolved.”

The “Copartnership of HAMILTON and LEIPER, Tobacconists,” provided their products to consumers for more than half a decade in the early 1770s.  In May 1772, they placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette to advise the public that they “established a MANUFACTORY in Market-street, Baltimore,” and they continued “to manufacture and sell as usual at Frederick-Town,” Maryland.  (At the time, Baltimore did not yet have its own newspapers, so the partners resorted to the Pennsylvania Gazette as a regional newspaper for their advertisement.)  Less than a year and a half later, they opened a new location in Philadelphia. In an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Journal in September 1772, they promoted “KITE-FOOT TOBACCO … manufactured and sold … In Second-street,” Philadelphia.  To entice prospective customers who might not believe that their tobacco was “Of an excellent quality, equal to any imported from Europe,” Hamilton and Leiper made samples available “at the Bar of the London Coffee-House.”

As summer arrived in 1776, however, Hamilton and Leiper ran a new advertisement in the Pennsylvania Ledger, this time announcing that they dissolved their partnership and calling on associates who “have any demand against that concern … to bring in their accounts as soon as possible.”  They could present any such accounts to Leiper “in the house lately occupied by the Company, at the corner of Spruce and Water-streets,” or to Hamilton and Son “in Second-street.”  That notice implied that Hamilton and Son commenced their own partnership.  An advertisement that conveniently appeared immediately below that notice made clear that “HAMILTON and SON, Tobacconists[,] … continue to carry on their Scotch snuff and to bacco Manufactory in all the several branches as usual.”  To that end, they “have laid in a large stock of the very best Virginia leaf tobacco.”  The news partners declared that they “are confident of giving the utmost satisfaction to their former customers and the publick” and pledged that orders “will be punctually answer’d with all possible dispatch.”  In running one advertisement after the other, they aimed to maintain the clientele that Hamilton and Leiper had cultivated over several years in business together.

June 8

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Freeman’s Journal (June 8, 1776).

“A likely healthy NEGRO MAN … Enquire of the printer. 3 5”

Benjamin Dearborn published the third issue of the Freeman’s Journal on June 8, 1776.  Among the various advertisements that appeared in that issue, one announced, “TO BE SOLD, (for want of employ) A likely healthy NEGRO MAN, aged about twenty five, and understands farming business well.”  For interested parties who wanted to know more, the notice instructed them to “Enquire of the printer” at his printing office in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  The previous issue of the Freeman’s Journal featured an advertisement in which Samuel Hall described Seneca, an enslaved man who liberated himself by running away from his enslaver on May 29, and offered a reward for his capture and return.  In the course of the first three issues, Dearborn went from proclaiming “the most sacred rights of a free people” in an address to readers to encouraging the surveillance of Black men in a notice placed for the purpose of capturing a fugitive from slavery to actively participating in the slave trade as a broker and proxy for an anonymous advertiser.

Notations in both advertisements suggests that each met with success.  Hall’s advertisement concerning Seneca concluded with “2–4,” a notation intended for the compositor who set type rather than for readers.  It indicated that Hall’s advertisement should appear in issue “No. 2” through issue “No. 4.”  However, Hall’s advertisement did not run in any subsequent issue, suggesting that Seneca had been captured and returned and, in turn, the notice withdrawn.  The anonymous “enquire of the printer” advertisement concluded with a similar notation, “3 5.”  It first appeared in issue “No. 3” and should have appeared in the next two issues as well.  It did not run the following week, but a note from the printer promised that “Advertisements &c. omitted, will be in our next.”  The advertisement did indeed appear in issue “No. 5” the following week, with the notation revised to “3 6” to allow for the week it did not run.  That meant that it should have appeared in the third (June 8), fifth (June 22) and sixth (June 29) issues of the Freeman’s Journal.  The advertisement did not run again, suggesting that someone had indeed enquired of the printer and completed the transaction.  Dearborn commenced advertising the “Books so much admired, entitled COMMON SENSE,” the most influential political pamphlet advocating for the colonies to declare independence, on June 22, the last issue that carried the advertisement offering the enslaved man for sale.  Dearborn deployed the power of the press to promote the liberty of some Americans while restricting the liberty of others.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 8, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Providence Gazette (June 8, 1776).

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Freeman’s Journal (June 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 8, 1776).