September 13

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

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

Connecticut Gazette (September 13, 1776).

“Send him the exact Measure round their naked Body on a Piece of Cartridge Paper.”

In September 1776, Stephen Johnson published an advertisement in the Connecticut Gazette to inform the public that he “Still continues the Business of making TRUSSES or Bandages to keep up the falling Parts of those who are troubled with the Burst.”  In other words, Johnson made hernia belts to relieve the discomfort of his clients.  Some readers may have previously been aware that Johnson made and sold trusses.  He had previously advertised in the Connecticut Gazette in April 1774.  That notice featured a testimonial signed by eight of Johnson’s former customers who addressed the printer and requested that he “insert the following in your next Paper.”  Given that they were so satisfied with their trusses that they took that step, they may have also promoted Johnson’s hernia belts via word of mouth.

In his new advertisement, Johnson declared that he “has made great numbers in the neatest Manner,” emphasizing both his experience and skill.  Furthermore, he “has the Satisfaction to find by those who have used them that they have never failed in one Instance of answering the Purpose.”  That may have been the most important appeal.  Johnson proclaimed that his trusses were effective, that they offered relief to his customers who purchased and wore them.  New customers could depend on wearing their trusses “without any kind of Inconvenience,” suggesting that they were not bulky or unnecessarily constrictive of movement.  Those who did would discover that the devices “afford abundant relief and satisfaction,” just as they had done for his customers in the past.

Johnson realized that not all prospective customers could visit him in Ashford for a fitting.  For those who wished to place orders from a distance, he offered these instructions: “send him the exact Measure round their naked Body on a Piece of Cartridge Paper, and on which Side the Breach is.”  He gave similar directions in his previous advertisement.  Such customers did not need to worry that they had not been precise in taking and recording their own measurements if they sent a length of paper that they had wrapped around their body and cut accordingly.  Johnson devised that means of increasing sales by filling order received from a distance, an eighteenth-century precursor to mail order medicine.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 13, 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.

Connecticut Gazette (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (September 13, 1776).

September 12

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

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (September 12, 1776).

“WAS STOLEN … A SILVER MILK URN.”

The woodcut depicting a crown suspended above a large cup likely drew attention to Thomas Shields’s advertisement.  After all, it was the only visual image that appeared in the September 12, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Not even the masthead featured a woodcut.  In the advertisement, Shields lamented that “A SILVER MILK URN, of an oval form, with a lid and spout,” had been stolen from his shop on September 4.  He gave further details to help identify the stolen merchandise.  It “weighed about nine ounces,” was “engraved with a cypher MR,” and had been “made in England.”  Shields offered a reward to anyone who helped him recover the urn, whether intact (three pounds) or “cut to pieces” (four dollars).  At the very least, he wanted the silver back even if the thief had destroyed it in hopes of selling the silver.

What did that have to do with the image that accompanied Shields’s advertisement?  It did not correspond to his description of the stolen urn.  Including it increased the price of running the advertisement since it took up more space.  Some readers may have realized that Shields was a goldsmith who ran his shop “at the Golden Cup and Crown.”  He previously ran an advertisement giving that address in the Pennsylvania Gazette in the fall of 1771.  That advertisement happened to include the same woodcut of a cup and crown that appeared in his advertisement about the stolen milk urn five years later.  Shields had commissioned a woodcut for his exclusive use, one that corresponded to the sign that marked the location of his shop.  He apparently collected the woodcut from the printing office when he discontinued his advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette and tucked it away in case he wished to use it again in advertisements in that or any other newspapers.  Although Shields did not mention his shop sign in his notice about the stolen urn, he likely figured that a visual image of any sort (and especially one associated with his business) would draw attention to his advertisement and increase the chances that readers would assist in recovering the milk urn (or the silver).

September 11

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (September 11, 1776).

“THE LANCASTER ALMANACK, for the year 1777.”

It was one of the first advertisements for an almanac for 1777 that ran in American newspapers in the fall of 1776.  In the September 11 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, Francis Bailey advertised “THE LANCASTER ALMANACK, for the year 1777.”  In some years such notices began appearing as early as the middle of August, but shortages of paper and other disruptions caused by the Revolutionary War may have slowed the production of almanacs.  Still, Bailey and other printers knew from experience that the handy reference manuals did good business.  They sold well and generated revenue.

