November 8

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).
“Demands from the Country it is expected will be accompanied with the Cash.”

When November arrived in 1776, John Dixon and William Hunter, the printers of the Virginia Gazette, began advertising “The VIRGINIA ALMANACK For the Year 1777.”  They ran their first advertisement on November 1, allowing prospective customers two months to purchase their almanacs before the new year began.  That also gave retailers in Williamsburg and other towns time to acquire almanacs to stock in their own shops and stores.  Dixon and Hunter printers advised that they sold the almanac “at the usual Prices,” though they did not specify the price in their advertisement.  The printers may have wished to assure readers that shortages of paper and other disruptions caused by the war had not resulted in significant increases in what they would pay for almanacs compared to previous years.

When Dixon and Hunter ran their advertisement a second time on November 8, they added a couple of lines that gave more information.  That included expanding the title to “The VIRGINIA ALMANACK For the Year 1777, Fitting VIRGINIA, MARYLAND, NORTH CAROLINA, &c.”  Readers in those states could depend on the astronomical calculations corresponding to their locations.  Dixon and Hunter did not mention in their advertisement that David Rittenhouse, a prominent mathematician and astronomer in Philadelphia, was credited as the author since he provided those calculations (and the printers, as editors, likely selected other contents).  Rittenhouse also supplied the calculations for Father Abraham’s Almanack, For the Year of Our Lord 1777, published by John Dunlap in Philadelphia.  In an advertisement in the November 12 edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, the printer boasted, “Our kind customers are requested to observe, that the ingenious David Rittenhouse, A.M. of this city, has favoured us with the Astronomical calculations of our Almanack for this year, therefore they may be most firmly relied on.”  Dixon and Hunter did not go into such detail, though Rittenhouse apparently undertook a separate set of calculations for states to the south of Pennsylvania.

Dixon and Hunter also added instructions for customers outside Williamsburg who sent orders rather than visiting the printing office to purchase their almanacs: “Demands from the Country it is expected will be accompanied with the Cash.”  That suggested that prospective customers were indeed familiar with “the usual Prices.”  It also revealed that the printers would not extend credit to either customers purchasing their own almanacs or retailers purchasing them to sell again.  Despite the upheavals of the war, they set a reasonable price, but in exchange they needed payment at the time of sale.  The printers declined to take on the risk of credit in such uncertain times.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 8, 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 (November 8, 1776).

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Essex Journal (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 8, 1776).

November 7

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

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (November 7, 1776).

“THE BATTLE of BUNKERS-HILL.  A dramatic piece of five acts, in heroic measure.”

In the fall of 1776, Robert Bell printed, advertised, and sold “THE BATTLE of BUNKERS-HILL.  A dramatic piece of five acts, in heroic measure.  By a Gentleman of Maryland.”  His advertisement in the November 7 edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post featured a quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, “Pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis,” along with a translation for readers who did not happen to know Latin, “‘Tis glorious to die in battle.”  Both the quotation and the translation also appeared on the title page of the play.  Most prospective customers were likely familiar with the Battle of Bunker’s Hill that occurred on June 17, 1775, during the siege of Boston.  Although the British won, they took such heavy losses at the hands of the Americans that they did not launch other attacks during the siege.  In that regard, the battle was an American victory, but one that came at cost.  General Joseph Warren, a patriot leader who only a few months earlier delivered the annual oration commemorating the Boston Massacre, was killed during the battle.

Bell’s advertisement did not go into such detail, perhaps because the printer expected that many prospective customers already knew the most significant details.  He expected that a “dramatic piece” would arouse both their curiosity and their patriotism, encouraging them to purchase the play.  Scholars have supplied some of the details that Bell did not include in his advertisement.  Curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for instance, explain that “the headmaster of Maryland’s Somerset Academy,” Hugh Henry Brackenridge, “responded [to the battle] with a play for his students to perform.”  Bell printed the play and distributed it more widely to American readers.  When he did so, he included a frontispiece, “The Death of Warren,” that depicted the general on bended knee with his right hand over his chest and his left hand on his rifle for support.  Concerned soldiers appeared on the left of the mortally wounded general and a fallen comrade, another American casualty, laid on the ground on the right.  John Norman, who had produced other patriotic images, engraved the scene, though Bell did not promote it in his advertisement.  Instead, he announced that he stocked “all the new publications of the Military Art” as well as “a considerable variety of books in Navigation, and other branches of the Mathematics.”

