October 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 19, 1776).

“The printers of the several newspapers in this city are desired to insert the above.”

On October 19, 1776, the Pennsylvania Evening Post carried an advertisement from the Committee of Accounts associated with the “late Committee of Inspection for the city and liberties of Philadelphia” that had been organized according to the Continental Association, the nonimportation agreement devised by the First Continental Congress in the fall of 1774.  The Committee of Accounts requested that “ALL persons who have any demands … deliver their accounts to any one of [its members] on or before the tenth day of November.”  This was the last call for any outstanding accounts since the committee “intended finally to settle this business.”  The advertisement warned the public “to take notice … as every account not furnished on or before that day must be excluded.”

Hoping to get the word out as widely was possible, the committee included a request to the “printers of the several newspapers in this city … to insert” the advertisement.  Those printers, however, did not immediately comply with that request.  The Pennsylvania Ledger, also published on October 19, did not carry the notice.  If the committee had delivered copy only to the Pennsylvania Evening Post and simply expected other printers to see the advertisement in that newspaper and then reprint it then the Pennsylvania Ledger would not have had an opportunity to run the advertisement on the same day.  It could have appeared, however, in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet on October 22, but it did not.  The printer did include a note that “Advertisements omitted this week for want of room shall be inserted in our next.”  The next day, neither the Pennsylvania Gazette nor the Pennsylvania Journal carried the advertisement.  In addition, the Pennsylvania Evening Post did not run the advertisement a second time in its October 22 and October 24 editions.  So far, the “printers of the several newspapers in this city” did not take heed of the request to publish the committee’s notice.

In the end, none of those printers opted to insert the advertisement.  The committee had allowed for three weeks between its initial appearance and the November 10 deadline for submitting accounts.  In that time, the notice did appear in the Pennsylvania Evening Post two more times, once on October 29 and again on November 7.  That it ran three times suggests that the committee may have paid the standard rate for an advertisement, a fee that included setting the type and three insertions.  They may have hoped that other printers would publish the notice gratis as a public service, but they ended up disappointed if that was the case.  It does not appear that the committee delivered copy to each printing office but instead depended on local printers monitoring the content in other newspapers.  It was possible, but unlikely, that no other printer in Philadelphia happened to see the advertisement and the request to print it.  Instead, those printers seemingly made other choices about what to publish with limited space and a shortage of paper.

October 19

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

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

Providence Gazette (October 19, 1776).

“Books for Accounts made and ruled to any Pattern.”

In the fall of 1776, Henry Roby, a “BOOK-BINDER, from BOSTON,” took to the pages of the Providence Gazette “to inform the Public, that he carries on the Book-Binding Business, in all its Branches, at the Shop lately occupied by Mr. Benjamin Gladding, nearly opposite Mr. James Arnold’s Store.”  Roby did not indicate how recently he had arrived in Providence from Boston.  He might have just taken up residence after leaving a city that had experienced significant hardships when the Boston Port Act shut down the harbor in the summer of 1774 and during the siege of the city following the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 or he might have departed Boston at some point in the past several years.  Artisans from that urban port sometimes continued to describe themselves as “from Boston” for years after they set up shop in another town.  Whatever the case, Roby recently moved into a shop where he had not previously conducted business.  He gave extensive directions to help prospective customers find it.

He also provided an overview of his services.  He suggested that he possessed both skill and experience when he stated that he “carries on the Book-Binding Business, in all its Branches.”  There was no aspect of that trade that he could not perform on his own.  He also chose to highlight certain services in a nota bene at the end of his advertisement.  Customers could have “Old Books re-bound or lettered” with the titles on the spine or cover.  In addition, merchants, brokers, or anyone keeping business or household accounts could have “Blank Books for Accounts made and ruled to any Pattern.”  Roby may have had some account books in stock, but he could also custom-make books to suit the needs of his customers.  They could send orders, though Roby likely preferred those who came to his shop for a consultation.  That allowed him to get the details right and perhaps even upsell them on other features or services.  Whatever customers ordered, Roby promised to complete the work “at the shortest Notice.”  The bookbinder apparently considered the advertisement worth the investment.  He inserted it in the Providence Gazette for seven consecutive weeks.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 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.

