July 2

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (July 2, 1776).

“TO be SOLD, the brigantine TWO FRIENDS.”

The most significant news from the Continental Congress first appeared in just three lines between an update from Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety and an advertisement offering a brigantine and a schooner for sale in the June 2, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  At the end of the news and before the paid notices, Benjamin Towne, the printer, informed readers that “[t]his day the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS declared the UNITED COLONIES FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES.”  The following day, the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journaleach carried the news in their weekly issues, though neither provided many more details.  The Pennsylvania Gazette replicated what appeared in the Pennsylvania Evening Post almost exactly, changing “This day” to “Yesterday” and placing the news first among the updates from Philadelphia but after news from London, Halifax, Charleston, Williamsburg, Watertown (outside of Boston), Providence, and New York.  The Pennsylvania Journal have the news similar treatment, but did note that “the Congress Unanimously Resolved to Declare the UNITED COLONIES FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES.”

Three newspapers reported that the Continental Congress declared independence before July 4, 1776.  How does that square with the most common narrative about the American Revolution and the long practice of celebrating Independence Day on July 4?  On July 2, the Continental Congress approved the Lee Resolution.  On June 7, Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, acting on instructions received from the Virginia Convention, proposed that the colonies declare independence, seek foreign alliances, and form a confederation for their mutual benefit.  The Second Continental Congress did not immediately vote on Lee’s resolution since many delegates were waiting for instructions from their own colonies.  Even though they delayed the vote, they established three committees to work on the elements of the resolution, including a committee to draft a declaration of independence.  On July 2, the Continental Congress approved this resolution: “That these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the british crown and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is and out to be totally dissolved.”

The following day, John Adams included the news in a letter to his wife, Abigail.  “The Second Day of July 1776,” he proclaimed, “will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.  It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”  Yet history did not work out that way.  On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved a revised draft of a declaration of independence submitted by Thomas Jefferson and the other members of that committee.  The Declaration of Independence then circulated in newspapers and on broadsides, each bearing the date July 4, 1776, the date that became associated with declaring independence.

News that the Continental Congress declared independence was much more substantial than the details of the sale of the brigantine Two Friends and the schooner Mary Ann that appeared immediately below it in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on July 2, 1776, yet such a momentous event has been largely overlooked in the narrative most familiar to the public.  Historians of early America chronicle what occurred, but the importance of July 2 is not widely recognized in the popular memory of the events of the imperial crisis and the American Revolution.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 2, 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 (July 2, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (July 2, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (July 2, 1776).

July 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (July 1, 1776).

“PROCEEDINGS OF THE PROVINCIAL CONFERENCE of COMMITTEES, Of the PROVINCE of PENNSYLVANIA.”

The Pennsylvania Provincial Congress met at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia in June 1776.  Delegates from the city of Philadelphia and each of the ten counties in the colony convened on June 18 and adjourned on June 25.  Over the course of a week, the Pennsylvania Provincial Congress reached some momentous decisions.  Newspapers carried updates about the work undertaken and news almost certainly reached even more colonizers via word of mouth, yet those were not the only means of learning about the debates and decisions of the ninety-seven delegates who participated in the congress.

On July 1, William Bradford and Thomas Bradford advertised that they published and sold “PROCEEDINGS OF THE PROVINCIAL CONFERENCE of COMMITTEES, Of the PROVINCE of PENNSYLVANIA,” less than a week after the meeting concluded.  They were so eager to make the record of the Pennsylvania Provincial Congress and its outcomes available to the public that they did not wait to advertise the pamphlet in the next issue of their own newspaper, the Pennsylvania Journal, scheduled for July 3 (though they did also publish the same advertisement in that issue, giving it a prominent place right after news from Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety).

What decisions did the delegates to Pennsylvania Provincial Congress make?  According to the overview of the sestercentennial commemorations sponsored by Carpenters’ Hall and other cultural, academic, and political institutions in Pennsylvania, they voted to “[d]eclare Pennsylvania’s independence from the British Empire, thus establishing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, [m]obilize the Pennsylvania militia for the American Revolutionary War, [and o]rganize elections to select delegates to a constitutional convention, which framed the influential Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776,” a constitution often considered the most democratic of all the state constitutions adopted during the War for Independence.  (For more on the Pennsylvania Provincial Congress, see Carl G. Karsh’s short essay, “Pennsylvania: From Colony to State.”

