March 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (March 6, 1776).

“Whoever doth him safely secure, / Of a reward they may be sure.”

William Moode wanted to increase the chances that his advertisements about his runaway apprentice attracted attention when he ran it in the March 6, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette.  Instead of the usual paragraph of dense text he composed more than a dozen rhyming couplets that told the story of the young rascal: “Thomas Stillenger he is called by name, / His indenture further testifies the same.”

As Moode told it, Stillenger had never been an ideal apprentice (“He has always been a vexatious lad, / One reason he is so meanly clad”) but instead a troublemaker who told lies (“Believe him not, if you be wise, / He is very artful in telling lies”) and stole goods from the fulling mill that Moode operated (“He is also guilty of another crime, / Of taking cloth from time to time”).  Punishing him, Moode claimed, had no effect (I whipt him, I thought severe, / But did not make him shed one tear”), though perhaps it played a part in Stillenger’s decision to run away.  Like other aggrieved masters of runaway apprentices and indentured servants, Moode offered a reward for capturing and returning the boy (“Whoever doth him safely secure, / Of a reward they may secure”), though he also indicated his willingness to be rid of Stillenger if anyone would purchase his remaining time (“Or clear me of him for ever, and mine, / And his indenture away I will sign”).

When setting the type, the compositor indented all but the last two lines of the poem, creating a significant amount of white space along the left side of the advertisement.  Most lines ended far short of the right side of the column rather than being justified too it like other advertisements.  That allowed for even more white space that distinguished Moode’s advertisement from all the other news and notices in that issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette.  That likely drew attention.  Readers may have become even more intrigued when they saw the rhyming couplets.  Although the Pennsylvania Gazettewas not one of them, some newspapers had a regular feature, the “Poet’s Corner” on the final page, with poems of no better quality than the one Moode wrote.  Readers may have taken note of the advertisement for its novelty and entertainment value.  For his part, Moode may have derived more pleasure from writing this poem than from any of his interactions with Stillenger when the apprentice worked in his mill.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 6, 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.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Constitutional Gazette (March 6, 1776).

**********

New-England Chronicle (March 6, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Gazette (March 6, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Gazette (March 6, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Journal (March 6, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published March 6, 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.

Constitutional Gazette (March 6, 1776).

**********

Constitutional Gazette (March 6, 1776).

**********

Constitutional Gazette (March 6, 1776).

March 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (March 5, 1776).

“Für Officiers und Soldaten.”

James Butland, a lacemaker who kept shop on Front Street in Philadelphia, placed his advertisements in several newspapers in 1775 and 1776.  Like many other entrepreneurs in urban ports, he inserted notices in multiple local newspapers, including the Pennsylvania Journal in February 1775 and the Pennsylvania Evening Post in July 1775.  Yet he did not confine his marketing solely to newspapers published in Philadelphia.  In December 1775, he ran an advertisement in the New-England Chronicle, published in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  With the Continental Army under the command of General George Washington continuing the siege of Boston, perhaps he thought that he could entice customers interested in “gold and silver epaulets for officers” and other adornments for military uniforms.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 10, 1776).

The lacemaker also continued seeking customers, including officers and soldiers, in Philadelphia.  In February 1776, he ran an advertisement for “All kinds of uniforms for officers and soldiers … made to any pattern,” “silk sword belts,” and “very fine white muffatees” (or fingerless gloves) “fit for officers or soldiers to exercise in.”  Butland added a nota bene, stating that “[i]f any commanding officer, or other gentleman, wants a particular dress made in gold or silver, to any pattern, he may … have it done at a short notice.”  Although he continued to make “all kinds of laces and fringes,” Butland took advantage of current events to cater to officers and soldiers.  He did so in two languages!  He inserted the same advertisement in Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, a newspaper published in Philadelphia to serve the community of German settlers that lived near the city and in the backcountry.  A nota bene in the masthead of that newspaper proclaimed, “All ADVERTISEMENTS to be inserted in this Paper, or printed single by HENRY MILLER, Publisher hereof, are by him translated gratis.”  Butland, who previously described himself as a “FRINGE and LACE-MAKER, from BRISTOL,” presumably availed himself of that service in his efforts to attract new customers.  He made bold decisions about where to place his newspaper advertisements as he sought to increase his share of the market.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 5, 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.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (March 5, 1776).

March 4

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  Ethan Sawyer

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

Norwich Packet (March 4, 1776).

“All Sorts of Doe and Buck-Skin Breeches.”