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 19, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 19, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 19, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 19, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 19, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Ledger (October 19, 1776).

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Providence Gazette (October 19, 1776).

October 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).
“RUN away … a negro man named BACCHUS.”

Like many other enslavers seeking to recover their human property, John Greenhow placed a newspaper advertisement that described the enslaved man who liberated himself by running away from him and offered a reward for his capture and return.  In this instance, Greenhow inserted an advertisement about Bacchus in the October 18, 1776, edition of Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette.  By that time, Bacchus had eluded Greenhow for three months.

Greenhow suspected that Bacchus had help.  He explained that the enslaved man “formerly belonged to mr. John Wilkinson, not far from New Kent courthouse.”  He reported that Bacchus headed that direction because he “has a father and other relations in that family, and has several times been seen there since he ran away.”  Furthermore, Greenhow had “great reason to believe he is harboured and employed in that neighbourhood.”  He did not mention whether Bacchus had any notable skills, yet Greenhow seemed certain that the formerly enslaved man managed to find work in the vicinity.  He was so confident that was the case that he offered a reward “to any person that will prove in court who the villain is that conceals and employs him.”  If Greenhow was correct, that meant that Bacchus received help not only from his “father and other relations” and other Black people but also from a white employer who did not ask too many questions about his background or who might even have been sympathetic to his situation.

Although Greenhow did not write the advertisement with the intention of creating a truncated biography of Bacchus, the notice revealed choices that the Black man made during the Revolutionary War.  Among the many disruptions caused by the war, enslaved men and women had the option of making their way to British forces in hopes of earning their freedom.  Both men and women could provide services in camp, while men could also fight.  In November 1775, John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore and the last royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation that offered freedom to enslaved people “appertaining to rebels” (or enslaved by patriots) who were “willing to bear arms” and “join[ed] his Majesty’s troops.”  Some advertisements indicated that enslaved men and women who liberated themselves were likely making their way to the British.  Yet Bacchus did not make that choice; at least, Greenhow did not think that he did.  Instead, Bacchus chose to reunite with his father and other members of his family.  He called on bonds with family and friends and forged some sort of agreement with an employer to keep him hidden from Greenhow.  Still in danger of discovery, Bacchus was in a better position than if he did not have allies who aided him in seeking freedom.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 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.

Connecticut Gazette (October 18, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 18, 1776).

October 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Independent Chronicle (October 17, 1776).

“At the Post-Office may be had, COMMON Sense … on the grand subject of American Independency.”

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was advertised widely in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England in the winter and spring of 1776, especially as printers in many cities and towns produced local editions.  As summer approached, the number and frequency of advertisements for the popular political pamphlet decreased.  By that time the market had been saturated.  Readers had many opportunities to purchase Common Sense as the arguments presented in the pamphlet helped to convince colonizers to declare independence rather than seek redress of grievances within the British imperial system.  By the time the Continental Congress declared independence on July 2 and approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, advertisements for Common Sense mostly disappeared.  Only the Freeman’s Journal, published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, carried advertisements for Common Sense in July 1776.

After several months, however, an advertisement for Common Sense suddenly appeared in the Independent Chronicle, published in Boston, on October 17.  It was the first time that newspaper carried an advertisement for Paine’s pamphlet, though the Boston-Gazette (printed in nearby Watertown) and the New-England Chronicle previously featured advertisements for Common Sense.  Local printers produced two editions to supplement those that came off presses in other towns in New England and beyond.  The new advertisement in the Independent Chronicle did not indicate who sold Common Sense.  It simply announced, “At the Post-Office may be had, COMMON Sense with the whole appendix,” and several other items that Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition, added to subsequent unauthorized editions.  Bell published, for instance, “a dialogue between the ghost of General Montgomery, just arrived from Elysian fields, and an American delegate in a wood, near Philadelphia,” separately and with Common Sense along with “large additions.”  Other printers added some of those items to local editions of the pamphlet, though Richard Gimbel’s bibliography of Common Sense does not indicate that local editions printed outside Philadelphia included all the material listed in the advertisement in the Independent Chronicle.[1]  Perhaps some copies of one of Bell’s Philadelphia editions made it to the post office in Boston in the fall of 1776.  Even readers who had previously perused Common Sense could have been interested in reading additional content associated with the pamphlet, justifying a newspaper advertisement giving renewed attention to this pamphlet “on the grand subject of American Independency.”

