July 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (July 20, 1776).

“Simes’s Military Guide for officers, 2 vol.”

After the Continental Congress voted to declare independence on July 2, 1776, and approved the Declaration of Independence two days later, the war that began with the skirmishes at Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts had a new purpose.  Colonizers and subjects of George III no longer fought for redress of grievances within the British imperial system; instead, settlers and citizens of a new nation fought for independence from that empire.  The military manuals that American printers had been printing, advertising, and selling for the past two years and longer were as important as ever.  Printers and booksellers continued promoting them in newspaper advertisements.

In an advertisement in the first column on the first page of the July 20 edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger, for instance, James Humphreys, Jr., the printer of that newspaper, declared that “A few Copies of the Military Guide FOR YOUNG OFFICERS, By THOMAS SIMES … embellished with a Number of Copperplates … May be had of the PRINTER hereof.”  Humphreys jointly published Simes’s military manual with Robert Aitken and Robert Bell.  For several months he had been hawking the book.  Bell also continued advertising and selling it.  In his own advertisement on the last page of that issue of the Pennsylvania Ledger, he listed it among the “following MILITARY WORKS, some of them very valuable, and seldom to be met with, [that] may be had at R. BELL’s.”  He also stocked “New System of Military Discipline, founded on Principle, by a General Officer,” a manual that Aitken printed and previously advertised, and “Hoste and Webster’s Mechanics, Fortification, Artillery, or Gunnery, adapted to the use of the Gentlemen of the Army and Navy.”  Bell did not mention the copperplate engravings that illustrated Simes’s military manual, but he did note that “LE Blond’s Military Engineer, containing the attack and defence of all kinds of fortified places” came with “numerous and excellent copperplates.”  He also carried copies of “ARCHITECTURE HYDRAULIQUE,” a manual on hydraulic architecture and “usage du cours des eaux dans les operations de la Guerre des Sieges & de Campaign” [utilizing watercourses in siege and field warfare operations], for readers who understood French.  Not surprisingly, printers and booksellers highlighted military manuals in their newspaper advertisements during the Revolutionary War.

July 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Freeman’s Journal (July 20, 1776).

“The Printing-Business, in it’s different branches carried on with care and fidelity.”

Like many other American printers, Benjamin Dearborn, the printer of the Freeman’s Journal, or New-Hampshire Gazette, used the colophon as an advertisement for the various services he provided.  The colophon for the Freeman’s Journal ran across all three columns at the bottom of the last page, separated from other content by two lines.  It stated: “PORTSMOUTH: Printed by BENJAMIN DEARBORN, near the Parade, where this Paper may be had at Eight Shillings L[awful]. M[oney]. per year, one half at entrance.  The Printing- Business, in it’s different branches carried on with care and fidelity.”  Whatever the other content, each issue concluded with an advertisement from the printer.

Usually that meant that news and paid notices appeared above the colophon, but only one other item ran on the final page of the July 20, 1776, edition of the Freeman’s Journal.  Dearborn printed the entire “DECLARATION, By the Representatives of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA, In General Congress assembled,” approved on July 4.  The Freeman’s Journal was one of the last American newspapers to print the Declaration of Independence, yet Dearborn delivered it in an especially attractive format for his subscribers.  As the only item (except for the colophon) on the final page, it could be removed from the newspaper and displayed.  John Holt, the printer of the New-York Journal, was the only other printer to present the Declaration of Independence as a broadside within a newspaper.  He underscored that “a number of our Customers, … intend to separate it from the rest of the paper, and fix it up, in open view, in their Houses, as a mark of their approbation of the INDEPENDENT SPIRIT of their Representatives.”  In making that observation, Holt delivered instructions to other subscribers that they should similarly display the broadside integrated into that issue in their homes, shops, or offices.  Both Dearborn and Holt included a colophon or imprint at the bottom of the broadside Declaration of Independence in their newspapers.  Subscribers could trim them before displaying the broadsides, but those who did not displayed advertisements for the printers as well as the founding document of the new nation.

Freeman’s Journal (July 20, 1776).

