GUEST CURATOR:  Mary Aldrich

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

“The above Goods will be sold … for Cash or Country Produce.”

It is interesting that Davidson starts his advertisement assuring his potential customers that the “neat assortment of English and East-India Goods [were] suitable for the season.” He is letting them know that the products he was currently carrying could be used immediately and did not need to be stored until their use was required.

Davidson also mentioned that if people did not have cash on hand he would be more than happy to barter. He even went beyond mentioning his openness to bartering; he listed specific items that he would accept in lieu of cash. He would have accepted country produce and a list of other products that costumers from the town would likely have gotten from another source or grown themselves.

By accepting items other than cash in exchange for goods, he interested a larger audience because hard currency was not as common at this time. Davidson appealed to a larger constituency than if he had advertised cash only.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

Mary notes that Davidson described his stock of “A Neat Assortment of English and East-India Goods” as “suitable for the Season.” This was one of many appeals the shopkeeper incorporated into his advertisement, along with mentioning price, quality, and the possibility of bartering. This advertisement also includes several stock phrases, including “Neat Assortment” and “suitable for the Season,” among its attempts to woo potential customers.

Davidson inserted one element that did not always appear in eighteenth-century advertisements: the date. While it was not exceptional for an advertiser to include a date, it was not the standard practice either. In this case, the date of the advertisement matched the date of the issue in which it appeared. (The type would have been set and the newspaper printed before February 17, so most likely Davidson intentionally specified that the date of his commercial notice would bear the same date as the issue in which it appeared.) Davidson, like other newspaper readers of the period, would have realized that sometimes an advertisement might be repeated for weeks or even months. Including the date in his advertisement buttressed his claim that his “Assortment of English and East-India Goods” was indeed “suitable for the Season,” or at least allowed readers and potential customers to better assess that claim.