Month: April 2019

April 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR: Patrick Waters

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 1, 1769).

“NEGROES … from CAPE-MOUNT, on the WINDWARD COAST, which is in the center of a RICE COUNTRY.”

Brewton, Doyley, and Brewton took out this advertisement in the South Carolina and American General Gazette to inform readers that a slave ship had just arrived. The advertisement stated that “A CARGO of Three Hundred PRIME YOUNG NEGROES Arrived Yesterday”

from Cape Mount on the Windward Coast of Africa. The captain was looking to offload its cargo on Wednesday, May 10, 1769. The advertisement speaks volumes about the economy of South Carolina in the era of the American Revolution. A slave ship with three hundred young black men and women would have been a welcomed sight for plantation owners looking to increase their labor force. Brewton, Doyley, and Brewton made sure in this advertisement to state that these slaves came from the Windward Coast. The reason for this, according to Joseph Opala, was that these slaves would already have expertise in farming rice. Colonists had found that the climate in South Carolina was perfect for farming rice; however, very few people had the skills to do so. This made slaves coming from the Windward Coast or the “Rice Coast” even more valuable because they came from fishing and rice farming villages.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

Brewton, Doyley, and Brewton’s advertisement was one of many in the May 1, 1769, edition of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette that indicated the origins of enslaved men, women, and children offered for sale. The partners provided very little information about the human cargo except to note that these “PRIME YOUNG NEGROES” came “from CAPE-MOUNT, on the WINDWARD COAST, which is in the center of a RICE COUNTRY.” Brewton, Doyley, and Brewton gave a short geography lesson, anticipating that it would resonate with prospective buyers precisely for the reasons that Patrick outlines in his analysis of the advertisement.

In another advertisement, John Chapman and Company announced the sale of “Two Hundred and Fifty NEGROES, Arrived … directly from GAMBIA.” Edmond Head placed yet another for “A CARGO of One Hundred and Twenty-six PRIME NEGROES … from GAMBIA.” Brewton, Doyley, and Brewton also placed a second advertisement, that one concerning “A CARGO of Three Hundred and Forty PRIME HEALTHY NEGROES, Arrived … directly from ANNAMABOE, on the GOLD COAST of AFRICA” (in modern Ghana). All of these advertisers expected that documenting the origins of enslaved men, women, and children made them more attractive to prospective buyers.

According to the Slave Voyages database, twenty-two vessels carrying at least 4277 captives arrived in Charleston directly from Africa in 1769. Another thirty-eight vessels from other ports, all of them in the Caribbean or mainland North America, also delivered enslaved men, women, and children to Charleston in 1769. Each of those vessels carried far fewer slaves. Still, the port of Charleston, one of the largest cities in the American colonies, was a vibrant slaving center on the eve of the American Revolution. Prospective buyers had many choices, prompting slave traders to attempt to distinguish the African men, women, and children they treated as commodities according to their particular places of origin and the types of expertise associated with laborers from those faraway places.

April 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , ,

GUEST CURATOR: Patrick Waters

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

Providence Gazette (April 29, 1769).

“He also carries on the BOOK-BINDING Business.”

Edward Jones took out an advertisement in the Providence Gazette on April 29, 1769. His advertisement was for “A VARIETY of useful and entertaining BOOKS” as well as his specialty in bookbinding. Bookbinding was a very interesting career choice because it was far from a simple job. In order to become a practicing bookbinder Jones had to go through years of apprenticeship that required “hard work, dexterity, attention to detail, and a willingness and ability to handle painstaking tasks,” according to Ed Crews. However, it was a great trade to have because books were so popular and seen as a status item since they were typically expensive and demonstrated that the owner was wealthy and educated. Yet there was one book that many colonists owned that would go through quite a bit of wear and tear, the Bible. It is likely that there was a large demand for repairing bibles, as they were used frequently.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

When customers purchased many of Jones’s “useful and entertaining BOOKS,” they likely did not acquire items that consumers would recognize as books today. In many cases they did not buy bound volumes but instead purchased books still in sheets. They then delivered those sheets to a bookbinder’s shop, where they could make decisions about the binding to fit their tastes and budget. In other words, customers who purchased Brady’s Psalms or Watts’s Hymns did not end up with matching volumes in their homes. They did purchase the same printed material, but their own decisions about binding resulted in different final products.