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[1] Richard Gimbel, Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense with an Account of Its Publication (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 78-79, 88-91.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 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.

Continental Journal (October 17, 1776).

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Independent Chronicle (October 17, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (October 17, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (October 17, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (October 17, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (October 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 17, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published October 17, 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.

Independent Chronicle (October 17, 1776).

October 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (October 16, 1776).

“THE Ship Caroline, of London, lately made a prize by the Harlequin Privateer.”

I rely on several databases of digitized copies of early American newspapers in the research and production of the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project.  America’s Historical Newspapers and Periodicals from Readex, a division of NewsBank, provides the most extensive coverage of newspapers published in eighteenth-century America.  It requires a subscription to access.  Other databases contain fewer newspapers but extend the geographic coverage in important ways.  Moving from north to south, the Maryland Gazette Collection from the Archives of Maryland Online, maintained by the Maryland State Archives, provides access to the Maryland Gazette, published in Annapolis.  Anyone with an internet connection may access this database.  Through its Digital Collections platform, the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library grants access to several newspapers published in Williamsburg, each named the Virginia Gazette, from Colonial Williamsburg, the Library of Virginia, and the Swem Library at the College of William and Mary.  Anyone with an internet connection may access this database.  Accessible Archives, now a part of History Commons, includes several newspapers published in Charleston, South Carolina, in the eighteenth century.  It requires a subscription to access.

Recently, I have started consulting Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers from the Library of Congress.  Anyone with an internet connection many access this database.  So far, Chronicling America focuses primarily on newspapers published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Through an ongoing partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities and partner archives and research libraries in many states, the National Digital Newspaper Program, it continues to add newspapers, including newspapers published during the era of the American Revolution.  I now consult Chronicling America to see whether it includes any newspapers not available through any of the other databases.  I was able to include the New York Packet during its short run (January 4 – August 29, 1776) in the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project thanks to Chronicling America.  That database also duplicates some of the newspapers available via other databases.

Pennsylvania Gazette (October 16, 1776).

Duplicates can be helpful.  Not all copies of newspapers that are digitized are in the same condition.  Not all remediation achieves the same quality.  Consider Benjamin Powell’s advertisement for an auction of prize ship and its cargo that ran in the October 16, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette.  Portions of it are difficult to read or even illegible in the digital image from America’s Historical Newspapers.  That is certainly the exception, not the rule.  The vast, vast majority of newspapers in America’s Historical Newspapers, including other issues of the Pennsylvania Gazette, are easy to read.  This example is not representative of the collection as whole, but instead illustrative that sometimes a second copy can be very helpful.  The National Digital Newspaper Project sets high standards for producing digitized images of historical newspapers.  Production involves technologies that were not available when other databases created the images in their collections.[1]  Accordingly, I start with America’s Historical Newspapers, an incredible database, and then consult Chronicling America when necessary.  That more than one database includes some newspapers is not superfluous or redundant.  It enhances research and access to these sources in important ways.

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[1] On a related note, the Rockefeller Library recently updated its Digital Collections to grant access to both black-and-white images from microfilm and high-quality color images created with modern digital technologies.  The black-and-white images constitute the largest part of that collection.  The color images are an important supplement.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 16, 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 (October 16, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 16, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 16, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 16, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 16, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 16, 1776).

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Massachusetts Spy (October 16, 1776).