This almanac was the first that Bailey published since the Continental Congress declared independence.  During the imperial crisis, some almanacs featured items that advocated for the American cause.  Two years earlier, for instance, Bailey listed a poem, “On American liberty,” among the contents of his almanac for 1775.  Yet he did not make explicit reference to current events acknowledge independence in his marketing of his almanac for 1777.  As he had in the past, he highlighted “a number of useful and instructive essays, selected from good authors,” that supplemented “the usual astronomical calculations, and tables.”  Those included “A new method of making hogs grow quickly fat,” “Hints on good manners, by Dean Swift,” and “Verses on the entrance of the new-year.”  Among those items, Bailey inserted “A curious and exact account of the national debt of Great-Britain.”  That touched on politics, but it did not commemorate or celebrate the revolution that continued to unfold in the former colonies that united to form a new nation.  Two years later, Bailey’s almanac for 1779 would be among the first publications to name George Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, as “Father of his country,” so the printer did not abandon integrating politics and patriotism in the almanacs he published.[1]  For some reason, he chose not to do so in marketing his almanac for 1777.

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[1] Carl Robert Keyes, “A Revolution in Advertising: ‘Buy American’ Campaigns in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Creating Advertising Culture:  Beginnings to the 1930s, vol. 1, We Are What We Sell:  How Advertising Shapes American Life … And Always Has, eds. Danielle Coombs and Bob Batchelor (New York:  Praeger, 2013), 9.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 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.

Connecticut Journal (September 11, 1776).

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Maryland Journal (September 11, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (September 11, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (September 11, 1776).

September 10

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

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

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

“The Second Edition of OBSERVATIONS ON THE Nature of CIVIL LIBERTY.”

When John Dunlap published a Philadelphia edition of Richard Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America, the book did well enough that he printed a second edition.  He gave an advertisement for the second edition a prime spot in the September 10, 1776, edition of his newspaper, Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, making it the first item in the first column of the first page.  Even if readers skipped over the rest of the advertisements on that page, they were more likely to notice that one.

Dunlap reworked an advertisement for the first edition that ran in his newspaper in July.  It appears he never broke down the type, perhaps anticipating that he would advertise the first edition again if it did not sell out.  Instead, he added a line, “The Second Edition of,” above the title of the book and eliminated the lengthy “EXTRACT from the WORK” that offered a preview in the previous advertisement.  A note about the reception that Price and his book received in London remained: “This learned, judicious and liberal author had the thanks of the Common Council, and the Freedom of the City of London presented to him in a gold box, for this much admired most excellent pamphlet on Civil Liberty.”  Dunlap added that Price “also deserves the united thanks of America.”

Dunlap and other printers certainly thought that “this much admired most excellent pamphlet” merited distribution in America.  Thomas Fleet and John Fleet published a Boston edition, Samuel Loudon published a New York edition, and David Bruce published a Charleston edition.  Like Dunlap, the Fleets used the pamphlet’s reception in London in marketing their edition.  In their advertisement, they declared, “This judicious and exceeding well wrote Pamphlet was published in London in March last and has had a very rapid Sale there.”  In turn, they considered it “well worthy the Perusal of every lover of Civil Liberty and good Government in America.”  Such appeals convinced enough consumers that Dunlap printed a second edition.  It even convinced retailers.  Matthew Anderson of Gloucester, Virginia, listed it as one of the few titles available at his store that primarily sold textiles, housewares, and hardware.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 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.

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (September 10, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (September 10, 1776).

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

September 9

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Connecticut Courant (September 9, 1776).

“All persons are forbid trusting her on my account, as I determine not to pay any debts of her contracting.”

Discord reigned in the Butler household in Stafford, Connecticut, getting to the point that Nathaniel found it necessary to publish an advertisement about the misbehavior of his wife, Abigail, in the September 9, 1776, edition of the Connecticut Gazette.  He claimed that he did so “With reluctance,” but her actions “necessitated” resorting to “this method.”  He certainly was not the only husband who ran a newspaper advertisement that instructed merchants, shopkeepers, and others not to extend credit to a wife who challenged his authority while she remained in their home and then abandoned him.  Similar advertisements appeared in newspapers throughout the colonies and states in the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century.