Brackenridge demonstrated his patriotism by writing the play and then resigning from his position to join the Continental Army as a chaplain.  Bell, like many other printers, artists, and booksellers presented consumers with an opportunity to show their patriotism by buying and reading the play.  Such commemoration and commodification of the events associated with the American Revolution began before the war and continued during the war.

Hugh Henry Brackenridge, The Battle of Bunkers-Hill, a Dramatic Piece, of Five Acts, in Heroic Measure (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1776). Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 7, 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 (November 7, 1776).

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Independent Chronicle (November 7, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (November 7, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (November 7, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (November 7, 1776).

November 6

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

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

Massachusetts Spy (November 6, 1776).

“BEHOLD A COWARD!”

The harsh tone exceeded what appeared in other advertisements placed for the same purpose.  Before the Revolutionary War, advertisements for runaways abounded in American newspapers.  Aggrieved masters ran advertisements for runaway indentured servants, runaway apprentices, and runaway convict servants.  The notices described the runaways and offered rewards for their capture and return.  Disgruntled enslavers ran similar advertisements about enslaved men and women who liberated themselves by running away.  After the war began, desertion notices started appearing.  In many instances, the number of desertion notices eclipsed advertisements about indentured servants, apprentices, convict servants, and enslaved people combined.

Like those familiar advertisements, desertion notices usually followed a familiar format.  Consider one that appeared in the November 6, 1776, edition of the Massachusetts Spy: “DESERTED from Captain William Gate’s Company, in Colonel Jonathan Holman’s Regiment, … Arthur Cary, a Soldier.”  The advertisement described Cary’s featured and clothing.  “Whoever will take up said deserter,” the notice continued, “and return him to me … shall have ten dollars reward and all reasonable charges paid.”  Many similar advertisements appeared in other newspapers in the fall of 1776.

The advertisement that ran immediately above that one in the Massachusetts Spy took a different approach.  It started with a headline that forcefully condemned the deserter: “BEHOLD A COWARD!”  It then told a story about the circumstances under which “DANIEL PITTEE, Ensign, in Capt. Timothy Stow’s Company, in Col. Wheelock’s Regiment,” deserted from “Head Quarters, [at] Ticonderoga” in October.  “THE PUBLIC are desired to take notice,” the advertisement proclaimed, that Pittee “applied … for a discharge upon hearing that the enemy were likely to attack our lines – he was refused and the next Day deserted the Camp.”  The notice, “Published by order of Brigadier General [James] Brickett,” ran in the Massachusetts Spy and newspapers published in Boston because the “infamous Runaway belongs to the south Parish of Dedham, County of Suffolk,” and his officers apparently suspected he was headed that way.  Unlike other advertisements about deserters, this one did not offer a reward for returning him to his regiment.  Instead, it aimed to humiliate and demean the deserter.  Pittee’s request for a discharge when an attack was likely may have been the deciding factor.  Such cowardice differed from the motivations of other soldiers who deserted in hopes of returning home to protect and aid their families.  The headline certainly attracted attention.  From the very first line, this desertion notice differed from others that so often appeared in newspapers during the Revolutionary War.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 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.

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

Connecticut Journal (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (November 6, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (November 6, 1776).

November 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (November 5, 1776).

“THE Work-shop of the subscriber was broke open on Saturday night.”

It was bad luck for John Hallberstat, a leather dresser, that someone broke into his workshop in Philadelphia and stole a variety of goods during the night of Saturday, November 2, 1776.  Losing no time, he arranged for advertisements to appear in the next newspapers published in the city.  That meant Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet and the Pennsylvania Evening Post, both printed and distributed on Tuesdays.  The Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal would not come out until Wednesday and the Pennsylvania Ledger not until Saturday.  Hallberstat needed to move quickly to increase the chances that newspaper advertisements would help him recover the stolen items.

