October 11

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

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

Connecticut Gazette (October 11, 1776).

“Persons intrusted with PROPOSALS for Re-printing the Penitential Cries, are desired to return them in to Judah P. Spooner.”

Among the various advertisements in the October 11, 1776, edition of the Connecticut Gazette, one notice instructed “Those Persons intrusted with PROPOSALS for Re-printing the Penitential Cries … to turn them in to Judah P. Spooner, of Norwich at or before the first Day of November next.”  This followed a common practice for publishing books in the eighteenth century.  Before taking a book to press, printers distributed subscription proposals that promoted the work and gave details about publication (such as price and the quality of the paper and type).  They asked consumers to reserve copies by subscribing for them.  Printers or local agents acting on their behalf, compiled lists of subscribers.  Subscription proposals simultaneously drummed up demand for books and let printers know how many copies to print so they did not end up with surplus copies that resulted in taking a loss on the project.  Sometimes subscription proposals did not yield enough subscribers to make a project viable; in those cases, they were an important tool for conducting market research.

According to this advertisement, however, Spooner’s effort to publish Penitential Cries did attract “a sufficient number of Subscribers to incourage the Printing said Book.”  Now he needed to add any subscribers not yet brought to his attention to his list so he could print copies for all of them and perhaps a small number of unclaimed copies in hopes of making additional sales.  Spooner likely proposed publishing John Mason’s Spiritual Songs: Or, Songs of Praise with Penitential Cries to Almighty God, upon Several Occasions.  At least five editions had been printed in the colonies, including a “fifteenth edition corrected” printed by Thomas Fleet for bookseller Daniel Henchman in Boston in 1742 and, most recently, a “sixteenth edition corrected” printed by Thomas Fleet and John Fleet in Boston in 1774.  (References to the edition did not always align.  For instance, Hugh Gaine printed a “seventeenth edition, corrected,” in New York in 1765, nearly a decade before the Fleets published their “sixteenth edition corrected.”  Zachariah Fowle also published a “seventeenth edition, corrected,” in Boston in 1765.)

Seeking to publish a book was a bold venture in the fall of 1776.  The war caused all sorts of disruptions; in particular, printers scrambled for paper to continue publishing their newspapers.  They frequently ran advertisements calling for readers to provide rags to recycle into paper, sometimes warning that the fate of the newspaper itself depended on compliance with those requests.  Spooner apparently thought that he had access to the paper he needed in addition to “a sufficient number of Subscribers.”  If he did print the book, however, no copy survives.  The next known American edition was indeed printed in Norwich, but not until 1783 when John Trumbull, the printer of the Norwich Packet, published his “fifteenth edition.”  Spooner’s advertisement suggested that he was on the brink of successfully printing the book, but gathering attracting subscribers may not have been enough.  Other circumstances likely prevented him from finishing the project.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 11, 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 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 11, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 11, 1776).

October 10

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 10, 1776).

“Excellent GREEN and BOHEA TEA.”

An advertisement in the October 10, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post alerted readers that a “SALE of a neat assortment of MERCHANDIZE, being the remains of a store,” would take place “at JOHN HART’s VENDUE store” on the following Tuesday.  The notice listed an array of textiles that rivaled many of the lists published in newspaper advertisements before the war, including “velvets and velverets, rattinets, shalloons, calimancoes, tammies, … white and embossed serges and flannels, chintzes, cottons, calicoes and printed linens.”  Eighteenth-century consumers could distinguish among that variety of fabrics and many more.

