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

“GODREY & GADSDEN, Will exchange the following GOODS.”

Godfrey and Gadsden’s dense list-style advertisement resembled many other inserted in the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal and newspapers throughout the colonies in the second half of the eighteenth century. The partners enumerated dozens of imported items, everything from textiles to housewares to hardware, and concluded with “&c.” (etc.) to suggest an even greater array of merchandise than what could be squeezed into their advertisement.

Their advertisement differed from most others, however, in one significant aspect. Godfrey and Gadsden were not seeking customers. They did not offer their assortment of goods directly to colonial consumers. Instead, they stated that they “Will exchange the following GOODS … for such others as they have occasion for.” The partners intended this notice for fellow merchants who imported a similar, yet slightly different, variety of goods and now wished to further diversify their wares. Perhaps they also sought shopkeepers who had obtained surpluses of certain items and looked for opportunities to reduce their inventory through such exchanges. They may have also had their eye on the export market, trading imported goods for local commodities that they could then transport to other ports around the Atlantic. Whatever the possibilities, Godfrey and Gadsden did not address end-sue consumers in their advertisement.

This illustrates that even though the format looked quite similar to other commercial notices advertisers sometimes envisioned very different purposes for their advertisements. They turned to the advertising pages of weekly newspapers to conduct business along multiple trajectories, rather than exclusively pursuing potential customers engulfed in the consumer revolution. The “black silk and cotton gauze” and “large bell lamps for halls and stair-cases” and “parrot cages” and “gilt Morocco leather prayer books” eventually found their way into the homes of consumers, but Godfrey and Gadsden’s advertisement helps to demonstrate the circuitous route. Rather than a direct transatlantic supply chain from English producer to English merchant to American shopkeeper to American consumer, imported goods often passed through many other hands and were part of numerous additional commercial exchanges before consumers purchased them.