In notices with nearly identical copy, Hallberstat described the stolen goods: “twenty-four reed or summer deer skins in the hair, one feather bed, blanket and sheet, and three pairs of leather breeches just scowered.”  Most victims of theft or burglary who ran newspaper advertisements called on all readers to assist in identifying the perpetrators and returning the stolen goods.  Hallberstat, however, made a plea directly to those he thought the culprits most likely to approach to sell the items from his workshop.  “As it is likely the skins may be offered for sale to some skinners,” he declared, “they are requested to stop them and the thief.”  Similarly, “Vendue-master” or auctioneers “are requested to give information if the bed and blankets should be offered them for sale.”  Skinners and vendue masters could collude with the thief or thieves to their own advantage.  In case doing the right thing was not sufficient motivation for assisting Hallberstat, he offered “THREE POUNDS REWARD … to any person who shall discover the goods so that the owner may have them again, or for the thief or thieves so that they may be brought to justice.”

Hallberstat was fortunate that his advertisement ran in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet at all on November 5.  It appeared as (almost) the last item at the bottom of the last column on the third page.  That would have been the final type set in place for that issue since printers tended to print the first and fourth pages on one side of the broadsheet first and finished with the second and third pages on the other side.  Only a brief note from the printer followed Hallberstat’s notice: “Advertisements omitted this week for want of room shall be inserted in our next.”  The printer selected some advertisements to exclude.  Given the urgency of Hallberstat’s advertisement, the printer may have made sure to give it a place in the November 5 edition.  That increased the chances that Hallberstat might recover the stolen goods.  Waiting to published the advertisement in the next issue on November 12 made it even less likely that it would yield the result that Hallberstat sought.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 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.

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

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (November 5, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (November 5, 1776).

November 4

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (November 4, 1776).

“THE Publisher of this Paper … has removed from Watertown … to the Printing-Office … in Queen-Street, Boston.”

After a year and a half of being printed in Watertown, the Boston-Gazette returned to Boston!  Benjamin Edes, the printer, inserted a notice to that effect at top of the first column on the first page of the November 4, 1776, edition, making it the first item that readers encountered.  “The Publisher of this Paper,” he declared, “hereby informs his Customers, that he has removed from Watertown, to the Printing-Office opposite the Court-House in Queen-Street, Boston; where they and others may be supplied with the same as usual.”  Edes hoped to retain his current subscribers and add news ones now that he printed the Boston-Gazette in the city once again, though he did acknowledge in the advertisement announcing his intention to “remove to Boston” that it might not “accommodate” his subscribers “to continue [as] his Customers.”  He requested that those who wished to discontinue their subscriptions “settle their arrears” before he moved to his new location.

Edes had previously partnered with John Gill in printing the Boston-Gazette in Boston.  Their newspaper earned a reputation as a staunch advocate of the American cause.  They printed their final issue together on April 17, 1775, two days before the battles at Lexington and Concord.  The start of the war caused a major disruption for every newspaper in Boston.  Isaiah Thomas had already suspended the Massachusetts Spy and announced plans to relocate to Worcester.  All the other newspapers printed in Boston folded, suspended publication, or moved outside the city.  Edes and Gill dissolved their partnership and then Edes revived the Boston-Gazette in Watertown.  The Massachusetts Provincial Congress met there, making it a good spot for a patriot printer to publish a newspaper.  Edes remained in Watertown after the British evacuated Boston and the siege of the city ended in March 1776.

Boston-Gazette (November 4, 1776).

When he did return to Boston in November 1776, he supplemented the notice on the first page of the Boston-Gazette with an advertisement that appeared immediately after local news on the second page.  “THE Town Customers to this Paper,” Edes announced, “may be supplied as heretofore, by leaving the Place of their Residence with the Printer.”  Even if he lost some customers in Watertown and other towns outside Boston, Edes hoped to replace them with new ones in the city.  He also welcomed back former subscribers who had not been able to continue their subscriptions during the siege.  He met with sufficient success to continue publishing the Boston-Gazette for more than two decades.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 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.

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

Boston-Gazette (November 4, 1776).

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Connecticut Courant (November 4, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (November 4, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (November 4, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (November 4, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (November 4, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (November 4, 1776).

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Newport Mercury (November 4, 1776).