In addition to that “MERCHANDIZE,” the advertisement also highlighted “Excellent GREEN and BOHEA TEA.”  For a time, tea had been a prohibited item.  Patriots in Boston tossed tea into the harbor in December 1773 and made bonfires of tea in other communities to protest the duties and other regulations on colonial commerce imposed by Parliament.  Tea figured prominently in the Continental Association, a nonimportation and nonconsumption pact devised by the Second Continental Congress in the fall of 1774.  Advertisements for tea disappeared from American newspapers for a while, but circumstances changed once the war began.  Once the king declared the colonies in rebellion and ordered the closure of ports at the end of March 1776, nonimportation and nonconsumption testified to the effectiveness of the British blockade rather than the Continental Association.  In addition, some merchants claimed that they possessed tea that they smuggled into the colonies but did not have a chance to sell before the Continental Association went into effect.  On April 13, 1776, Congress allowed for selling and consuming tea.  Tea began to appear in newspaper advertisements once again, though not nearly as often as it had in the 1760s and early 1770s.  More tea hit the market as the result of privateers capturing British ships and their cargoes.  The advertisement for the sale of tea at Hart’s Vendue Store did not mention the origins of that tea, though the local committee of inspection may have cleared it for sale.

With the extensive list of textiles and the “Excellent GREEN and BOHEA TEA,” the advertisement for an upcoming sale of a “neat assortment of MERCHANDIZE” resembled advertisements that so frequently appeared in American newspapers before the war.  However sincere their political principles, consumers still desired all sorts of goods.  As the Continental Association eroded, they resumed their previous purchasing habits.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 10, 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.

Independent Chronicle (October 10, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (October 10, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 10, 1776).

October 9

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Maryland Journal (October 9, 1776).

“BLANKS AND HAND BILLS are done on the shortest NOTICE, in a NEAT and CORRECT MANNER.”

As was the case for many eighteenth-century newspapers, the Maryland Journal featured an array of advertisements and concluded with a colophon that served as a final advertisement, one that repeated from issue to issue every week.  Not every colophon advertised the goods and services available at the printing office where the newspaper was published.  Some merely gave the name of the printer and the town.  The Maryland Journal and many others, however, had lengthy colophons that hawked subscriptions and solicited job printing.

In the fall of 1776, the newspaper’s colophon stated, “BALTIMORE: Published by M.K. Goddard, at the PRINTING-OFFICE in MARKET-STREET, next Door above Dr. JOHN STEVENSON’s, where SUBSCRIPTIONS for this PAPER, at TEN SHILLINGS per Annum, ADVERTISEMENTS and INTERESTING ESSAYS, or LETTERS of USEFUL INTELLIGENCE, are gratefully received for this PAPER; and where all MANNER of PRINTING-WORK is performed with CARE, FIDELITY, and EXPEDITION.— BLANKS AND HAND BILLS are done on the shortest NOTICE, in a NEAT and CORRECT MANNER.”

Like many of her male counterparts, Mary Katharine Goddard used the colophon to promote both the newspaper and other aspects of the business she operated.  Her brother, William, established the Maryland Journal in August 1773, but Goddard had been the printer since May 1775.  She included extensive directions to the printing office in the colophon to aid customers seeking to purchase subscriptions, advertisements, or blanks or others with job printing orders for handbills and other items.  In addition, advertisements often instructed interested parties to “enquire of the printer” to learn more.  Goddard served as an information broker, supplying details that did not appear in print.  The directions in the colophon helped readers seeking to “enquire of the printer” to find her printing office.  That Goddard included blanks (or printed forms, which could be personalized for an entrepreneur) and handbills in the colophon suggests that she did brisk business in them.  Those forms of advertising media have not been saved and preserved to the extent of newspapers and the advertisements that appeared in them, though they circulated in Baltimore and other cities and towns in eighteenth-century America.  Goddard’s colophon hinted at marketing materials that readers encountered as they went about their daily lives.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 9, 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 (October 9, 1776).

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Connecticut Journal (October 9, 1776).

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Connecticut Journal (October 9, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 9, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 9, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 9, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 9, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 9, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 9, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 9, 1776).

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Massachusetts Spy (October 9, 1776).

October 8

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 8, 1776).

“He proposes giving LECTURES in FRENCH after the most easy and concise method possible.”