This advertisement announced the arrival of John Saltmarsh, a “LEATHER BREECHES MAKER” from London.  He offered to make breeches for anyone who needed them in Norwich, Connecticut.  He uses both doe and buckskin and made them fit properly.  He also promised they would fit well, offering to “make them fit properly, or demand nothing for his trouble.” This sounds confusing, but it was the equivalent of modern lawyers only asking for a payment if they win.  Saltmarsh was that confident in his ability to make new breeches or alterations that pleased his customers.

I was not sure what “breeches” were when I first read this advertisement.  From an interview with historian Kate Haulman in Vox, I learned that breeches are a kind of pants made distinctive through the wrappings that tighten them just below the knees.  Some had buttons or buckles, but for a cheaper option some just had simple ties to hold them in place.  They were fashionable, which was one reason Saltmarsh said that he was “from London,” but that was not the only way he tried to convince customers to buy breeches from him.  He also focused on service, promising the work to be done with “one Day’s Notice” or else he will compensate the customer for the inconvenience.  He even said, “he will pay for their trouble of coming after them.”  Overall, Saltmarsh ran an honest business. He focused on not only making a good product that fits the needs of each customer, but also on a timetable that works for them.

**********

ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

One of my favorite parts of having students in my upper-level early American history courses serve as guest curators for the Adverts 250 Project is observing their sense of wonder and discovery as they encounter everyday life in the eighteenth century for the first time.  That starts with each student compiling an archive that consists of one week of newspapers published during the era of the American Revolution.  Those newspapers look familiar, but they also have significant difference compared to modern newspapers … and not just the long “s” that looks so strange to novice researchers.  The purposes of some advertisements surprise them, such as what are today known as “runaway wife” advertisements in which husbands made public proclamations that they would not pay any expenses incurred by the unruly women who abandoned their household responsibilities (and that gives us a chance to discuss both coverture and the perspectives of the wives who did not have ready access to the public prints).  Students also encounter consumer goods commonly advertised in early America that are not familiar to them, such as andirons and “AMERICAN CAKE-INK.”  Breeches also fall in that category.  Ethan was not the only student enrolled in my senior seminar in Fall 2025 who included an entry on breeches in the advertising portfolio he created throughout the semester.

In addition to seeing fresh perspectives on consumer goods, I am always interested to see which advertisements draw the attention of my students because they usually select different advertisements to examine as guest curators than I would if I produced that entry of the Adverts 250 Project on my own.  I would have skipped over “JOHN SALTMARSH, LEATHER BREECHES MAKER, FROM LONDON,” in favor of the two advertisements for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense that appeared in the March 4, 1776, edition of the Norwich Packet, advertisements even more notable because the printers also included “EXTRACTS FROM A PAMPHLET ENTITLED, COMMON SENSE.”  Perhaps they previewed the pamphlet for the edification of their readers, though they likely also hoped to incite greater demand for sales of the pamphlet at their printing office.  This helps make a point that I underscore in all my courses: the stories that historians tell about the past depend on the sources they consult and, among those, which they choose to examine in greater detail.  Ethan and I both chose advertisements that illuminate the past, though different advertisements engaged our curiosity.  Elsewhere in his advertising portfolio, Ethan examined other advertisements from other newspapers.  Considered together, his advertisements looked at many aspects of consumer culture, commerce, politics, and everyday life during the first year of the Revolutionary War.  They included an advertisement for a riding manual “for gentlemen of every rank and profession,” an advertisement for pig iron, an advertisement for an assortment of books and pamphlets for supporters of the American cause, … and an advertisement for a local edition of Common Sense that appeared in the March 1 edition of the Connecticut Gazette.  When we perused that newspaper, Ethan and I selected the same advertisement!

Slavery Advertisements Published March 4, 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.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Courant (March 4, 1776).

**********

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (March 4, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 4, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 4, 1776).

**********

Norwich Packet (March 4, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published March 4, 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 (March 4, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 4, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 4, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 4, 1776).

March 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (February 29, 1776).

“TO BE SOLD CHEAP FOR CASH … A VARIETY of ENGLISH GOODS.”

After more than seventy years, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter ended its run with one last advertisement and a colophon that stated, “Printed by J. HOWE, at the Printing-Office in Newbury-Street.”  John Campbell, the publisher, and Bartholomew Green, the printer, distributed the first issue of the Boston News-Letter, as the newspaper was initially named, on April 24, 1704.  It became the first weekly newspaper published in the colonies, preceded only by a single issue of Publick Occurrences, a newspaper quickly shut down by authorities in 1690.

