March 31

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

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

Supplement to the Pennsylvania Ledger (March 30, 1776).

“BLANKS and HAND-BILLS in particular are done on the shortest notice.”

In the spring of 1776, Melchior Steiner and Charles (Carl) Cist ran an advertisement “to acquaint the public, that they have removed their PRINTING OFFICE to the house of Ludwick Sprogrell, in Second-street” in Philadelphia.  In their new location, the partners “carry on the PRINTING-BUSINESS in its different branches, in the English, German, and other languages, with care, fidelity & dispatch.”  That had been a common appeal in advertisements that they previously placed in several newspapers in December and January, emphasized in a headline that proclaimed, “PRINTING In ENGLISH, GERMAN, and other Languages.”  By the time they relocated, Steiner and Cist collaborated with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, in printing a new edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense approved by the author and a German translation of the popular pamphlet.

Yet the printers did not limit themselves to books and pamphlets and other major projects.  They concluded their advertisement with a note that “BLANKS and HAND-BILLS in particular are done on the shortest notice.”  In other words, they accepted all sorts of smaller job printing assignments, quickly producing documents useful in business.  “BLANKS” referred to a variety of forms so commonly used that it saved time to print them in volume and then write the details by hand for each transaction.  In an advertisement in the Providence Gazette, John Carter listed more than a dozen kinds of blanks he printed, including “long and short Powers of Attorney, long and short Deeds, Bills of Sale, Bills of Lading, Portage Bills, Policies of Insurance, Apprentices Indentures, [and] Bonds of various Sorts.”  When it came to “HAND-BILLS,” customers used them to promote consumer goods and services, sometimes supplementing newspaper advertisements, and to disseminate news about politics, meetings, and other current events.  That printers so often advertised that they printed handbills suggests that many more of those items circulated in early American cities and towns than have survived in research libraries, historical societies, and private collections.  Steiner and Cist printed both blanks and handbills “on the shortest notice,” indicating that customers expected their orders to be filled speedily so they could get more information into circulation.

March 30

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

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (March 30, 1776).

“JOHN ATKINS … was seen wheeling a wheelbarrow … for a woman selling liquor.”

It was a rare instance of an aggrieved wife running a response to an advertisement that her husband placed to describe her supposed bad behavior and cut off her access to credit.  It began with a notice that John Atkins inserted in the February 19, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet: “WHEREAS ALICE ATIKENS, wife of the subscriber, now in this city,” Philadelphia, “has for some time past absented herself from my bed without any reason: This is therefore to caution all persons not to trust her on my account, as I am determined not to pay any debt she may contract.”  John used standard language that could have appeared in any newspaper published anywhere in the colonies.  Such notices, known to historians as runaway wife advertisements, ran regularly, often more than one in a given issue of a newspaper.  They were a familiar mechanism for husbands to attempt to assert authority over wives they claimed misbehaved.

Yet they told only one side of the story … and since husbands refused to pay expenses incurred by their wives that meant that very few of the women featured in such advertisements published responses in the public prints.  Alice was an exception.  Her own advertisement ran in Pennsylvania Evening Post, declaring that “JOHN ATKINS, by trade a bricklayer, was seen wheeling a wheelbarrow across the Race Ground, for a woman selling liquor and had not been with me for six nights past.”  Alice implied that John had been unfaithful or at least inappropriately directed his affections toward another woman.  He may even have diverted his time away from earning a living by transporting liquor for the other woman when he should have been on a job.  His absence might have been a relief of sorts because, Alice reported, “when he comes home, [John] pulls his wife’s cap and hair up by the root.”  Many runaway wife advertisements likely concealed domestic abuse that caused women to flee from their husbands.

Alice concluded with familiar instructions to the public, though inverted to disadvantage an absent husband rather than a disobedient wife: “This is therefore to forewarn all persons not to trust him on my account, as I will pay none of his debts.”  As a married woman, according to English common law, Alice held the status of a feme covert (or covered woman) whose legal identity had been subsumed by her husband.  She did not have the authority to cut her husband off from credit, though she did find resources to place the advertisement.  That final threat likely was not her purpose in placing the advertisement; instead, she wished to tell her side of the story and reveal the mistreatment she experienced at home.  In so doing, she deployed a format readers easily recognized, making it more powerful by bending it to her own purpose.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 30, 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.