Yet Nathaniel composed a much more detailed account of Abigail’s infractions than appeared in most advertisements.  He used standard language when he stated that she “eloped from my bed and board,” though he had already departed from the model with declaration that he placed the notice “With reluctance.”  When Abigail left, she “took with her a mare and colt £. 26 value, and about 40 s[hillings] money and other household furniture, to the value of about £. 40 in the whole.”  (That the couple had “household furniture,” a term for housewares, worth so much testified to their participation in the transatlantic consumer revolution.  How much to spend at shops and stores may have been a point of contention in the Butler household.)  According to Nathaniel, Abigail was a repeat offender who “hath played me off several tricks of the same nature, for years past, and when spent, comes for more.”  To make matters worse, she “comes for more, till she hath, by being often intoxicated with spirits, and a masculine temper, hath wasted hundreds of pounds of my estate.”  Most aggrieved husbands did not air their family’s dirty laundry by giving so many details, perhaps because they were already embarrassed that they had not managed to assert their patriarchal authority over their wives.  No matter how much appeared in print, more stories likely circulated via the rumor mill.  Nathaniel’s advertisement may have seemed to confirm some of the gossip and probably inspired more.

After laying out his grievances against his wife, Nathaniel “humbly request[ed]” that no one buy “said mare, or colt, or other goods, at her hand, or any body authorised by her.”  Most husbands merely cut off credit, which Nathaniel also did when he declared that “all persons are forbid trusting her on my account,” but that was not sufficient in this case since Abigail absconded with horses and household good.  She apparently had a history of selling off items she took with her.

Unlike most husbands in similar circumstances, Nathaniel expressed embarrassment over running the advertisement.  His account did not reflect well on Abigail.  It may have been an accurate rendering of what occurred, yet readers, then and now, had access to only one side of the story.  Abigail may have been the more difficult spouse in that marriage … or Nathaniel may have conveniently left out details that did not reflect well on himself.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 9, 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 (September 9, 1776).

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Boston-Gazette (September 9, 1776).

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Boston-Gazette (September 9, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (September 9, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (September 9, 1776).

September 8

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

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

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (September 7, 1776).

“Thread Laces, Shoe Thread, Observations on Civil Liberty.”

Matthew Anderson operated a store in Gloucester, Virginia, at the time that the Continental Congress declared independence.  He placed an advertisement in the September 7, 1776, edition of John Dixon and William Hunter’s Virginia Gazette, an advertisement that looked much like those that appeared before the imperial crisis and the Revolutionary War.  The lengthy list of goods he stocked testified to participation in the transatlantic consumer revolution.  Anderson sold everything from “Women’s Worsted Hose” and “Velvet Hoods” to “Thread Laces” and “common Sleeve Buttons” to “Desk and Cupboard Locks” and “Awl Blades” to “Punch Ladles” and “Queen’s China Dishes.”  If that was not enough to excite the imaginations of prospective customers, he also had “some other Trifles, too tedious to mention.”

Among the dozens of items that Anderson did mention, he listed some books.  He had a selection of “Psalters” and “Histories” that he did not name as well the popular “Watts’s Hymns and Psalms.”  He also stocked two books that resonated with current events.  Both had been widely advertised in other newspapers.  One was a work of political philosophy, Richard Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War in America.  Anderson shortened the title to “Observations on Civil Liberty.”  He may have sold an American edition published in Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, or Boston.  He also advertised “British Tyranny, or American Liberty triumphant,” a play that had also been printed and promoted in several cities and towns.  Most shopkeepers did not usually advertise such titles.  They tended to stick with almanacs and psalters, items with broad appeal that they had confidence customers would purchase, or popular devotional literature, like Watts’s hymns and psalms.  That Anderson included two books related to current events among his inventory (instead of relegating them “other Trifles, too tedious to mention”) may have been a way of signaling his political sentiments.  If so, that could have been an attempt to gain the approval of prospective customers who supported the American cause without taking a position that alienated other prospective customers who did not.  Anderson stocked the books, but he did not outright endorse their contents.  That allowed for flexibility in how he related to consumers who held a variety of views.