Ed Crews describes assembling books as akin to “constructing a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.” Broadly speaking, the process required two steps: forwarding and finishing. Forwarding, Crews explains, “generally involved arranging pages so they could be turned and examined.” Recall that customers purchased books in sheets. That meant that many pages were printed out of order on each side of large sheet that, when folded, ended up with the pages in the correct order. Once the pages had been folded in these closed signatures, bookbinders stitched them together and then “put a protective cover on them, typically fashioned of leather from calves, sheep or deer. At this point, the signatures (or folded pages) were cut open so readers could view every page. Already the decisions about the leather cover produced different appearances for volumes that contained the same text, but the decoration that comprised the finishing further distinguished them from each other. Finishing “could include lettering as well as design work” created with heated tools that stamped or imprinted designs into the leather covers. Bookbinders had a lot of responsibility. Not only did their work require artistry, it also required that they produce durable products. Crews notes the many ways that colonists handled their books: the structure “had to allow for repeated openings and closings, page fanning and tugging, falls to the floor, and being pulled from a shelf by a finger hooked on a spine.”

Today most consumers put little thought into the bindings of most books they buy, beyond choosing between hardcover and paperback editions. Colonial consumers, however, faced far more choices. They interacted not only with booksellers but also often with bookbinders who transformed the printed sheets they purchased into unique volumes according to consumers’ wishes.

Reflections from Guest Curator Samantha Surowiec

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features , ,

“Doing” history has always been something I dreamed about but never actually had the opportunity to do. The closest I feel like I have ever been to “doing” history has been whenever I visit museums or historical sites. After those visits, I usually spend the car or train ride home on Google, trying to learn as much additional information as possible. Coming into college as a history major, I was prepared to read many primary and secondary sources that I would then have to analyze and write about, but never did I imagine that my sophomore year I would be doing hands-on work that explored my favorite period of American history in more depth than ever before. The opportunity to read through colonial newspapers and be able to pick my own advertisements to analyze was even more exciting to me than trying to test my Boston history knowledge against my Freedom Trail tour guide.

When first presented with the project, it seemed daunting. There were pages upon pages of newspapers to read through, much of them written in print so small that I had to look over them very closely, each including many different types of advertisements. Most of the newspapers could be accessed on databases available from the d’Alzon Library at Assumption College; however, some required that I make a trip to the American Antiquarian Society (AAS). For the last three semesters of college, I had driven past the AAS building, always wanting to go inside but not having a need. Sitting in that beautiful building that contains such vast archives as I completed my own digital archives only bolstered my love of being immersed in history.

Having to complete work that was actually going to be published online for the whole world to see was much more intimidating than the thought of completing a research project for my professors in other classes. Compiling the newspapers for my week was not as difficult as I imagined it would be, but choosing only seven advertisements to analyze started off as nearly impossible. There were so many advertisements that piqued my interest, many of them appearing in newspapers printed on the same day. Once I got over my indecisiveness and chose my advertisements, the rest of the project seemed to flow much more naturally. With each advertisement I researched and analyzed, I learned a new piece of a puzzle I have been working on since I fell in love with early American history in elementary school. Never have I felt more connected to the past I so ardently enjoy studying. One small detail, like the name of a cabinetmaker, could illuminate for me what type of furniture Virginia colonists wanted to display for guests in their houses. A single advertisement for a ship provided me with links between eighteenth century shipbuilding in my home state, Massachusetts, and the current status of the United States as the strong world power it is today.

It amazed me to learn just how important print culture in the colonies was, especially during the revolutionary era, while I completed the project. Since newspapers were a major form of communication between colonies, reading through them gave me insight to what household goods were more highly sought than others, in addition to what kind of sentiments the colonists truly held for the British. Knowing that I have been able to make a small contribution to the American history field is something I am so proud of. Working on the Adverts 250 Project helped to hone my information literacy and research skills that will help me through the rest of my college career and provided me with insight into the life of a historian.

 

 

April 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR: Patrick Waters

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

New-Hampshire Gazette (April 28, 1769).

“A SCHOOL for teaching young MASTERS and MISSES, DANCING and GOOD MANNERS.”