Slavery Advertisements Published July 20, 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 (July 20, 1776).

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Freeman’s Journal (July 20, 1776).

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Providence Gazette (July 20, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (July 20, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (July 20, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (July 20, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published July 20, 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.

Freeman’s Journal (July 20, 1776).

July 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Essex Journal (July 19, 1776).

“Sundry Advertisements, Articles of Intelligence, &c. omitted for want of room.”

On July 19, 1776, yet another printer informed readers that some items did not appear in that issue of his newspaper due to lack of space.  This time it was John Mycall in the Essex Journal and New-Hamnpshire Packet, published in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  He informed readers of “Sundry Advertisements, Articles of Intelligence, &c. omitted for want of room.”  Six days earlier, the Providence Gazette carried a similar notice: “[Advertisements omitted will be in our next.]”  A day before that, Timothy Green, the printer of the Connecticut Gazette, pledged that his newspaper “digested every material Occurrence that is come to Hand” even though it consisted of “only a Half Sheet Paper this Week.”  In each instance, the newspapers carrying those notices printed the Declaration of Independence for subscribers and other readers to examine for themselves.

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

In this case, the Declaration of Independence appeared as the first item on the first page of the Essex Journal, followed immediately by “A PROCLAMATION, For a day of public humiliation, fasting and prayer” adopted by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Watertown on July 4, 1776.  By July 19, almost every other newspaper published in New England had printed the Declaration of Independence, making the text of the document available to Mycall via an exchange network of printers.  Except for Solomon Southwick and the Newport Mercury, no printers adjusted their weekly publication schedule or published a supplement or extraordinary issue to disseminate the Declaration of Independence.  As a result, the founding document sometimes ran where space was available on the second or third page and other times had a prominent spot on the front page.  It seemingly depended on when a printer received a copy compared to when the next issue went to press.  The placement of the Declaration of Independence on the first page of the July 19, 1776, edition of the Essex Journal suggests that Mycall had a copy far enough in advance that he could have chosen to publish a supplement or extraordinary issue but instead opted to make it part of the standard issue.  The amount of space required to do so meant less room for “Sundry Advertisements, [and] Articles of Intelligence.”

The same day, Alexander Purdie made a curious and quite different decision about publishing the Declaration of Independence in his Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg.  Rather than print the entire document, he published an “Abstract from the minutes of the General Congress, of Thursday the 4th instant, declaring the United Colonies free and independent states.”  Purdie promised that the Declaration of Independence “will be published at full length in next week’s Gazette,” but he did not explain why he chose not to publish it in that issue.  The “Abstract” ran on the second page.  Purdie had enough space to include the entire document if he left out other “Articles of Intelligence” or “Sundry Advertisements.”  Instead, he explained that the “first part of the declaration is a recapitulation of injuries,” referring to the grievances against the king, “and it concludes as follows.”  The final three paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence ran in the center column on the second page of Purdie’s Virginia Gazette.

When they acquired copies of the Declaration of Independence, printers made decisions about when to publish it and whether to displace other content to make the document available to the public.  In most cases they did not deliver news of independence.  That spread via word of mouth more quickly than printing presses, but the proliferation of printed copies of the Declaration of Independence in American newspapers allowed the public to engage with the rationale and results for themselves.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 19, 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.

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

July 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Continental Journal (July 18, 1776).

“WHEREAS the Great and General Court …”

John Gill, the printer of the Continental Journal, faced the same dilemma as his former partner, Benjamin Edes, the printer of the Boston-Gazette, when he received a legal notice with so many columns that its width exceeded that of the columns in his newspaper.  Edes had rotated some advertisements to run perpendicular to the rest of the text on the page, thus maximizing space while also eliminating the need to reset type for other advertisements that followed the standard column width.  Gill made a different decision in his effort to cover every inch of the page with content.  He opted for the same wider width for news and advertising that appeared in the same column as the legal notice the first time that it ran on July 4, 1776, and a narrower width for news and advertising in another column on the same page.

