February 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Connecticut Courant (February 5, 1775).

“The Paper-Mill which he has been concerned in erecting … is perhaps the best of the Kind in New-England.”

Ebenezer Watson, the printer of the Connecticut Courant and Hartford Weekly Intelligencer, briefly suspended publication of that newspaper due to a lack of paper in late December 1775 and early January 1776.  The issue for December 11, “NUMBER 572,” was the last for over a month.  The next known issue had neither a date nor a number in the masthead, but the news from Hartford on the final page bore the date January 15.  The issue for January 22, “NUMB. 574,” had both a date and number in the masthead.  A handwritten note at the bottom of the first page of the December 11 edition digitized for the America’s Historical Newspapers database states, “There appears to be an interruption of four weeks,” consistent with the issue numbering.

Watson inserted a notice about the suspension in the January 22 edition and the next two issues.  “THE Printer of this Paper, after the greatest Fatigue, and meeting with Disappointment upon Disappointment,” he explained, “now presented his Customers with the Connecticut Courant, &c. (printed on Paper manufactured in this Place).”  That made the Connecticut Courant yet another newspaper that experienced difficulties due to lack of paper during the first year of the Revolutionary War.  Watson expressed appreciation “for the Patience [his subscribers] have exercised toward him since it has been discontinued” while simultaneously “assur[ing] them, that nothing but absolute Necessity has stopped is so long.”  During the newspaper’s hiatus, Watson had been “concerned in erecting” a paper mill.  Perhaps it produced the paper that allowed him to resume publishing the Connecticut Courant.  He anticipated that “in a short Time” the mill, “perhaps the best of the Kind in New-England, would “be able to supply the Public, in this Part of the Colony, with all Kinds of Writing Paper.”  For that to happen, he recruited the assistance of “the Ladies, to be very careful of their Rags without which this important Manufacture must fail.”  In other words, the paper mill needed clean linen rags to recycle into paper to use in writing letters and publishing newspapers.  In addition to rags, Watson needed to cover “the very great Expence in erecting the above Mill,” so he called on “ALL those indebted to him, on any Account, to make immediate Payment.”  Watson aimed to continue disseminating news about the momentous events occurring in the colonies, but he needed the cooperation of both women saving rags and customers paying off accounts to make that possible.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 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.

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 Courant (February 5, 1776).

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

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (February 5, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (February 5, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published February 5, 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.

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

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

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (February 5, 1776).

February 4

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  Nicholas Arruda

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

New-York Journal (February 1, 1776).

“MADEIRA Wine.”

Samuel Van Horne advertised “MADEIRA Wine, from eight to 20 years old, Port, Claret, Jamaica spirits, [and] old Brandy” in the New-York Journal on February 1, 1776.  Mentioning that the Madeira was aged between eight and twenty years might have meant that Van Horne was focusing on elite consumers who used imported wines to show their refinement since Madeira wine was not an everyday beverage.  As David Hancock explains, in the eighteenth century, Madeira was “an expensive, exotic, status-laden, and highly processed wine produced on the Portuguese island of Madeira, 500 miles west of Morocco.”[1]  Its status came from its position in Atlantic trade networks. Hancock argues that the status of the wine was created through “an Atlantic network of producers, distributors, and consumers in intense conversation with one another,” which transformed Madeira into a commodity that was recognized across the British Empire.[2]  Van Horne’s advertisement thus shows that selling aged Madeira was not just about selling alcohol but even more importantly participating in elite identity.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

Regular readers of the New-York Journal saw Samuel Van Horne’s advertisement for Madeira and other wines and spirits three times before they encountered it in the February 1, 1776, edition.  As the colophon at the bottom of the final page explained, “Advertisements of no more Length than Breadth are inserted for Five Shilling[s for] four Weeks, and One Shilling for each Week after, and larger Advertisements in the same Proportion.”  Many newspapers printed in the colonies solicited advertisements, but they did not always indicate the fees.  John Holt, the printer of the New-York Journal, hoped to entice advertisers by letting them know how much they would pay to insert notices in his newspaper.  The initial charge covered the space that an advertisement occupied in four consecutive issues at one shilling per week and an additional shilling for setting the type, keeping the books, and other work undertaken in the printing office.

