What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
“Too many other articles too tedious to mention.”
In an extensive advertisement that comprised almost an entire column in the September 22, 1768, edition of the New-York Journal, Samuel Broome and Company emphasized the choices they offered consumers by listing hundreds of items. Organized into two neat columns with only one or two items listed on each line, this list of goods enumerated a vast array of merchandise “imported in the Mercury, from London, and the last vessels from Bristol, Liverpool, and Scotland.”
Visually, the design of the advertisement readily communicated the choices available to prospective customers, but Broome and Company relied on more than just copy filling so much space in the newspaper to make their point. For many items they provided descriptions that further testified to the variety readers could expect to encounter upon visiting their store “near the Merchant’s Coffee-House.” For instance, they stocked “Gilt, silver’d and metal buttons of all sorts.” After listing dozens of textiles, Broome and Company stated that they also stocked “a large assortment of other handsome figur’d stuffs.” They did not merely carry ribbons but instead “Ribbons a complete assortment.” Similarly, they carried “Rose blankets of all sorts.” They also emphasized the range of colors and prints for many of their fabrics and garments, including “Flannels of all colours,” “Tammies, durants, and callimancoes of all colours,” “Silk, hair and scarf twist of all colours,” and “Cotton checks of all sorts[,] Check linen handkerchiefs[, and] Printed blue and red do.” They used an eighteenth-century abbreviation for “ditto” – “do” – as they expanded on the variety of handkerchiefs. They did the same when they listed an assortment of hinges: “H and HL hinges[,] Table do[,] Dovetail do[,] Butts do[, and] Rais’d joint do.”
As if this was not enough to entice potential customers, Broome and Company invoked a familiar refrain to conclude their list: “With too many other articles too tedious to mention.” Despite all of the textiles, housewares, and hardware named in the advertisement, the partners suggested to consumers that they provided only a small preview of the many wares available at their store. Many of their competitors who advertised in the same issue of the New-York Journal also made appeals to consumer choice, but the combination of copy and design deployed by Broome and Company most effectively delivered the message to consumers in the city and its hinterlands.