Three advertisements had wider widths: one placed by Silent Wilde, a post rider, calling on customers to make payment for his services, another in which Andrew Mitchel offered a reward for the capture and return of Cato, an enslaved man who liberated himself by running away, and an anonymous notice describing an enslaved woman for sale with instructions for interested parties to “Inquire of the Printer.”  Those three advertisements remained in a block of text with the legal notice for each of its three appearances, though sometimes in different order.  One advertisement that accompanied the legal notice the first time it appeared had a narrower width.  Beneath a headline that exclaimed “Stop Thief!” Joshua Longley described a man who sold him a stolen horse.  That advertisement also remained in the same block of text with the legal notice.  Gill did not need to publish news that appeared in the narrow column a second time.  Instead, he reset the type for three advertisements that previously appeared with the standard width, making them narrower but longer.  This did not save time and effort as Edes had done in the Boston-Gazette, but it did have all the text on the page printed in the same direction instead of rotating some advertisements to run perpendicular to the rest of the content.  Both solutions filled every inch of the page, an especially important consideration considering the shortages of paper during the Revolutionary War.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 18, 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.

Continental Journal (July 18, 1776).

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Continental Journal (July 18, 1776).

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Continental Journal (July 18, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (July 18, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (July 18, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (July 18, 1776).

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Newport Mercury Extraordinary (July 18, 1776).

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New-York Journal (July 18, 1776).

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New-York Journal (July 18, 1776).

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New-York Journal (July 18, 1776).

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New York Packet (July 18, 1776).

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New York Packet (July 18, 1776).

July 17

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

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

Connecticut Journal (July 17, 1776).

“For Sale at his Shop Next Door to the White-Haven Meeting House …”

Either Thomas Green and Samuel Green did not acquire a copy of the Declaration of Independence in time to include it in the July 10, 1776, edition of the Connecticut Journal or they prioritized other news and advertisements with type already set.  Due to a paper shortage, they scaled back their newspaper from four pages to two pages each week, so that also constrained how much space they had for the Declaration of Independence and other content.  Even though the new nation’s founding document did not appear in the Connecticut Journal in the first issue after the printers acquired a copy, the Greens did disseminate it to readers in New Haven and nearby towns via other means.  A notice from the printers appeared above the other advertisements: “To morrow, will be ready for sale, The Resolves of the Congress, declaring the United Colonies, FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES.”  That broadside edition circulated for nearly a week before the Declaration of Independence appeared in the July 17 edition of the Connecticut Journal.

When it did appear, as Emily Sneff explains, the Greens “reused the typesetting for their weekly newspaper.  …  To create their broadsides, they formatted the Declaration in two columns separated by a line of ornamental type.  In the next issue of their Journal on July 17, the Greens squeezed the same two columns of type onto the back page and used a border of or ornamental type to separate the Declaration from other pieces of news and advertisements.”[1]  To fit the remaining space, the Greens rotated the text to run perpendicular to the two (wider) columns of the Declaration of Independence at the top of the page and the three (narrower) columns of news and advertisements at the bottom of the page.  The content set at an awkward angle included a correction concerning “the Time of the visible Eclipse of the Moon to happen the 30th of this Month” that was “inserted wrong in some of Stafford’s Almanacs” printed by the Greens.  An advertisement about goods that Major Line sold at his shop ran as two short columns of five or six lines each.  The savvy printers made those short columns the same width as standard columns throughout the rest of their newspaper.  When the advertisement ran in the next issue, they did not have to reset all the type but instead combined the two columns into a single notice.  They repeatedly showed ingenuity in the choices they made about how to print the Declaration of Independence and other items in the Connecticut Journal.

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In addition to briefly recounting this story in When the Declaration of Independence was News, Emily Sneff offers more analysis of the broadside and the newspaper (with images of both) as Research Highlight for the Declaration Resources Project.

[1] Emily Sneff, When the Declaration of Independence Was News (Oxford University Press, 2026), 69.

Connecticut Journal (July 17, 1776).

Slavery Advertisements Published July 17, 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 (July 17, 1776).

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Maryland Journal (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 17, 1776).