June 24

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 24, 1776).

“FOUR PENCE per pound will be given for the best Sort of good, dry, clean LINEN RAGS.”

Colonial printers regularly inserted advertisements offering cash for rags in their newspapers.  They collected linen rags to supply to paper mills to transform into paper that they could then use to print more newspapers (with more calls for rags) or sell to consumers for other purposes.  Such notices seemed to multiply during the Revolutionary War.  Colonizers already participated in nonimportation agreements that reduced the amount of imported paper and then the war further disrupted trade.  Some printers briefly suspended their newspapers or resorted to smaller sheets amid the disruptions.

Two calls for rags appeared in the June 24, 1776, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, just days after similar notices ran in the Freeman’s Journal, published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette and the Maryland Journal, both published in Baltimore, and John Dixon and William Hunter’s Virginia Gazette, published in Williamsburg.  Other newspapers in New England, the Middle Atlantic, and the Chesapeake also carried calls for rags.  In the Lower South, James Johnston published the last known issue of the Georgia Gazette in Savannah on February 7, 1776, and John Wells suspended the South-Carolina and American Gazette from May 31 to August 2, 1776, when the British fleet approached Charleston, leaving the entire region without any newspapers and, as a result, no notices offering cash for rags.

In the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, John Keating ran a short advertisement with a headline that proclaimed, “LINEN RAGS.”  He promised four pence per pound for “the best Sort of good, dry clean LINEN RAGS, and so in Proportion for those of an inferior Quality.”  Many readers likely knew that Keating operated a “Paper Manufactory” since he frequently advertised in the various newspapers published in New York.  On many occasions he went into greater detail in his efforts to encourage the public to assist him in that enterprise by supplying rags from their households.  He depicted doing so as a patriotic duty and a way that everyone, especially women, could demonstrate their political principles.  He was much more constrained in his latest notice.

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 24, 1776).

Hugh Gaine, the printer of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, ran an advertisement with identical copy except he substituted his name for Keating’s name.  Gaine likely collected rags to supply to Keating, perhaps receiving a discount on paper in return.  He distinguished his own advertisement with an elaborate border composed of printing ornaments, a line of decorative type that separated the headline from the body of the advertisement, and printing his name in a larger font.  Gaine’s advertisement ran on the first page along with notices for patent medicines that he peddled as an alternate revenue stream.  Immediately below his call for linen rags, the printer informed readers that he “HAS FOR SALE, AMERICAN MANUFACTURED WRITING PAPER, Of Excellent Quality, BY the Quire of Ream,” as well as writing supplies and a variety of other goods.  The rags that he collected might become broadsheets for printing the news or writing paper for letters that carried news that might eventually appear in the public prints.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 24, 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 24, 1776).

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Boston-Gazette (June 24, 1776).

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Connecticut Courant (June 24, 1776).

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New-York Gazette ad Weekly Mercury (June 24, 1776).

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New-York Gazette ad Weekly Mercury (June 24, 1776).

Slavery Advertisements Published June 25, 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.

American Gazette (June 25, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (June 25, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published June 24, 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 24, 1776).

June 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 21, 1776).

“I was a few days ago mortified with a report that he was brought to Williamsburg as a Tory.”

Marital discord often found its way into advertisements in early American newspapers, usually via notices placed by husbands to announce that their wives abandoned their households and warning merchants, shopkeepers, and others not to extend credit to them.  The husbands thus controlled the narrative that appeared in print, though they could not exert the same amount of influence over gossip that circulated.  On rare occasions, wives published responses that justified their actions and revealed abuse, neglect, and other bad behavior on the part of their husbands.  In the summer of 1776, however, Elizabeth Minson placed an advertisement about her husband, Henry, in Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazettewithout first having been a subject of an advertisement placed by him.  She suspected that some readers might be familiar with Henry because “for a number of years past [he] has been captain of several vessels in the employ of many gentlemen on James river.”

Her husband, Elizabeth lamented, “has thought fit, to leave me, his disconsolate wife, with his five children, without assigning any reason for so doing.”  Under normal circumstances, that would have been distressing enough, but the war made the situation even worse.  “[T]o add to my afflictions,” the aggrieved wife declared, “I was a few days ago mortified with a report that he was brought to Williamsburg as a Tory, and have never since heard of him.”  Despite that report, she did not believe that her husband had been imprisoned or otherwise detained.  Instead, she suspected that he resided in Hampton or Norfolk and asked readers to inform her of Henry’s whereabouts.  Did Elizabeth intend to seek out her husband, reunite him with their five children, and compel him to resume his responsibilities as head of household and provider?  Or did she have another motive for publishing this advertisement?  Although she reported that he had abandoned his family “without assigning any reason,” she acknowledged the “many proofs of his affection for me, and tenderness for his children.”  That caused her “to believe he has some private reasons for his being guilty of this inhuman act.”  Whether “this inhuman act” referred to deserting his wife and children or siding with the Tories was not clear.  In addition, Elizabeth did not explicitly reveal her own views on politics.  Perhaps she published her advertisement as a strategy for protecting herself, her children, and the family’s property, hoping that Patriots would leave them alone because she expressed dismay at the report that her husband was a Tory and that Loyalists would similarly not bother them out of respect for Henry’s supposed allegiance.

June 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Freeman’s Journal (June 22, 1776).

“The Book so much admired, entitled COMMON SENSE.”

“CASH given for RAGS.”