The Bradfords and many other printers throughout the colonies published, advertised, and sold proceedings of provincial congresses and the Continental Congress.  In so doing, they offered colonizers greater access and more complete coverage of those meetings, reporting not only the outcomes but also the processes and the debates that led to them.  The publication and sale of the Proceedings of the Provincial Conference of Committees, of the Province of Pennsylvania and similar conventions in other colonies helped the public stay informed about current events and perhaps even shaped opinions during the transition from resistance to revolution.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 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.

Boston-Gazette (July 1, 1776).

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Connecticut Courant (July 1, 1776).

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Connecticut Courant (July 1, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 1, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 1, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 1, 1776).

June 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).

“Constitutional Post-Office, Williamsburg, June 28, 1776.”

The colophon that ran across the bottom of the final page of the June 28, 1776, edition of Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette testified to the multiple roles that the printer played in the community: “WILLIAMSBURG: Printed by ALEXANDER PURDIE, at the CONSTITUTIONAL POST-OFFICE.”  Note that Purdie did not describe his location as printing office but rather as the local branch of the Constitutional Post Office approved by the Second Continental Congress as an alternative to the imperial postal system in the summer of 1775.  Purdie took the same approach in giving his location in an advertisement for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, two military manuals, and writing paper in the May 17 edition, stating that he sold them “at the CONSTITUTIONAL POST OFFICE, Williamsburg,” rather than at his printing office.  The two locations were the same, but Purdie chose to emphasize the responsibility entrusted to him as a supporter of the American cause.

In addition, he ran advertisements to conduct business on behalf of the Constitutional Post Office, underscoring his position to readers of his newspaper.  Some advertisements featured a dateline that included the location and date, such as John Moody’s notice that the smith and farrier opened a shop.  That dateline stated, “WILLIAMSBURG, June 28, 1776.”  For his advertisement placed as a deputy to the Postmaster General, Purdie included more than just the town in the dateline: “Constitutional Post-Office, Williamsburg, June 28, 1776.”  He advised readers and especially the postmasters in several towns in Virginia that the “Postmaster-General … empowered and directed me to receive the quarterly accounts” from a dozen offices and “to settle with the riders” who carried mail between them.  In turn, “it is expected the several postmasters will strictly comply with those instructions” to maintain the services of the “American Post-Office.”

That advertisement and the colophon helped to make Purdie’s politics clear to readers, distinguishing his Virginia Gazette from John Dixon and William Hunter’s Virginia Gazette, also published in Williamsburg but not at a branch of the Constitutional Post Office.  The competing newspapers often took a more measured approach in covering current events, perhaps because Hunter was a Loyalist.  In addition, Purdie’s Virginia Gazette had yet another new masthead.  The decorative type enclosing “THIRTEEN UNITED COLONIES. United, we stand—Divided, we fall” appeared in the masthead of only three issues before being replaced with a more sophisticated image depicting a bear and a stag, symbolizing the British Empire, flanking a snake, a symbol of the colonies that previously appeared in mastheads of other newspapers.  Below the bear, the snake, and the stage, a ribbon featured the motto “DON’T TREAD ON ME.”  As a printer and as a postmaster, Purdie signaled his allegiance to the American colonies.

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).

June 29

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

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

Providence Gazette (June 29, 1776).

“The Strength as well as the Growth of a State depends much upon the due Encouragement of Arts and Manufactories.”

Robert Newell undertook “all Kinds of Clothier’s Work … at his very convenient Works, near the Mill Bridge, in Providence.”  In an advertisement in the June 29, 1776, edition of the Providence Gazette, he informed the public that “every Branch of the Clothier’s Business is performed in great Perfection” when customers entrusted him their instructions for treating textiles.  For instance, he “dyes all Sorts of Colours, and dresses all Kinds of Cloth, in the neatest and best Manner.”  In addition, he “also dyes Cotton and Linen Yarn a fine Blue, and at a very short Notice.”  Newell made skill and quality centerpieces of his appeals to the public, yet he also emphasized price and customer service.  He declared that he “engaged punctually and faithfully to do” the work delivered to his “convenient Works,” pledging that “[t]hose who favour him with their Custom, may depend on having their Directions faithfully observed, and their Work done to Satisfaction, and at reasonable Rates.”

