Month: June 2017

June 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Jun 19 - 6:19:1767 New-Hampshire Gazette
New-Hampshire Gazette (June 19, 1767).

“He proposes to open a DANCING SCHOOL.”

Peter Curtis wished to open a dancing school in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and inserted an advertisement to that effect in the local newspaper. In the decade before the Revolution, dancing masters frequently advertised their services in newspapers published in the largest port cities, especially Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia. Fewer of them, however, placed notices proposing to open schools or teach private lessons in smaller towns. Curtis’s advertisement in the New-Hampshire Gazette was rather out of the ordinary.

Still, Curtis must have suspected that he could cultivate a market for his skills in Portsmouth and the surrounding area. After all, the “Gentlemen” and “Ladies” he addressed in his advertisement participated in the same consumer culture as their counterparts in major port cities. Many colonists adopted various consumption practices – outfitting themselves in the latest styles and displaying fashionable furnishings and housewares – to demonstrate they belonged among the ranks of the genteel. Yet possessions alone did not guarantee that others would acknowledge the gentility of those who acquired them. Personal comportment became a measure for distinguishing the truly genteel from crass pretenders who merely made purchases. Manners, conversation, and dancing, among other pursuits, all played a role. Dancing well, completing the latest steps with grace while interacting easily with others in attendance at social gatherings, testified to an individual’s inner refinement that could not be counterfeited by wearing the right sorts of apparel and adornments. To that end, Curtis pledged to teach his pupils “in the most polite and genteel Manner.”

The colonial gentry in the major port cities availed themselves of lessons from dancing masters because they wished to assert that they were as cosmopolitan as their cousins in London. Other residents sought social mobility; they identified dancing as a means of demonstrating their own refinement matched their elite neighnors. For both, anxiety provided motivation. Curtis’s advertisement suggests that interest in dancing as a means of exhibiting refinement was not limited to urban ports in early America. Instead, with the help of advertisements to incite demand, it filtered out to smaller cities, like Portsmouth, and beyond. Curtis solicited customers “within Twenty Miles,” pledging to visit their homes for private lessons. He believed that some residents in the countryside, especially the “Gentlemen” and “Ladies” considered the local elite and who wanted to safeguard that position, could be convinced that they desired to become as cosmopolitan and refined as the better sorts in colonial cities.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 19, 1767

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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 19 - New-Hampshire Gazette Slavery 1
New-Hampshire Gazette (June 19, 1767).

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Jun 19 - New-London Gazette Slavery 1
New-London Gazette (June 19, 1767).

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Jun 19 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 1
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 19, 1767).

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Jun 19 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 2
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 19, 1767).

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Jun 19 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 3
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 19, 1767).

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Jun 19 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 4
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 19, 1767).

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Jun 19 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 5
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 19, 1767).

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Jun 19 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 6
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 19, 1767).

June 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jun 18 - 6:18:1767 Massachusetts Gazette.jpg
Massachusetts Gazette (June 18, 1767).

“At the Sign of the Two Wheat-Sheaves.”

According to his advertisement in the Massachusetts Gazette, William Hill, a baker in Boston, made and sold “Ship Bread,” biscuits, and gingerbread at “the Bake House” appropriately marked with “the Sign of the Two Wheat-Sheaves.” In an era before standardized street numbers organized the streets of towns and cities, shop signs helped both entrepreneurs and customers identify and locate businesses of all sorts. Some shopkeepers and artisans also used the devices depicted on their signs as rudimentary brands, sometimes adopting similar visual images in newspaper advertisements as well as on magazine wrappers, trade cards, and billheads.

Not every advertiser had his or her own shop sign, but that did not prevent them from using the signs of others who ran businesses nearby as landmarks to guide potential customers to their own shops. In the same issue that Hill promoted the breads he sold “at the Sign of the Two Wheat-Sheaves,” Nathaniel Cudworth reported that he kept shop “in KING-STREET, opposite the Sign of Admiral Vernon.” Similarly, Joseph Domett gave the location of his store as “nearly opposite the GOLDEN BALL.” That Domett gave no other directions, not even a street name, suggests the Golden Ball was widely recognized by residents of Boston. The shopkeeper expected potential customers to already be familiar with that landmark, a common point of reference for advertiser and reader alike.

