GUEST CURATOR: Mary Williams

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

“Buckskin and Sheepskin Gloves – The neatest made Gloves for Funerals.”

In this advertisement from the New-Hampshire Gazette, James and Matthew Haslett offered several leather goods. The first thing I noticed was the description of gloves that were specifically made for funerals.

For my research, I found “The Handsome Tokens of a Funeral: Glove-Giving and the Large Funeral in Eighteenth-Century New England” by Steven Bullock and Sheila McIntyre. Bullock and McIntyre explain that the family of the deceased distributed leather gloves to funeral attendees. They write that this tradition was short-lived, but when it was popular it was a very important funeral custom in British North America. “Well-to-do families distributed them to everyone, often using far more than twelve dozen pairs. A particularly substantial ceremony might require a thousand – or more.”^[1] This tells us that a wide variety of people might have responded to this advertisement for funeral gloves: both common people and the elite. The difference between the groups would most likely be that the elite would purchase a large amount of gloves that would be more widely distributed, while common people would purchase a smaller number of gloves that would be reserved for specific funeral attendees.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

James and Matthew Haslett advertised regularly in the New-Hampshire Gazette. The Adverts 250 Project featured one of their advertisements just two months ago, selecting that advertisement because of the woodcut depicting the “Sign of the Buck and Glove” that accompanied it. Over a period of several weeks the Hasletts published three advertisements that included two different woodcuts depicting the sign that marked their place of business. Considering that very few newspaper advertisements included visual images (and that those that did usually relied on stock images of houses or ships that belonged to the printer), it was quite exceptional that the Hasletts commissioned not only one but two woodcuts.

Just two months later, however, neither woodcut was anywhere in evidence in their advertisement in the New-Hampshire Gazette. The image was missing and so was any mention of the sign. The Hasletts previously announced that “they have set up their Factory at the Sign of the Buck and Glove, adjoining Canoe Bridge.” Now they reported that they had REMOVED from the Canoe Bridge, to the House lately belonging to Mr. Matelin, next Door to Capt. George Boyd’s, and almost opposite the Sign of the State House.” These new directions were extensive, which would have allowed new and returning customers to find the Hasletts.

What happened to the “Sign of the Buck and Glove” that marked their previous location? Presumably it moved with them. After all, other colonial artisans and shopkeepers were known to have operated under the same shop sign for years or decades. For some, it became a brand of sorts, especially when they commissioned woodcuts that consistently appeared in their newspapers advertisements and on their trade cards and billheads. The Hasletts were in a position to create their own brand with their shop sign. Considering the verbiage involved in the directions they provided in today’s advertisement, it would not have been any more complex to include the name of their shop sign as a means of encouraging readers to always associate their products with the Sign of the Buck and Glove. This appears to have been a missed opportunity.

It may have also been a pragmatic decision. Although this advertisement did not include a woodcut, very little else changed from the previous iteration. The headline was identical. The text was identical from the fifth line of the body of the advertisement until the conclusion of the nota bene, although an additional call for ashes was eliminated. If the Hasletts paid for a certain amount of space or to have type reset, then it made sense to leave out a reference to their shop sign in favor of inserting sufficient information to direct customers to their new location.

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^[1] Steven Bullock and Sheila McIntyre, “The Handsome Tokens of a Funeral: Glove-Giving and the Large Funeral in Eighteenth-Century New England,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 68, no. 2 (April 2012): 336.