The first issue of the Boston News-Letter concluded with an “Advertisement” soliciting advertisements: “THis News Letter is to be continued Weekly; and all Persons who have any Houses, Lands, Tenements, Farmers, Ships Vessels, Goods, Wares or Merchandizes, &c. to be Sold or Lett; or Servants Run away; or Goods Stoll or Lost, may have the same Inserted at a Reasonable Rate; from Twelve Pence to Five Shillings.”  Over the next seven decades, the Boston News-Letter carried countless advertisements, many of them promoting goods and services to readers experiencing a transatlantic consumer revolution.  The notices concerning “Servants Run away” included enslaved men and women who liberated themselves by fleeing from their enslavers.  Many other advertisements about enslaved people for sale also appeared in the pages of the Boston News-Letter alongside those promoting goods and services or placed for the various other reasons outlined in that first “Advertisement.”

Ownership of the newspaper changed several times.  The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter briefly suspended publication after the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.  When it resumed, it was the only newspaper that continued in Boston.  All the others either closed or relocated to other towns.  New issues sometimes came out sporadically (or “PUBLISHED OCCASSIONALLY,” according to the masthead of the October 13, 1775, edition), often as half sheets with two pages of content instead of the usual full sheets with four pages.  Sometime in late September or early October, John Howe became the final printer of the newspaper.  In his History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, Clarence S. Brigham indicates that the last known issue was the February 22, 1776, edition, yet a quotation from the February 29 issue appeared in the Boston-Gazette on March 4.[1]  Since publication of Brigham’s History and Bibliography in 1947, a copy of the February 29 issue has been located, digitized, and made accessible via Readex’s America’s Historical Newspapers.  That last known issue consisted of only two pages.  Most of the content consisted of news from London with some local updates from Boston.  Half a dozen advertisements also appeared, including a final notice from Richard Jennys for a “VARIETY of ENGLISH GOODS.”

**********

[1] Clarence S Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 328.

March 2

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (March 2, 1776).

“KEYSER’s FAMOUS PILLS … are selling … By NICHOLAS BROOKS.”

His advertisements in Philadelphia’s newspapers made it clear that Nicholas Brooks diversified his participation in the marketplace in the 1770s.  He often promoted selection of general merchandise, what he called a “curious Collection of various GOODS” in one advertisement, yet on other occasions he specialized in prints and maps.  Sometimes he made special note of those items in his advertisements, such as a nota bene that called attention to a “very large quantity of elegant pictures, maps, copper plater writings, and music,” while other times devoting advertisements exclusively to a “LARGE and curious collection of the most modern PRINTS and PICTURES.”  After the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Brooks partnered with Bernard Romans, a cartographer and engraver, to publish a “MAP, FROM BOSTON TO WORCESTER, PROVIDENCE AND SALEM” that showed the “SEAT of the present unhappy CIVIL WAR in NORTH-AMERICA” and print that provided “An Exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.”  On the heels of those successful ventures, Brooks also advertised a “NEAT Mezzotinto print of the of the Hon. JOHN HANCOCK, Esquire, President of the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.”

Yet maps and prints were not Brooks’s only significant side hustle.  He also peddled patent medicines, placing an extensive advertisement for “MAREDANT’s DROPS,” complete with testimonials in March 1772.” He continued hawking patent medicines during the Revolutionary War.  For instance, he placed two advertisements in the March 2, 1774, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger.  The one for “Dr. RYAN’s INCOMPARABLE WORM-DESTROYONG SUGAR PLUMBS” rivaled his earlier advertisement for Maredant’s Drops in length.  Brooks billed this remedy as “Necessary to be kept in all FAMILIES.”  He described the efficacy of the medicine, noted its popularity in Great Britain and Ireland, and provided directions so prospective customers could see how easily they could administer the sugar plumbs once they purchased them.  In another notice, a much shorter one, Brooks advertised “KEYSER’s FAMOUS PILLS, so well known all over Europe, and in this and the neighbouring colonies, for their superior efficacy and peculiar mildness, in perfectly eradicating every degree of a certain disease.”  He did not need to say much more because this popular cure for venereal disease was advertised widely in the public prints.  Brooks did not exaggerate when he proclaimed that Keyser’s Pills were “so well known” on both sides of the Atlantic.  He also mentioned that he stocked Maredant’s Drops as well.  He offered discounts to retailers “who sell again.”  Side ventures into patent medicines accounted for an alternative revenue stream for Brooks, supplementing his sales of general merchandise and prints.