Even without woodcuts depicting the Sign of the Two Wheat-Sheaves, the Golden Ball, or the Sign of Admiral Vernon, the advertisements reveal some of the visual culture of eighteenth-century streets. Advertisements in the Massachusetts Gazette and other newspapers published in Boston named dozens of signs present in the city in 1767, a vibrant display that served several purposes but now can only be imagined. Sighting various signs aided colonists as they navigated through cities. Signs also enticed colonists to become customers as they encountered them because marketing efforts encouraged consumers to associate certain signs with particular businesses and the men and women who ran them.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 18, 1767

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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 18 - Massachusetts Gazette Slavery 1
Massachusetts Gazette (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - Massachusetts Gazette Slavery 2
Massachusetts Gazette (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - New-York Gazette Weekly Post-Boy Slavery 1
New-York Gazette: Or, the Weekly Post-Boy (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - New-York Gazette Weekly Post-Boy Slavery 2
New-York Gazette: Or, the Weekly Post-Boy (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - New-York Gazette Weekly Post-Boy Slavery 3
New-York Gazette: Or, the Weekly Post-Boy (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - New-York Journal Slavery 1
New-York Journal (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - New-York Journal Slavery 2
New-York Journal (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 1
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 2
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - Virginia Gazette Slavery 1
Virginia Gazette (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - Virginia Gazette Slavery 2
Virginia Gazette (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - Virginia Gazette Slavery 3
Virginia Gazette (June 18, 1767).

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Jun 18 - Virginia Gazette Slavery 4
Virginia Gazette (June 18, 1767).

June 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jun 17 - 6:17:1767 Georgia Gazette
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

“To be sold by the Printer of this paper …”

James Johnston’s advertisement for a “FOUR SHEET MAP of SOUTH-CAROLINA and PART of GEORGIA” would have looked very familiar to readers of the Georgia Gazette. It had been inserted frequently in that newspaper for quite some time, often on the final page alongside most other advertisements but other times on the second or third pages with news items. Although Johnston, the printer of the Georgia Gazette, certainly wished to sell copies of this map to interested customers, he also used this advertisement as filler to complete the page when he did not have sufficient news items and other commercial notices to do so. Subscribers and regular readers would have recognized it at a glance. The same was true of the notice immediately below it, an announcement that colonists could purchase all sorts of printed blanks at Johnston’s printing office. Again, the advertisement served dual purposes: attracting customers and filling the page. The latter was particularly efficient since type had already been set long ago for both advertisements. The printer resorted to the eighteenth-century version of cut-and-paste when laying out the pages of the Georgia Gazette each week.

For more information about the map (and to examine the map itself), see the previous entry that featured an earlier insertion of this advertisement in the August 27, 1766, edition of the Georgia Gazette. The methodology of the Adverts 250 Project usually precludes examining any advertisement more than once but allows for exceptions when doing so illuminates some aspect of eighteenth-century practices or consumer culture. In this case, an advertisement that practically became a permanent feature of the Georgia Gazette merited attention. Its frequency should not be misconstrued to suggest that Johnston was desperate to sell surplus copies of the map (though that might have also been the case). Instead, when read alongside the notice hawking printed blanks, this advertisement might better be interpreted as a device for completing the page or the issue when lacking other content.

Summary of Slavery Advertisements Published June 11-17, 1767

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

These tables indicate how many advertisements for slaves appeared in colonial American newspapers during the week of June 11-17, 1767.

Note:  These tables are as comprehensive as currently digitized sources permit, but they may not be an exhaustive account.  They includes all newspapers that have been digitized and made available via Accessible Archives, Colonial Williamsburg’s Digital Library, and Readex’s America’s Historical Newspapers.  There are several reasons some newspapers may not have been consulted:

  • Issues that are no longer extant;
  • Issues that are extant but have not yet been digitized (including the Pennsylvania Journal); and
  • Newspapers published in a language other than English (including the Wochentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote).

