June 2

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

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

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 1, 1776).

“This Gazette … though small, contains all the material Intelligence that came to Hand this Week.”

The June 1, 1776, edition of John Dixon and William Hunter’s Virginia Gazette looked different than previous issues and opened with an explanation from the printers.  That newspaper usually consisted of four pages of three columns each with a large masthead at the top of the first page.  In addition to the title, date, names of the printers, and issue number, the usual masthead declared that the newspaper contained “THE FRESHEST ADVICES, BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.”  Another line in the masthead proclaimed, “IN CIVITATE LIBERA LINGUAM MENTEMQUE LIBERAS ESSE DESERE” or “In a free state, there should be freedom of speech and thought.”  For a final layer, an advertisement for subscriptions, paid notices, and job printing ran across the bottom of the masthead.  An image depicting the arms of the monarch, similar to the one previously used by Alexander Purdie in the masthead of his Virginia Gazette, appeared in the center of Dixon and Hunter’s standard masthead.

The latest edition of their newspaper, however, consisted of four pages with two columns per page on a smaller sheet.  Rather than a masthead with five layers of text serving different purposes, a streamlined masthead gave the title on one line and the date, number, city, and names of the printers on the second line.  No image appeared in that masthead.  Subscribers could not help but notice that Dixon and Hunter’s Virginia Gazette had a new size and format.  Anticipating what kinds of reactions that might cause, the printers opened with a notice to readers: “THE Printers humbly hope that the present Scarcity of paper will sufficiently apologize for the Size of this Gazette.”  They tried to mollify their customers, asserting that the June 1 edition, “though small, contains all the material Intelligence that came to Hand this Week.”  They did not, however, make any sort of acknowledgment that some advertisements may have been omitted for lack of space.  “A considerable Supply of Paper is daily expected from NEW YORK and PHILADELPHIA,” the printers explained before ending with a promise.  “When it arrives, our Customers shall be served as formerly.”  It was not the first time during the Revolutionary War that colonizers in Virginia did not have access to as much news and advertising in the public prints as they had come to expect.  In January 1776, for instance, John Pinkney, the printer of another Virginia Gazette, ran an advertisement in Dixon and Hunter’s newspaper to explain that he missed an issue due to “a Disappointment in receiving Paper from the Northward.”  Dixon and Hunter faced the same challenge.  The following week they still did not have a new supply of paper, but they doubled the number of smaller pages to eight to serve their readers and their advertisers.

June 1

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 1, 1776).

“RAN AWAY … a NEGRO MAN, named Seneca.”

Benjamin Dearborn published the first issue of the Freeman’s Journal or New-Hampshire Gazette on May 25, 1776.  In a note that followed his address to readers, he “requested that those who would have advertisements, &c. [including letters and poetry] inserted in this paper will send them” to the printing office in Portsmouth “before the Post arrives, (which is on Friday afternoon) as it’s proposed to publish the paper on Saturday mornings.”  Several advertisers heeded those instructions.  The following week the second issue of the Freeman’s Journal featured more than half a dozen advertisements, a good start for a printer seeking to establish multiple revenue streams for his new newspaper.

Samuel Hall of Portsmouth was among those advertisers.  He published a notice that described Seneca, a “NEGRO MAN” who liberated himself by running away from his enslaver, and offered a reward for his capture and return.  Such advertisements encouraged readers to engage in surveillance of Black men and women to determine whether they matched the descriptions that appeared in the public prints.  In this case, Hall included Seneca’s age and height, noting as well that he was “a stout thick sett fellow.”  Readers might also recognize him by the clothing that he wore and took with him, including “two coats, one red the other blue; one blue pea Jacket; … 2 pair leather breeches; 2 pair worsted, and 2 pair yarn stockings; [and] a mill’d cap turn’d up with fur.”  In addition, Seneca “talks good English.”  Hall intended for all those details in aid in identifying the fugitive from slavery.

