November 15

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Essex Journal (November 15, 1776).

“Scantiness of paper obliges us to publish but half a sheet this week.”

The November 15, 1776, edition of the Essex Journal consisted of only two pages rather than the usual four.  In a notice that appeared among the few advertisements that ran at the bottom of the last column on the second page, John Mycall, the printer, offered an explanation to subscribers and other readers: “Scantiness of paper obliges us to publish but a half sheet this week.”  Newburyport, Massachusetts, certainly was not the only town in that situation.  Throughout the new nation, printers sometimes had difficulty acquiring paper to publish their newspapers during the war.

Mycall provided another update for readers: “This PAPER will in future (‘till a more convenient Day presents) be Published on WEDNESDAY at Twelve o’Clock.”  The Essex Journal had been published on Fridays, so that meant readers could expect to see the next issue sooner than anticipated.  As promised, Mycall published the next issue on Wednesday, November 20.  Again, he distributed a half sheet, but this time he explained that the “time for publication, has this week been so short, that it was not in our power to print a whole sheet.”

He also determined that a “more convenient Day” had indeed presented itself.  “We find, that by publishing on Thursday,” the printer announced, “we shall be able to entertain our readers with fresher southern intelligence.”  Mycall depended on letters and other newspapers carried to Newburyport by post riders for content to fill the pages of the Essex Gazette.  Like other printers, he reprinted liberally from other sources to keep his readers informed of the latest developments from the Continental Congress and the Continental Army.  Given when newspapers from Boston and other towns to the south arrived in Newburyport, Mycall “therefore determine[d] to make choice of [Thursday] for the future.”  Eight days later, he circulated a complete issue consisting of four pages.  He (mostly) maintained that schedule, sometimes resorting to smaller sheets, until he discontinued publishing the Essex Gazette in February 1777.  The challenges of publishing the newspaper during the war apparently became too significant to overcome.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 15, 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.

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 15, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 15, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 15, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 15, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 15, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 15, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (November 15, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (November 15, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (November 15, 1776).

November 14

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

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

Independent Chronicle (November 14, 1776).

“Near LIBERTY-STUMP.”

When Robert Hewes and Son placed an advertisement for “CROWN, Hard and Soft Soap, Poland Starch, Hair Powder,” and other items in the November 14, 1776, edition of the Independent Chronicle, they advised prospective customers to find them “Near LIBERTY-STUMP,” the remnants of the former Liberty Tree, in Boston.  One of the elms in a grove near Boston Neck became known as the Liberty Tree after colonizers hung an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the proposed tax collector, in protest of the Stamp Act on August 14, 1765.  Oliver resigned from the position and Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766.  When news arrived in Boston, colonizers gathered at the elm to celebrate.  They “installed a copper sign designating it the Liberty Tree … and hung up 150 lanterns.”

The Liberty Tree became an important symbol to supporters of the American cause.  It also served as a landmark for advertisers to direct prospective customers to their businesses.  In March 1766, before Boston received news about the repeal of the Stamp Act, Adam Collson advertised fleece wool that he sold “Under the TREE of LIBERTY.”  In 1767, both John Gore, Jr., and John Greenlaw gave directions that featured the Liberty Tree in their advertisements.  Gore continued doing so in 1769 and 1770, emphasizing that he sold “North American Manufactures” rather than goods imported from Britain.  Quite appropriately, he paired the famous landmark with the nonimportation strategy that colonizers first adopted as economic leverage against the Stamp Act and then again against the duties on certain goods imposed by the Townshend Acts.  Even when the nonimportation agreements lapsed after Parliament repealed most of those duties, Gore continued to give his location as “Opposite LIBERTY-TREE” in an advertisement for a “large and general Assortment of English and India Goods.”  Similarly, Rosannah Moore advertised a “general Assortment of Wines, as are commonly imported to America,” that she sold “near LIBERTY TREE” in the spring of 1771.