That makes it easy to determine that Van Horne invested five shilling in running his advertisement.  Its length certainly was no more than its breadth, so the printer did not increase the fee in proportion as he did for longer advertisements.  The notation in the lower right of the advertisement, “23-26,” makes clear that Van Horne intended for the advertisement to run only for the four weeks covered by the initial expense.  “23” referred to the issue number for the first issue that carried the advertisement, “NUMBER 1723” on January 11, while “26” indicated the final issue to carry the advertisement, “NUMBER 1726” on February 1.  At a glance, the compositor knew whether to include Van Horne’s advertisement in a new issue or remove it.  The notation, intended for employees in the printing office rather than readers of the newspaper, made it unnecessary to consult a ledger, instructions from the advertiser, or other documents.  Van Horne apparently decided that he did not wish to extend the run of this advertisement.  The compositor did indeed remove it rather than publish it once again in the February 8 edition.

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[1] David Hancock, “Commerce and Conversation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic: The Invention of Madeira Wine,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 2 (Autumn 1998): 197.

[2] Hancock, “Commerce and Conversation,” 197.

February 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (February 3, 1776).

“RUN away … a mulatto man, named GABRIEL.”

After taking out an advertisement in a competing newspaper on January 27, 1776, an apology for not publishing his Virginia Gazette because he had difficulty acquiring paper, John Pinkney managed to print the next issue on schedule on February 3.  He may or may not have published subsequent issues, but today the February 3 edition is the last known one from his press.  In his apology, Pinkney lamented, “It gives me the greatest Uneasiness that I cannot publish such Advertisements as ought to have appeared this Week.”  The next (and perhaps final) issue included more than two dozen advertisements of various lengths on the last two pages.

Among those advertisements, Julia Wheatley offered her services as a midwife, Carter Braxton and John Ware described real estate for sale, and Pinkney hawked “A TREATISE on the MILITARY DUTY, By adjutant DAVIS,” a pamphlet that “has met with the approbation of colonel BULLITT, and many other officers.”  Six of those notices, accounting for one-quarter of the advertisements by number and far more than that by length, concerned enslaved people.  David Meade advertised “ABOUT one hundred Virginia born NEGROES” for sale, including “some female house servants, a carpenter, and shoemaker.”  Four described enslaved men who liberated themselves by running away from their enslavers, offering rewards for their capture and return.  The advertisers enlisted the public in engaging in surveillance of Black men to determine if they matched the descriptions in the newspapers.  John Hudson, for instance, pledged “FIVE POUNDS reward” to “Whoever takes up … and secures” a “mulatto man, named GABRIEL, aged 52 or 53 years,” who had “a free woman for his wife, who goes by the name of Betty Baines.”  The other advertisement described “a negro man named Frank,” dressed like a sailor, “COMMITTED to the jaol of Surry county” two months earlier.  Thomas Wall, the jailer, called on Frank’s enslaver, Walter Gwin of Portsmouth, to claim the enslaved man and pay the expenses of holding him and running the advertisement.

Such advertisements stood in stark contrast to news about the Revolutionary War and “EXTRACTS from a most excellent pamphlet, lately published, and addressed to the Americans, entitled COMMON SENSE” that appeared elsewhere in that edition of Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette.  William Rind founded that newspaper nearly a decade earlier, distributing the first issue shortly after the repeal of the Stamp Act.  Eventually, Clementina Rind, his widow, published the newspaper and, following her death, Pinkney did so on behalf of her estate and her children.  During that decade, each of those printers published hundreds of advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children even as they circulated news about the imperial crisis and the first months of the Revolutionary War.  Revenues generated from advertisements about enslaved people underwrote newspaper coverage of current events and editorials about freedom and liberty.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 3, 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.

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (February 3, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (February 3, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published February 3, 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.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 3, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 3, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Ledger (February 3, 1776).

February 2

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Essex Journal (February 2, 1776).

“He intends to go with a carriage weekly, from this town to Cambridge.”

When Thomas Wescomb of Newburyport, Massachusetts, launched a new enterprise, he placed an advertisement in the February 2, 1776, edition of the Essex Journal to promote it to prospective customers.  He described his notice as an “opportunity to acquaint the Public, that he intends to go with a carriage, weekly, from this town to Cambridge.”  Presumably he took passengers, but he did not provide the rates he charged, describe any of the amenities they could expect, or give further details about the schedule.  Other entrepreneurs who advertised carriage or stagecoach service between towns frequently included that kind of information to entice customers.  Just a few days earlier, for instance, John Mercereau ran an advertisement for the “New STAGE COACHES, THAT constantly ply between New-York and Philadelphia” in the January 29 edition of the New-York-Gazette and Weekly Mercury.  It included a schedule and prices per passenger “in the Coach” and “out” on seats exposed to the weather.  He also advised that a second service, called “The Flying Machine” for its speed, “Still continues … from Powles-Hook Ferry, opposite New-York, and from the Sign of the Cross-Keys in Philadelphia.”  Mercereau had years of experience operating and advertising his stagecoaches, with advertisements going back as far as 1769.