Francis Daymon had competition.  For years the “MASTER of the French and Latin Languages” taught “the useful and polite French language in the newest and most expeditious method” to genteel residents of Philadelphia, the most cosmopolitan city in British North America.  He operated and frequently advertised a “FRENCH ACADEMY,” first at his house on Front Street, “nearly opposite the London Coffee-House,” and later “in the Library Room in Carpenters Hall.”  In addition, he offered private lessons to “Ladies and Gentlemen” who wished to be “instructed at their places of abode.”  On October 5, 1776, he advised readers of the Pennsylvania Evening Post that “he continues to instruct gentlemen in the French language in the most expeditious method, agreeable to the late improvements of the French academy.”  Pupils could now find him “on the south side of Market-street, the fifth door below Fourth-street.”

Three days later, Bartholomew le Petite ran his own advertisement in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, addressing the same readers who recently perused Daymon’s notice.  Le Petite informed “the ladies and gentlemen of this city, that he proposed giving LECTURES in FRENCH after the most easy and concise method possible for the scholar to obtain the knowledge and propriety of writing and speaking it with propriety.”  After all, those seeking to deploy their familiarity with the “polite and useful language” to demonstrate their sophistication wished to avoid the embarrassment of clumsy execution that would mark them as pretenders rather than truly genteel.  Le Petite did not make any mention of “the French academy” on the other side of the Atlantic, choosing not to burnish the same sort of credentials that Daymon so often incorporated into his advertisements.  Instead, he focused on making his lessons as accessible as possible via his “most easy and concise method.”  That may have been an attractive prospect to new students as well as students who had been frustrated when receiving lessons from Daymon or others.  Le Petite’s methods might prove the most effective.

Whether learning French for the first time, seeking to expand their vocabulary and improve their pronunciation, or desiring to brush up on their skills, students could compare advertisements from two instructors published within days of each other.  Those advertisements did more than merely announce that French lessons were available.  They played a role in guiding students to the instructors so they could make informed decisions about which one they wished to hire.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 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.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 8, 1776).

October 7

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (October 7, 1776).
“JAMES DEAS … SINCE the late dreadful Fire has removed into the House he formerly lived in.”

In the weeks after the British took possession of New York in September 1776, Hugh Gaine removed to Newark, New Jersey, and printed the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury there.  Without a newspaper in the city they just captured, the British tasked Ambrose Serle with publishing another New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury in New York.  The first issue featured Gaine’s name in the imprint, but it disappeared from subsequent issues until Gaine returned to the city and resumed publication there in November.  The October 7 edition was the first with a masthead that stated, “PRINTED AT THE BIBLE AND CROWN, IN HANOVER SQUARE,” without naming a printer.  The masthead continued to proclaim that the newspaper “Contain[ed] the freshest Advices Foreign and Domestick.”

In addition to news articles and letters, advertisements accounted for those “freshest Advices.”  James Deas, a “PERUKEMAKER and HAIR-DRESSER,” placed a short advertisement to inform the public of his new location.  “SINCE the late dreadful Fire,” he announced, he “has removed into the House he formerly lived in, at the Corner of Broad-Street, near the Exchange.”  He hoped that “his former Friends and Customers” would avail themselves of his services at his new (but familiar) location.  Deas referred to the fire that destroyed more than one-fifth of the city on the night of September 20 and into the morning of September 21, just as the British arrived.  Gaine provided the first coverage of the fire in his New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury printed in Newark on September 21, part of his promise to publish “the freshest Advices Foreign and Domestick” in that newspaper.  For his part, Deas did not comment on the fire beyond describing it as “dreadful.”  Instead, he focused on maintaining his clientele and rebuilding his business.  His advertisement did not reveal his politics, a savvy strategy considering recent events, but the fire raised lots of questions and speculation about whether the retreating American forces set it deliberately.  The fire may very well have been a topic of lively conversation between Deas and his clients as he dressed their hair or took their measurements at his new shop.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 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.

Connecticut Courant (October 7, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (October 7, 1776)