During the siege of Boston that followed the battles at Lexington and Concord, the British occupied the city.  British soldiers cut down the Liberty Tree and used it for firewood, yet the stump remained and became an important symbol of resistance and resilience.  The tree was gone, but so were the British, who evacuated Boston in March 1776 when they determined that breaking the siege would be too costly.  They learned that lesson at the Battle of Bunker Hill.  Patriots reclaimed the city … and the stump remained.  The British had not removed the entire tree, so the portion that endured took on new significance.  The stump no longer remains today, but the city established Liberty Tree Plaza at its former site in 2018.  In 1776, just months after the British left, Robert Hewes and Son joined other Bostonians in reclaiming the Liberty Stump, foiling the attempts of British soldiers to remove a powerful symbol of revolution.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 14, 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 14, 1776).

**********

Continental Journal (November 14, 1776).

**********

Independent Chronicle (November 14, 1776).

**********

Maryland Gazette (November 14, 1776).

**********

Maryland Gazette (November 14, 1776).

**********

Maryland Gazette (November 14, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Evening Post (November 14, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Evening Post (November 14, 1776).

November 13

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

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (November 13, 1776).

“The above Almanacks are to be had of Mr. GEORGE REYNHOLD, Bookseller, … in Market-street, Philadelphia.”

When James Adams advertised the almanacs for 1777 that he published “at his Printing-office in Wilmington,” Delaware, he promoted both the Wilmington Almanack and the Pennsylvania Almanack in a single notice in the November 12, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet.  For each almanac, he gave an extensive list of the contents to entice prospective customers.  The following day, he also placed advertisements in both the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal, increasing the reach of his marketing campaign.

The advertisements published on November 13, however, did not feature the same copy as the one in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet.  Instead of separate paragraphs giving the contents of each almanac, the new notice had a single paragraph that listed most, but not all, of the contents that appeared in the other advertisement.  That likely made it more difficult for readers to spot where the overview for one almanac ended and the other began.  Adams may have been attempted to reduce the cost of those advertisements by eliminating some of the copy.

The two versions also had a different note at the end.  In Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, the printer announced, “From one penny to three pence a pound is given for clean Linen Rags by said Adams.”  Like many other printers, he collected rags to recycle into the paper he needed to continue operating his printing office.  In the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal, on the other hand, he dropped the call for rags in favor of a nota bene that gave information about a local agent who also sold his almanacs: “N.B. The above Almanacks are to be had of Mr. GEORGE REYNHOLD, Bookseller, near the Sign of the Conestogoe-Wagon, in Market-street, Philadelphia.”  Perhaps it had been an oversight not to include Reynhold in the other advertisement.  Many prospective customers, especially readers who resided in the largest city in the new nation, no doubt found it more convenient to visit Reynhold’s shop in Philadelphia rather than make arrangements to acquire almanacs from Adams’s printing office in Wilmington.

Despite the minor differences in the advertisements, Adams strove to increase the number of prospective customers he reached by running his advertisements in multiple newspapers published in Philadelphia.  Each of them circulated far beyond that city.  He did not extend his advertising campaign to all the newspapers then published in the city.  He may have believed that the three newspapers he chose would yield the best return on his investment.  He certainly did not believe that placing a notice in a single newspaper would be as effective as running variations in multiple newspapers.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 13, 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 13, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Gazette (November 13, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Gazette (November 13, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Journal (November 13, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Journal (November 13, 1776).

November 12

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

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

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (November 12, 1776).

“FATHER ABRAHAM’S ALMANACK.”

“THE BURLINGTON ALMANACK.”

“The WILMINGTON and PENNSYLVANIA ALMANACKS.”

It was the time of year for advertising and buying almanacs.  Although the advertisements for the popular pamphlets did not begin appearing in newspapers as early in 1776 as they had in previous years, they gained momentum by the middle of November.  The November 12 edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet even carried advertisements for almanacs published in printing offices in three towns.