Benjamin Dearborn launched the Freeman’s Journal in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on May 25, 1776.  He quickly gained advertisers, including advertisers who offered rewards for capturing and returning enslaved people who liberated themselves by running away and advertisers who offered enslaved people for sale.  An advertisement for a “likely healthy NEGRO MAN, aged about twenty-five,” for instance, made its second appearance on the final page of the June 22 edition.  Like every other newspaper printed in the colonies, the Freeman’s Journal simultaneously perpetuated slavery (of some) and advocated for liberty (for others).

On the first page, Dearborn inserted his own advertisement for Thomas Paine’s popular political pamphlet: “The Book so much admired, entitled COMMON SENSE, may be had at the Printing Office.”  It was the first time that Dearborn offered Common Sense for sale.  Neither he nor any other printer in New Hampshire published a local edition, so he apparently acquired copies from a colleague in another town.  By the end of June, local editions published in New England had proliferated to the point that he could have received the pamphlet from printers in Boston, New Haven, Norwich, Providence, or Salem.  In Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress tasked a committee that included Thomas Jefferson with drafting a statement of independence for the colonies on June 10.  As Jefferson worked on a draft of what would become the Declaration of Independence, Dearborn disseminated the pamphlet that made the boldest and clearest call for separation from Great Britain.

Dearborn also issued a call for rags, offering cash for them at his printing office.  Throughout the colonies, printers of other newspapers were doing the same as they all attempted to gather materials for paper mills to recycle into one of the most essential supplies necessary for publishing newspapers.  Throughout the war, paper shortages had an impact on the dissemination of the news.  Printers sometimes suspended their newspapers for short periods or published them on smaller sheets when that was the only paper available.  Dearborn inserted lines to separate most advertisements from those that appeared above and below, but he did not do so with his notices about Common Sense and rags.   That may have been especially fitting because any rags he collected might have been transformed into paper for printing more copies of Common Sense or, more likely, new issues of the Freeman’s Journal with advertisements for the pamphlet and news about the war and the Continental Congress’s decision to declare independence.  Four weeks after his first advertisement for Common Sense, Dearborn devoted an entire page of the Freeman’s Journal to printing the Declaration of Independence.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 22, 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 22, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 22, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 22, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 22, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 22, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published June 22, 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 (June 22, 1776).

June 21

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

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

Massachusetts Spy (June 21, 1776).

“ISAIAH THOMAS, having relinquished the Printing business in Worcester.”

The title changed from Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy to The Massachusetts Spy with issue “NUMB. 269” on June 21, 1776.  Two months earlier, Isaiah Thomas informed readers that he intended to remain in Worcester “for the present,” but since then he decided to pursue new opportunities in Salem.  He previewed that decision in a notice in the May 31 edition, the last one he published.  In a lengthy address on the first page, William Stearns and Daniel Bigelow, the new “publishers of this Paper,” informed the public that Thomas “relinquished the Printing business in Worcester” to them.  They now occupied the printing office “near the COURT-HOUSE,” where they undertook “the various branches of said business with the utmost care and fidelity, and will exert their utmost efforts to procure authentic intelligence of affairs, in the various parts of this continent and elsewhere.”  They hoped to attract customers for job printing as well and maintain and expand their subscribers.

The title shifted slightly, but the subtitle, American Oracle of Liberty, remained the same.  Stearns and Bigelow made their editorial stance clear in their address.  “At a time when OUR ALL is at stake, when no less than the fate of the STATES of AMERICA is in agitation,” they proclaimed, “then (of all times) the means of conveying intelligence ought to be encouraged.”  That meant that subscribers had a duty to continue to subscribe and others had a responsibility to support Worcester’s only newspaper by becoming subscribers, placing advertisements, and sharing news as they received it in letters and by other means.  In turn, the printers would do their civic duty.  “The liberty and free exercise of the PRESS,” Stearns and Bigelow continued, “is the greatest temporal safeguard of the state—it assists the civil magistrate in wielding the sword of justice—holds up to public view the vicious, and in their odious colours— … —It detects political impostors, and is a terrific scourge to tyrants.”  Readers could expect the same vigilance and advocacy for the American cause from Stearns and Bigelow that Thomas had a reputation for delivering.

Following Stearns and Bigelow’s address, Thomas inserted a brief notice in which he expressed “sincere thanks to those gentlemen who have settelled with him for News-Papers for the year past.”  The spelling error may have been an actual error rather than an eighteenth-century variation.  Despite their pledge to “do services highly beneficial to their oppressed brethren” in central Massachusetts, their skill as printers paled in comparison to Thomas.  For his part, the printer did not offer words of encouragement or general expressions of gratitude as he departed Worcester.  After thanking subscribers who already settled accounts, he called on those who still owed to “pay their respective balances” to Stearns and Bigelow.  After a hiatus of three weeks, a new issue of the Massachusetts Spy carried news (and a couple of advertisements) to readers.  When news of the Declaration of Independence reached Worcester about three weeks later, Thomas may (or may not) have made the first public reading in New England, but he no longer ran his own newspaper.  He published an account of the battles at Lexington and Concord in the first edition of the Massachusetts Spy printed in Worcester, but now others would cover the Declaration of Independence and its reception in the commonwealth of Massachusetts and other states.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 21, 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 (June 21, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (June 21, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (June 21, 1776).

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Essex Journal (June 21, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 21, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 21, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 21, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 21, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 21, 1776).