Peter Curtis took out an advertisement in the April 28, 1769, edition of the New Hampshire Gazette to advertise his dance school. This advertisement is particularly interesting because it demonstrates one of the ways that people found entertainment in the eighteenth century. The lives of colonists during the revolutionary era were not focused only on work and survival. The services that Peter Curtis offered might have been a great way for people to take a break and learn how to dance. The profession of dance master could be quite rewarding because, according to an online exhibition from the American Antiquarian Society, these dances were difficult to master and would require many classes. However, having the time and money to attend a dance class would have been a luxury that mostly the middling sort and elites would have been able to take advantage of. In another part of this advertisement that is interesting Curtis states that he will also teach good manners. This would be a must for elites who wanted their children to learn the proper way to behave themselves when in the company of other affluent members of society. A common way that people asserted their affluence was through consumer culture, but being able to dance and have well-mannered children also accomplished the same goal.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

In this advertisement Peter Curtis announced that he “has again opened a SCHOOL for teaching young MASTERS and MISSES, DANCING and GOOD MANNERS.” In declaring that he had “again opened a SCHOOL,” he assumed that readers and prospective clients were already aware of his previous endeavors as a dancing master. The brevity of his advertisement, especially compared to another he previously inserted in the New-Hampshire Gazette, suggests that was indeed the case. For instance, Curtis did not even state his location; he instead expected that others knew where to find his dancing school. In an advertisement that ran almost two years earlier, however, when Curtis launched that enterprise, he informed residents of Portsmouth that “he proposes to open a DANCING SCHOOL, at the House where the late Mr. David Horney kept a Tavern, and opposite Mr. John Stavers.” Over the course of a couple of years, his school became so familiar that Curtis no longer considered it necessary to give directions.

The dancing master himself had also become familiar in the community, so much so that he no longer underscored one of his most important credentials. When he first opened his school he introduced himself in the public prints as “Peter Curtis, From PARIS.” After outlining his services, he noted that he “has resided fifteen Years in France; he will teach them in the most polite and genteel Manner.” In so doing, he linked the experience he gained living and working in France with gentility and proper comportment. He encouraged prospective clients to desire the additional cachet of employing a dancing master with connections to Paris, at least when he first marketed his services in a community as yet unfamiliar with him. Over time, however, he apparently decided that he had established such a reputation in Portsmouth that he no longer needed to explicitly attach himself to the cosmopolitan French center of fashion and manners.

That Curtis once again advertised in the New-Hampshire Gazette suggests that he experiences some success in Portsmouth and its environs. Dancing masters were notorious for being itinerant in eighteenth-century America. Curtis apparently attracted enough clients and cultivated sufficient demand that he planned to remain in the relatively small port for another season rather than seek his fortune in New York or Philadelphia or any of the larger cities in the colonies. Even beyond urban centers, genteel colonists (and those who aspired to gentility) considered dancing and the manners associated with the pastime an important signifier of their status.

Welcome, Guest Curator Patrick Waters

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , , ,

Patrick Waters is a senior at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is majoring in Marketing major with a minor in Information Technology. He recently made a presentation about his work on the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project at Assumption College’s twenty-fifth annual Undergraduate Symposium. For the past three years he has been working for Dell in their Social Media Strategy and Governance department. He has passion for high tech and enjoys learning about American history.

Welcome, Patrick Waters!

April 27

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR: Samantha Surowiec

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

Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).
“To be SOLD … before Mr. Anthony Hay’s door, in Williamsburg … TWENTY LIKELY VIRGINIA BORN SLAVES.”

Since slaves were being sold outside of Anthony Hay’s door, I wondered if he was a prominent figure in Virginia in the 1760s. I learned that Hay was a Scottish immigrant and owned one of the largest cabinetmaking shops in Williamsburg. According to the historians at Colonial Williamsburg, he primarily sold to the middle class and above, catering to their “modern tastes.” These people bought elegant furniture made by Hay and other artisans to show off their status or convey the importance of an event. His shop made the ceremonial chair for the Virginia governor, but his most beautiful works were elaborate tea and china tables designed to impress guests. Around the middle of the eighteenth century, about one-third of stylish furniture was imported from England, but as the colonies used commerce and consumption as acts of resistance in the years before the American Revolution, Virginians bought more and more domestically made furniture. Today, Williamsburg has a reconstructed cabinet shop located where Hay’s business used to reside. It is open to the public to learn more about the history of cabinetmaking.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

For today’s entry, Sam selected an advertisement also included among those from the Slavery Adverts 250 Project. That companion project to the Adverts 250 Project seeks to demonstrate the ubiquity of advertisements for enslaved men, women, and children in eighteenth-century newspapers. From New England to Georgia, slavery was an everyday part of life. Enslaved people lived and labored throughout the colonies. They were also visible in the public prints, the subjects of advertisements that offered men, women, and children for sale or encouraged white colonists to participate in a culture of surveillance of black bodies in order to recognize their descriptions and claim awards for capturing those who attempted to escape from bondage.

