What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“Proposes carrying on the BAKING BUSINESS.”
When Elizabeth Anderson went into business in December 1768, she placed an advertisement in the Georgia Gazette. In a short notice she informed the residents of Savannah that she now occupied “the house where the late Mrs. Pagey lived” and “proposes carrying on the BAKING BUSINESS.” Although the enterprise was a new one for Anderson, she aimed to benefit from depicting it as a continuation of the services previously offered by Pagey. She encouraged “the customers of Mrs. Pagey to continue their favours” at the same location but with a new baker. In addition to attracting new customers, she hoped that the clientele already cultivated by Pagey would seamlessly transfer their business to her.
Anderson did not provide further details about her venture. Perhaps she intended to replicate Pagey’s hours and services as closely as possible. Sticking to a system successfully deployed by the late baker increased the likelihood of maintaining her former customer base. She certainly expected that readers of the Georgia Gazette, whether or not they had been “customers of Mrs. Pagey,” were familiar with the house where the baker had resided before her death.
In each of the issues that carried her advertisement, Anderson was the lone woman who promoted consumer goods and services. She was not the only woman to place a notice in the Georgia Gazette that month. “REBECCA FAUL, Executrix,” ran her short advertisement calling on “ALL persons indebted to the ESTATE of GEORGE FAUL, blacksmith, … to make immediate payment” for the final time in the December 14 issue. In the December 21 and 28 editions, “AVE MARIA GARDNER, Administratrix,” ran a similar notice directed to “THE creditors of George Gardner, deceased.” Enslaved women were the subjects of several other advertisements, though they did not place those notices themselves.
Women were more likely to appear in the advertisements than anywhere else in colonial newspapers. Among the advertisements they placed, white women most often appeared in their capacity as executors when husbands or other male relations died. Yet other women did sometimes insert their names in the public prints for other reasons. Entrepreneurs like Elizabeth Anderson did not rely solely on personal relationships and word-of-mouth to promote their businesses. Instead, they used advertising as a means of expanding their participation in the market as providers of goods and services, not merely as consumers.