Supplement to the Pennsylvania Ledger (March 30, 1776).

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Providence Gazette (March 30, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (March 30, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (March 30, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (March 30, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (March 30, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (March 30, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (March 30, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published March 30, 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 30, 1776).

March 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Connecticut Gazette (March 29, 1775).

“FREEBETTER’s New-England ALMANACK, To be Sold by T. GREEN.”

Timothy Green, the printer of the Connecticut Gazette, needed something short to complete the first column on the last page of the March 29, 1776, edition of his newspaper.  Most of the column consisted of news from Williamsburg, Philadelphia, New York, and Providence, but those updates did not quite fill the column.  He seized the opportunity to insert an advertisement for “FREEBETTER’s New-England ALMANACK” available at his printing office in New London.  It was late to advertise an almanac.  After all, one quarter of the year already elapsed, yet readers would still find many of the contents useful or entertaining.

Throughout the colonies, advertisements for almanacs usually began appearing as fall arrived.  They increased in number and frequency as the new year approached before tapering off during the winter months.  When they had surplus copies, some printers continued advertising their almanacs into March, though they often ran less elaborate notices than those they used to promote the popular pamphlets when they first came off the press.  Green, for instance, ran a much longer advertisement for “FREEBETTER’s New-England ALMANACK, For the Year of Our LORD, 1776,” in December 1775, encouraging readers to acquire their copies before the new year began.  That advertisement featured an overview of the contents, including reference material like “Feasts and Fasts of the Church of England; Time of High-Water [or high tide]; Courts; Roads; [and] useful Tables” and “useful and entertaining Pieces” like “A cheap, easy, and tried Remedy for the Bloody Purging” and an essay “On the Folly of those who vex themselves with fruitless Wishes.”

Green devoted much more space in his newspapers to the advertisement he ran in early December than to the one in late March.  He likely realized that he had much better prospects for selling almanacs before the first of the year, yet he still thought he had a chance to make some sales in early spring.  Still, the placement and length of his latest advertisement suggests that he decided to insert it, at least in part, because he needed to fill the space at the bottom of a column and not solely because he prioritized marketing the remaining copies of the almanac.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 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.

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 Gazette (March 29, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (March 29, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (March 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 29, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 29, 1776).

March 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-England Chronicle (March 28, 1776).

“THE 2d Salem Edition of the celebrated Pamphlet, intitled COMMON SENSE.”

A brief advertisement in the March 28, 1776, edition of the New-England Chronicle alerted readers that “THE 2d Salem Edition of the celebrated Pamphlet, intitled, COMMON SENSE, is just published, and to be sold by EZEKIEL RUSSELL of that place.”  It was the fourth advertisement for Thomas Paine’s influential political pamphlet that appeared in a newspaper published in Massachusetts and perhaps the first one that promoted an edition of Common Sense printed in that colony.

On March 4, the Boston-Gazette, printed in Watertown during the siege of Boston, carried a notice offering “A few of those celebrated Pamphlets … to be Sold (if applied for soon) at Mr. Samuel Wait’s … in Cambridge; and at the Printing Office in Watertown.”  Benjamin Edes, the printer of the Boston-Gazette, did not indicate which edition he stocked.  The copies he had on hand may have come from the press of Judah P. Spooner in Norwich, Connecticut, or from the press of John Carter in Providence, Rhode Island.  Alternately, Edes may have acquired copies published in New York or Philadelphia.  Perhaps Russell had published a local edition in Salem by early March, doing so without fanfare in the public prints.  Edes ran the same advertisement again three weeks later.

In the time between the appearances of those advertisements in the Boston-Gazette, Samuel Hall offered for sale at his printing office in Cambridge “A few copies of that valuable pamphlet, intitled COMMON SENSE” in an advertisement in the March 14, 1776, edition of the New-England Chronicle.  Which edition did he sell?  Could it have been the first edition printed in Salem by Russell?  If so, why did the advertisement published on March 28 indicate that Russell sold the “2d Salem Edition” in that town but Edes did not have copies in Cambridge?