Enslaved men and women liberated themselves by running away from their enslavers throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Advertisements describing Black men and women who emancipated themselves in this way began appearing in newspapers soon after the Boston News-Letter commenced publication in 1704.  Seneca likely knew of other enslaved people who escaped from slavery by fleeing from their enslavers.  He may have taken advantage of the disruptions caused by the Revolutionary War to increase his chances of evading detection.  At the same time Seneca made his decision, Dearborn set about a new venture made possible in part by the war, establishing a newspaper called the Freeman’s Journal.  The title made a political statement about liberty on the eve of the colonies declaring independence, yet in the second issue Dearborn joined every other American newspaper printer, Patriots and Tories, who generated revenues and played a role in perpetuating slavery by publishing advertisements about enslaved people.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 1, 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.

Freeman’s Journal (June 1, 1776).

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Providence Gazette (June 1, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 1, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 1, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 1, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 1, 1776).

May 31

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy (May 31, 1776).

“A Press, in all probability will be continued, and a public Paper regularly printed each week.”

A notice “To the SUBSCRIBERS for THOMAS’s Massachusetts-Spy” in the May 31, 1776, edition informed that that “this week’s paper compleats the twelve month with most of the Subscribers.”  With the period for an annual subscription coming to an end, Isaiah Thomas “earnestly begs his good Customers would settle with him as soon as possible.”  That was even more imperative because the printer “proposes removing to Boston.”  Thomas had not intended to settle in Worcester.  In the winter and spring of 1775, he advertised plans to open a printing office in that town and set up a junior partner to oversee the business there, including publishing Worcester’s first newspaper.  Events in Boston, however, prompted Thomas to flee to Worcester and run the printing office himself.  He left shortly before the battles at Lexington and Concord and continued printing the Massachusetts Spy in Worcester during the siege of Boston.  After British forces evacuated the city on March 17, 1776, he contemplated returning to Boston.

What did that mean for Worcester?  Thomas expressed appreciation “to all those who have encouraged him in his business the year past” and declared that he “is willing to do what lays in his power towards continuing a Printing-Office in Worcester.”  With most of the annual subscriptions for Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy coming to an end, he needed to assess demand for continuing to publish a newspaper there.  To that end, he requested that “all those who incline to take papers from this town, and support the press, … would give in their names by Friday the 6th day of June.”  At that time, he would publish a handbill “for the Subscribers” with more information and collect subscription fees not yet paid.  Whether the printing office and Worcester’s first local newspaper closed depended on how many subscribers made a commitment to supporting the venture.  “[I]f a sufficient number of Subscribers appear, to continue and support the publication of a news-paper in this Town,” Thomas advised, “a Press, in all probability will be continued, and a public Paper regularly printed each week.”  With the May 31 edition, the printer suspended publication of the newspaper, yet his notice gained that “sufficient number of Subscribers” that three weeks later William Stearns and Daniel Bigelow distributed a new issue on June 21.  They altered the title from Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy to the Massachusetts Spy.  Two years later, Thomas returned to Worcester, resumed his role as printer, and changed the title back to Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 31, 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] (May 31, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 31, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 31, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (May 31, 1776).

May 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , ,

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

Continental Journal (May 30, 1776).

“Proposing to furnish the public with a News-Paper of Intelligence every THURSDAY.”

It was the third newspaper established in New England in just over a week.  Robert L. Fowle distributed the first of the “occasional HAND-BILLS” that became the New Hampshire Gazette in Exeter on May 22, 1776.  Three days later, Benjamin Dearborn published the first issue of the Freeman’s Journal in Portsmouth.  Finally, on May 30, John Gill presented the Continental Journal to readers in Boston and beyond.  Daniel Fowle had suspended his New-Hampshire Gazette in January or February, leaving the colony without any newspaper, so readers likely welcomed the new publications that gave them easier access to news and editorials about current events and forums for disseminating advertising than depending on newspapers from Massachusetts.  After the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, some printers in Boston discontinued or suspended their newspapers and others moved their newspapers to other towns.  That included Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the printers of the Boston-Gazette.  They dissolved their partnership and Edes printed the newspaper in Watertown during the siege of Boston and continued there for many months after British forces evacuated Boston.  Only recently had Samuel Hall moved the New-England Chronicle from Cambridge into Boston.  That made the Continental Journal only the second newspaper published in the city when Edes decided that he once again wished to “furnish the public with a News-Paper of Intelligence,” though he claimed that he “complied with the solicitation of his Friends” in pursuing the venture.