While Wescomb’s advertisement was not as elaborate or sophisticated, he did pitch other services that he offered, declaring that he “would be glad to serve such as may want him to carry packages” and other items “to, or from Cambridge; or any other business he may be entrusted with.”  Notably, Wescomb’s route terminated at Cambridge, not Boston.  The Continental Army’s siege of Boston continued, making Cambridge a more significant site than it had been before the Revolutionary War began.  Samuel Hall and Ebenezer Hall relocated the Essex Gazette from Salem to Cambridge and renamed it the New-England Chronicle.  George Washington, appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress, had his headquarters in Cambridge.  Readers of the Essex Journal in Newburyport and other nearby towns likely had a variety of reasons to visit Cambridge or to send packages to officers, soldiers, and others in that town.  Wescomb pledged his “fidelity” in delivering those packages or undertaking any other business assigned to him in his efforts to drum up business for his new venture.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 2, 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 (February 2, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (February 2, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 2, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 2, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 2, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 2, 1776).

February 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 1, 1776).

“A Number of ANXIOUS FRIENDS, and all the MILITARY MEN who wanted MITTENS.”

The screed extended an entire column and overflowed into another in the February 1, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  It continued the feud between Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, and Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition who embarked on an unauthorized second edition.  Two days earlier, advertisements for Bell’s second edition and a forthcoming edition that Paine collaborated with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford in publishing ran side by side in that newspaper.  One included an address “To the PUBLIC” by Bell and the other featured a “declaration” by the author.  Paine, who still remained anonymous given the radical contents of the pamphlet, concluded by stating, “This is all the notice that will ever be taken of [Bell] in future.”

For his part, Bell was not finished taking notice of Paine.  He quickly submitted a response, addressed “TO MR. ANONYMOUS,” for publication among the advertisements that ran in the next issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  He mocked Paine because the “Feeble author” “took the field” and engaged in battle that he supposedly could not win against the “Provedore to the Sentimentalists,” as Bell often referred to himself in the subscription proposals he circulated and in his newspaper advertisements for book auctions.  The publisher claimed that he had been “wantonly, and maliciously, dragged … into the unwished for field of public altercation,” yet he would defend his actions and his reputation.  Bell attacked Paine’s claim that he wished to remain anonymous: “You say you wanted to remain unknown … but, in practice, yourself telling it in every beer-house, gives the direct LIE to the assertor of such falsehood.”  Even though Paine’s name had not yet appeared in print, Bell alleged that the author had been bragging about writing Common Sense in taverns around town.

Bell also demeaned “boasted intentional generosity” of the “Would-be-Author” who had declared that he planned to use his share of the profits from the first edition, which he never received, to purchase mittens for the soldiers participating in the American invasion of Canada.  Bell insinuated that Paine mentioned drew the “MILITARY MEN who wanted MITTENS” into the dispute as a means of currying favor with the public as he threatened “malevolent LAW SUITS … against one industrious Bookseller, who never asked or received any thing from the public without giving an equivalent.”  In contrast to Paine’s manipulations of both his friends who acted as intermediaries and the public, Bell portrayed himself as an honest entrepreneur, “a poor individual who neither attempteth nor wisheth for more FRIENDS than the rectitude of his conduct in business, an in the affairs of society, shall both gain and retain.”

Taking another shot at Paine, Bell instructed him that “your taking the public field was bad, because there was no foundation for it, unless envy be allowed a good one.”  Furthermore, his “management of the fight and precipitate flight was worse – and final exit (as you say) worse and worse.”  The publisher scorned the way that author backed down, comparing his handling of the situation to a “rascally PUPPY, who, with open mouth, runs snarling at an honest manly DOG, whose notice is attracted by the yelpings of the ill-natured CUR.”  Paine, the “PUPPY,” ran away with his tail between his legs once he was on the receiving end of “words of stern contempt.”

Much of the dispute revolved around the revenues generated by Common Sense (or, as “the assignees of the nameless author” discovered, a surprising lack of profits on the first edition).  Yet the feud and the publication of multiple editions of Common Sense did produce revenues for Benjamin Towne, the printer of the Pennsylvania Evening Post. The competing advertisements comprised one-quarter of the content in the January 30 edition and Bell’s notice in response to Paine’s “declaration” occupied nearly as much space.  With those advertisements, Towne did not need to sell a single copy of the pamphlet to turn a profit on its publication by other printers.