John Dunlap, the printer of that newspaper, promoted “FATHER ABRAHAM’s ALMANACK, For the Year of our LORD 1777,” an almanac that he “published and … sold” at his printing office in Philadelphia.  He trumpeted that “the ingenious David Rittenhouse, A.M. of this city, has favoured us with the Astronomical calculations …, therefore they may be most firmly relied on.”  The printer leveraged the reputation of the well-known astronomer and mathematician in marketing the almanac he published.  He also inserted standard language that appeared in advertisements for other almanacs: “Containing, besides the usual Astronomical calculations, a variety of useful and entertaining matter, in prose and verse.”

An advertisement for another almanac that ran immediately below Dunlap’s notice deployed almost identical copy, substituting “Astronomical Observations” for “Astronomical calculations.”  Isaac Collins announced that he “Just published … THE BURLINGTON ALMANACK, For the YEAR of our LORD 1777” and sold it “at his Printing-office in Burlington,” New Jersey.  With no local newspaper in that area, Collins resorted to advertising in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet and other newspapers printed in Philadelphia each fall when he published the new edition of the Burlington Almanack.

James Adams found himself in a similar position when it came to marketing the “WILMINGTON and PENNSYLVANIA ALMANACKS, For the Year of our LORD 1777” that he “published and … sold … at his Printing-office in Wilmington, Delaware.”  That town also did not have its own newspaper, so Adams regularly advertised his almanacs in newspapers published in Philadelphia.  In addition to advertising in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet in the fall of 1776, he increased the visibility of his almanacs by placing notices in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal.

Advertisements for almanacs were a sign of the season each fall.  Readers encountered them for weeks (and sometimes months) as they perused newspapers, often exposed to multiple advertisements in a single issue.  They were often given choices among several almanacs published in the same town as the newspaper, but sometimes, depending on the market served by a newspaper, it carried notices about almanacs published in other towns and even other states.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 12, 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 Pennsylvania Packet (November 12, 1776).

**********

Freeman’s Journal (November 12, 1776).

November 11

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (November 11, 1776).

“She will instruct them in the English and French Languages Grammatically.”

When Eleanor Druitt opened a “Boarding and Day-School, for the reception of young Ladies,” in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1776, she ran an advertisement in the Essex Journal, the newspaper published in that town.  She was likely familiar to many of her prospective pupils and their parents, having relocated from Boston to Newburyport in the spring of 1775, shortly before the battles at Lexington and Concord.  At that time, she placed an advertisement in the Essex Journal to promote the “Boarding-School” that she planned to open there, going into great detail about a curriculum that included speaking “French and English Grammatically; Writing, … [especially] Epistolary correspondence, … Arithmetic, … Drawing, … every kind of Needle-work, … and every other polite accomplishment necessary.”  She proclaimed that “her abilities” for teaching embroidery “are well known in Boston and many other parts of the continent.”

As Druitt started a new term in the fall of 1776, she did not limit her advertising to the Essex Journal.  She placed an advertisement with identical copy in the Boston-Gazette.  She likely hoped that readers in Boston and other towns served by that newspaper remembered her reputation and would consider sending their daughters to her boarding school.  Her advertisement first appeared in the October 25 edition of the Essex Journal, a few days before she planned to commence instruction on October 28, but it did not run in the Boston-Gazette until November 11.  That may explain why the advertisements had identical copy; they did not even have variations in capitalization or italics as was common when advertisements appeared in more than one newspaper.  Rather than writing out the advertisement a second time, Druitt may have clipped her notice from the Essex Journal and sent it to the Boston-Gazette.  Once it arrived in the printing office, the compositor could have set the type exactly as it appeared in the other newspaper.  Whatever the explanation, Druitt wanted to enlarge the size of her class beyond those she attracted with her advertisement Newburyport’s Essex Journal.  She apparently believed that she could gain students by advertising more widely, especially in a newspaper published in the town where she formerly resided and readers remembered her.  Druitt expected a return on the investment she made when she placed her advertisement in the Boston-Gazette in addition to the newspaper published in her town.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 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.

Boston-Gazette (November 11, 1776).

**********

Boston-Gazette (November 11, 1776).

**********

Newport Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 11, 1776).