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Slavery Advertisements Published June 11-17, 1767:  By Date

Slavery Adverts Tables 1767 By Date Jun 11

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Slavery Advertisements Published June 11-17, 1767:  By Region

Slavery Adverts Tables 1767 By Region Jun 11

Slavery Advertisements Published June 17, 1767

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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 17 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 1
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

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Jun 17 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 2
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

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Jun 17 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 3
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

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Jun 17 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 4
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

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Jun 17 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 5
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

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Jun 17 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 6
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

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Jun 17 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 7
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

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Jun 17 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 8
Georgia Gazette (June 17, 1767).

June 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Jun 16 - 6:16:1767 South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

“Will be sold at the London retailing prices.”

Watchmaker Joshua Lockwood ran a shop at the corner of Union and Broad Streets in Charleston, South Carolina, where he sold “a very large and neat assortment of CLOCKS and WATCHES” recently imported from London. In an advertisement in the June 16, 1767, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, he informed potential customers that his clocks and watches “are of the latest improvements,” signaling that the quality, style, and technology matched what they could purchase in London. His clientele did not need to worry about obtaining inferior timepieces simply because they lived in a small city at the edge of the empire.

Such assurances did not come with an inflated price. Lockwood pledged that his clocks and watches “will be sold at the London retailing prices.” Some prospective customers may have expected to pay a premium in order to obtain clocks and watches with “the latest improvements” that had been shipped across the Atlantic, but Lockwood indicated that this did not incur higher prices for his local buyers. They would be charged the same as if they lived in London and dealt directly with watchmakers there. There was no need to worry that distance and the smaller size of the local community lessened competition and raised prices.

Colonial advertisers most often compared their prices to those of their local competitors, asserting that they sold at the “lowest rates” in their town or colony. On occasion, however, advertisers made price comparisons that took into account the size of the community in which they lived and worked. Shopkeepers in the hinterlands beyond the major port cities, for instance, claimed that they set prices that competed with those in Boston, Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia. Advertisers in smaller cities, such as Portsmouth and Providence, favorably compared their prices to the going rates in larger ports. Transatlantic comparisons represented the next link in the chain, as merchandisers in the largest colonial cities, like Lockwood, declared that their prices matched what counterparts in London charged. Regardless of their location, advertisers believed potential customers looked to the next larger community and suspected prices might be lower there. In turn, advertisers sought to ease such anxieties (and promote more sales) by persuading potential customers that they benefited from the same deals as if they shopped in a locale with a larger population and considered less remote.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 16, 1767

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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 1
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 2
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 3
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 4
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 5
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 6
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 7
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 8
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 9
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 10
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

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Jun 16 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 11
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 16, 1767).

June 15

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Jun 15 - 6:15:1767 New-York Gazette
New-York Gazette (June 15, 1767).

“Just arrived … Thomas Paul, TAYLOR from LONDON.”

George Senneff, “TAYLOR, from LONDON,” and Thomas Paul, “TAYLOR from LONDON” competed for clients in New York. In the process, they resorted to similar advertising campaigns. Senneff’s connection to London was central in his marketing efforts. Not only did he promote his place of origin, he also stressed his familiarity with current fashions in the cosmopolitan center of the empire and pledged to outfit his patrons in the same manner. He promised customers that he made a variety of garments “after the newest and genteelest Taste, as is now worn in London.” To drive the point home, he reiterated that he made riding habits for women “after the newest Fashions now worn in London.”

Thomas Paul deployed the same appeal in his advertisement. He noted his origins before stating that he produced “Mens Cloaths, both trim and plan, in the newest and genteelest Taste, as is now worn in London.” To enhance this claim, he added an element not present in Senneff’s advertisement. Paul noted that he had “Just arrived in the Ship New-York, Capt. Lawrence.” Senneff, on the other hand, gave no indication of how long he had been in New York or how recently he had migrated from London.

This created an interesting tension between their advertisements, especially when they appeared in close proximity, as they did in the June 15, 1767, edition of the New-York Gazette. Senneff’s notice was at the bottom of the first column on the first page and Paul’s notice two columns to the right. Through repetition, Senneff more forcefully asserted that his garments accorded to “the newest Fashions now worn in London,” but Paul’s recent arrival may have trumped that declaration since his familiarity with current tastes certainly derived from direct observation. Faced with a choice between Senneff and Paul, the latter’s recent residence and work in London may have been the deciding factor for some potential customers.