Printers often included an address to the public in their subscription proposals when they announced their plans to publish a newspaper or inserted a message to readers in the first issue.  In his notice “TO THE PUBLIC,” Gill kept it simple by declaring that he “chooses to omit all pompous representations and promises … and only engages his utmost fidelity in collecting and printing the newest and best accounts of things that can be obtained.”  With many years experiences printing the Boston-Gazette, he could rely on his reputation among prospective subscribers.  Gill also outlined the “TERMS” for subscribers.  The Continental Journal cost eight shilling per year, “one half to be paid at entrance, the other at the end of the first six months.”  That was a common model among newspaper printers.  He also advised, “Advertisements inserted at the customary price,” but did not specify that price.  The printer did instruct advertisers that their notices were “to be paid on receiving them.”  Like many other newspaper printers, he depended on advertising revenue.  The printing office accepted advertisements until two o’clock on Wednesdays (and later only “in cases of necessity”), allowing time to set type and print the newspaper in time to distribute it to subscribers on Thursdays.  The Continental Journal met with success, continuing throughout the war and closing in 1787 when Massachusetts imposed a tax on advertisements.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 30, 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.

New-York Journal (May 30, 1776).

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New-York Journal (May 30, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published May 30, 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.

New York Packet (May 30, 1776).

May 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (May 29, 1776).

“THE TRUE INTERSEST OF AMERICA IMPARITALLY STATED.”

An advertisement for a new political pamphlet, The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense, ran on the first page of the May 29, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette. According to Thomas R. Adams, “only two pamphlet-answers to Common Sense appeared” after the publication of Thomas Paine’s influential pamphlet on January 9, 1776.[1]  In March, Robert Bell, the printer of the first edition of Common Sense and subsequent unauthorized editions in Philadelphia, printed, advertised, and sold “PLAIN TRUTH; addressed to the INHABITANTS of America, containing Remarks on a late Pamphlet intituled COMMON SENSE.”  At the same time, Samuel Loudon, a printer in New York, advertised the imminent publication of “The Deceiver unmasked, or Loyalty and Interest united; In answer to a Pamphlet, entitled, COMMON SENSE.”  However, Loudon never sold that pamphlet because Patriots destroyed almost all the copies.  That made True Interest the second pamphlet directly responding to Common Sense available to the public.

Charles Inglis, a minister at Trinity Church in New York and a Loyalist who later became the first Anglican Bishop of Nova Scotia, published the pamphlet anonymously, just as Common Sense and Plain Truth had been published anonymously.  Inglis presented a stronger rebuttal than the arguments in Plain Truth, but he did so too late to have much impact on the debate over declaring independence.  Adams notes that “True Interest (traditionally regarded by historians as a much more effectual reply to Common Sense [than Plain Truth]) did not appear until nine days before Richard Henry Lee actually introduced his resolution for independence in the Congress.  Clearly, Inglis’s pamphlet came too late to play any part in shaping opinion.”[2]  That was not for lack of effort on the part of James Humphreys, Jr., the printer of True Interest, in marketing the pamphlet.  In addition to the advertisement in the May 29 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, he inserted an advertisement in his own Pennsylvania Ledger on June 1, giving it a privileged place as the first item in the first column on the first page.  That might have helped in finding a market for the pamphlet among Loyalists and perhaps others curious about the pamphlet’s contents or eager to refute it.  It did well enough that Humphreys printed a second edition, but True Interest still did not have the influence that Inglis hoped as the Second Continental Congress considered declaring independence.

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[1] Thomas R. Adams, “The Authorship and Printing of Plain Truth by ‘Candidus,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 49, no. 3 (1955): 230.

[2] Adams, “Authorship and Printing of Plain Truth,” 234.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 29, 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 Gazette (May 29, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (May 29, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (May 29, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (May 29, 1776).