What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“The Advertisement … against Elenor Fairfield … is Unjust and Cruel.”
It was a rare instance of a wife accused of abandoning her husband in a newspaper advertisement publishing a response. In the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century, American newspapers carried notices now known as “runaway wife” advertisements. Using standardized language and a familiar format, husbands alleged that their wives misbehaved and left them without cause. In turn, the husbands warned merchants, shopkeepers, and others not to extend credit to the women who fled from their households and from the authority they were supposed to exercise there. In most instances, the wives did not have the resources to publish their own version of events, but occasionally advertisements contradicting the stories told by husbands did appear.
The July 26, 1776, edition of the Connecticut Gazette carried William Fairfield’s advertisement for the first time. In it, he proclaimed that his wife, Elenor, “has without Just cause Denied my bead and bord” in Woodstock. In turn, he ran the notice “to forbid all persons Harbouring or trusting or concealing of her things which she hath unjustly carry of or traiding with hir on my account for I will not [pay] one farthing of hir Debt She may cantract.” Like most other advertisements, Fairfield’s notice ran multiple times, giving readers in New London, Woodstock, and other towns several opportunities to see it.
Fairfield likely expected to have the last and only word in the public prints, but eighteen of his neighbors decided that would not be the case. They published their own notice in response to “the Advertisement in the Connecticut Gazette, Number 663, against Elenor Fairfield the Wife of William Fairfield, of Woodstock.” The considered his advertisement “Unjust and Cruel,” explaining that “her leaving of him, was from his Cruelty.” Then they went into even more detail, revealing much more than William included in his advertisement. Elenor resorted to “swearing the Peace against him … for her own Safety.” According to her friends and neighbors, “18 credible Persons in the Neighbourhood where she has long lived,” the fault belonged entirely to William because Elenor was “a dutiful Wife when used with Humanity, a kind and tender Mother, [and] a good Neighbour [who] sustains a good Character.” Unfortunately, she had become “abject and miserable by her Husband’s misconduct.” It was out of “Justice to her injured Character” that her friends and neighbors ran their own advertisement about what had occurred in Woodstock.
Seven men and eleven women signed that advertisement. The men’s names appeared first in one paragraph, followed by the women’s names in a separate paragraph. That testified to the men’s authority, especially in interacting with other men, but readers could not ignore the women who also affixed their names. Some readers, especially women, may have had greater trust in the women who defended Elenor. After all, circles of female friends and acquaintances in Woodstock likely interacted with Elenor more often than most men in the community and had greater awareness of how her husband treated her and the discord in the Fairfield household. That did not mean that men did not witness mistreatment, but rather that women often had greater access to the everyday experiences of other women.