Whatever the answer to that question, this reference to a “2d Salem Edition” seems to suggest an edition published there but not listed in Richard Gimbel’s Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense.  Gimbel identifies only one edition published in Salem in 1776.[1]  Its title page identified it as the “Third Edition,” though that did not necessarily mean that Russell printed three editions.  Instead, it likely indicated that he knew of two previous editions.  When John Carter published local editions in Providence, he identified them as the “Sixth Edition” and the “Tenth Edition,” presumably taking into account editions printed in Philadelphia, New York, and other towns that came to his attention via newspaper advertisements, correspondence, and exchanges with fellow printers.[2]  That being the case, Russell almost certainly knew that any Salem edition he published was not the third edition printed in the colonies, but perhaps the disruptions caused by the war had an impact on his networks for collecting information at the time he first took a Salem edition to press.  That the advertisement in the New-England Chronicle cites a “2d Salem Edition” yet Gimbel lists only one edition of Common Sense printed there might indicate that yet another edition circulated in 1776 even though no known copies have survived in historical societies, research libraries, and private collections.  Paine’s pamphlet went through more editions than any other published during the era of American Revolution.  Perhaps it had one more edition than scholars previously realized.

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[1] Richard Gimbel, Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense with an Account of Its Publication (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 91.

[2] Gimbel, Thomas Paine, 90-91.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 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.

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.

Maryland Gazette (March 28, 1776).

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New-England Chronicle (March 28, 1776).

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New-England Chronicle (March 28, 1776).

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New-York Journal (March 28, 1776).

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New-York Journal (March 28, 1776).

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New-York Journal (March 28, 1776).

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New-York Journal (March 28, 1776).

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New-York Journal (March 28, 1776).

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New York Packet (March 28, 1776).

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New York Packet (March 28, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published March 28, 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.

New-England Chronicle (March 28, 1776).

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New York Packet (March 28, 1776).

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New York Packet (March 28, 1776).

March 27

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Journal (March 27, 1776).

“The above goods are now offered … as low as goods of the same quality have been sold … for two years past.”

As spring arrived in 1776, Peter Stretch advertised an assortment of textiles and accessories available at his store on Walnut Street in Philadelphia.  In a notice in the March 27 edition of the Pennsylvania Journal, he listed many kinds of fabrics, including “SCARLET, brown, drab and mixed superfine broadcloaths and trimmings,” “spotted velvets and thicksetts,” and “best black Paduasoy and white sattin.”  Among the accessories, he stocked “death-head and basket buttons,” “knee garters,” and “buttons worked with pearl and spangle, on the most fashionable colours.”  Stretch’s inventory also included “claret, brown, drab, blue, scarlet, and mixed superfine Bath coatings, as fine as were ever imported into this place.”  He conveniently did not mention when he had received shipment of any of his wares, sidestepping whether they arrived before the Continental Association went into effect on December 1, 1774, though he had on another occasion detailed his compliance with that pact.

In this instance, Stretch did assert that his goods “are now offered to the public as low as goods of the same quality have been sold for in this place for two years past.”  In that regard, he did acknowledge the nonimportation agreement devised by the Second Continental Congress in response to the Coercive Acts that Parliament passed to punish Boston for destroying tea by throwing it into the harbor in December 1773.  The ninth article required that “Venders of Goods or Merchandise will not take Advantage of the Scarcity of Goods that may be occasioned by this Associacion, but will sell the same at the Rates we have been respectively accustomed to do for twelve Months past.”  It also specified that merchants and shopkeepers who did engage in price gouging then “no Person ought, nor will any of us deal with any such Person … at any Time thereafter, for any Commodity whatever.”  Stretch certainly wanted to avoid such consequences!  In stating that his prices matched those charged two years earlier, he assured prospective customers that they were in line with prices from before the Continental Association went into effect.  He did not promise great bargains, but at least his customers did not have to worry that he took advantage of the disruptions to trade caused by the imperial crisis and a war that started the previous April.