Artisans and others regularly made all those appeals in their newspaper advertisements.  Newell added one more that he believed would resonate with the public as they contemplated current events, especially the war and calls for the colonies to declare independence rather than seek redress of grievances within the British imperial system.  The clothier opened his notice with a pronouncement with wording that echoed the resolutions made by provincial congresses that appeared elsewhere in the public prints.  “WHEREAS the Strength as well as the Growth of a State depends much upon the due Encouragement of Arts and Manufactories,” Newell asserted, “upon this Principle the Subscriber requests the Favours of his former Customers, and the Public in general, in supplying him with all Kinds of Clothier’s Work.”  Beyond all his appeals concerning quality and customer service, Newell claimed that residents of Providence and other towns in the area had a civic duty to employ him if they wished for their country to prosper and thrive.  He deployed language similar to the eighth article of the Continental Association devised by the Second Continental Congress and adopted throughout the colonies: “we will, in our Several Stations, encourage Frugality, Economy, and Industry; and promote Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country.”  The decisions that colonizers made in the marketplace, as producers and as consumers, had political implications.  The Second Continental Congress made that clear.  Newell endorsed that position and sought to use it to his own advantage to attract customers for his “Clothier’s Business.”

Slavery Advertisements Published June 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.

Constitutional Gazette (June 29, 1776).

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Constitutional Gazette (June 29, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (June 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (June 29, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published June 29, 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 29, 1776).

June 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (June 28, 1776).

“Patent Medicines … Turlington’s Balsam of Life, Hooper’s Female Pills.”

In the summer of 1776, Benjamin Greene advertised a “compleat assortment of Drugs and Medicines” available “at his Store, a little to the Northward of the Meeting house,” in Worcester.  He listed some of the items he stocked, including “a quantity of excellent Peruvian Bark, best India Rhubarb, … British oil, [and] Essence of Pepper-Mint.”  Greene also carried popular patent medicines, such as “Turlington’s Balsam of Life, Hooper’s Female Pills, Anderson’s Pills, [and] Stoughtons Elixir.”  Consumers were so familiar with those products that he did not need to say anything about their uses.  In addition, Greene sold a variety of spices, from cinnamon and cloves to allspice and pepper.  Whatever illnesses readers experienced, Green could supply some sort of medicine to alleviate their symptoms.

Greene’s notice was one of the few advertisements that appeared in the June 28 edition of the Massachusetts Spy.  Isaiah Thomas had published the newspaper in Worcester for more than a year after relocating from Boston just as the Revolutionary War began, but, after the siege of Boston ended, he decided to seek opportunities in a larger town on the coast once again.  He opted for Salem rather than returning to Boston, perhaps because of a smallpox outbreak in the colony’s largest port.  William Stearns and Daniel Bigelow began printing the Worcester Spy on June 21.  Greene advertised in that issue and again the following week, one of the few who trusted that the Massachusetts Spy had a large enough circulation under new management to justify the fee for purchasing space in the newspaper.  He was the only purveyor of goods and services to place an advertisement in either issue.  Joseph Jaseph advertised a stolen horse on June 21 and Solomon Jones advertised a lost pocketbook on June 28.  The printers inserted a call for rags to recycle into paper in both issues, echoing their counterparts in towns throughout the colonies.  That meant that Stearns and Bigelow generated some revenue from advertisements, but not much.  Just as they had to convince residents of Worcester and other towns in central Massachusetts to become subscribers, they also had to build a clientele of advertisers following Thomas’s departure.  For a while, it had been uncertain whether the newspaper would continue so advertisers fell away during its suspension.  As they started the process, Greene experienced a lack of competition in the public prints, something that may have benefited his business as much as the advertising copy that he composed.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 28, 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 28, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (June 28, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (June 28, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (June 28, 1776).

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Essex Journal (June 28, 1776).

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Essex Journal (June 28, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (June 28, 1776).