This advertisement for “TWENTY LIKELY VIRGINIA BORN SLAVES” demonstrates another aspect of the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century America: the venues where enslaved men, women, and children were sold. W. Mitchell planned to conduct this sale “before Mr. Anthony Hay’s door, in Williamsburg.” Anyone who traversed the street where Hay kept his shop was exposed to this sale, whether or not they wished to engage in a transaction, whether or not they wished to observe. Just as white colonists regularly encountered enslaved men, women, and children, they also regularly glimpsed the buying and selling of them since such business was not restricted to auction houses or other venues specifically for that purpose.

Another advertisement published in Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette on the same day described a “SCHEME for disposing of … LANDS, HOUSES, and SLAVES” through a lottery. The “Prizes” included several enslaved men, women, and children. Although some were described as parents and children or sister and brothers, the trustees who organized the lottery as a means of settling an estate listed each of them as separate prizes. Almost certainly they would be separated from each other at the time of the drawing. The entire process was just as callous and casual as the sale held in the street “before Mr. Anthony Hay’s door.” The advertisements made these sales all the more visible. Quite likely far more readers became aware of them from the advertisements in the public prints than colonists viewed them when they occurred.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 27, 1769

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Samantha Surowiec

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 for slaves – for sale, wanted to purchase, runaways, captured fugitives – 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 colonists 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. Colonists who did not own slaves were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing slaves or assisting in the capture of runaways. 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 slaveholders rather than the slaves themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

Samantha Suroweic is serving as guest curator for the week of April 21-27, 2019.  She compiled these advertisements that appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Boston Weekly News-Letter (April 27, 1769).

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Supplement to the New-York Journal (April 27, 1769).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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Pennsylvania Journal (April 27, 1769).

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Pennsylvania Journal (April 27, 1769).

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Pennsylvania Journal (April 27, 1769).

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Pennsylvania Journal (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 27, 1769).

April 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR: Samantha Surowiec

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

Georgia Gazette (April 27, 1769).

“HOUSE, SIGN, and SHIP PAINTING, done by ROBERT PUNSHON.”

Signs were very important in colonial America, since they served as a way for colonists to distinguish between private homes and those that served as taverns for the public. According to Susan P. Schoelwer, tavern signs in the eighteenth century typically had impressive woodwork, but the paintings were not very elaborate. This was because there were more skilled woodworkers in the colonies than there were painters. As the nineteenth century drew closer, and the new United States of America matured, so did the signage. Travel became more common, and more skilled artists lived in the new nation, which resulted in more sophisticated signs, as well as more signs being advertised in newspapers. The images painted on these signs ranged from animals to horse-drawn carriages to even portraits and landscapes as painters became more skilled. To view images of tavern signs from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, visit “Tavern Signs Mark Changes in Travel, Innkeeping, and Artistic Practice.”

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

What kind of market for sign painting did Robert Punshon encounter in Savannah? The answer is difficult to determine. Entrepreneurs who placed advertisements for consumer goods and services in the Georgia Gazette rarely indicated that shop signs marked their location. In the same issue that Punshon advertised, for instance, Lewis Johnson inserted a notice about “An Assortment of MEDICINES” but did not list a sign to help prospective clients navigate to his shop.

In contrast, shopkeepers, merchants, and artisans in other places, especially the largest port cities, regularly included signs in the notices they placed in the public prints. In the April 23, 1769, edition of the Providence Gazette, Samuel Young stated that “the Sign of the Black Boy” marked his store near the Baptist Meeting House. In another advertisement (as well as the colophon), John Carter reminded readers and potential customers that “the Sign of Shakespear’s Head” adorned the printing office. The next day in the Boston-Gazette, Elias Dupee advertised a “PUBLIC VENDUE” to be held at his “NEW AUCTION ROOM” located “near the Golden Key.” Although he did not have a sign for his own business, he made use of the sign marking a nearby shop in giving directions to his clients. Another auctioneer promoted a vendue “at the Bunch of Grapes” in an advertisement in the Boston Post-Boy published the same day.

The absence of shop signs in newspaper advertisements does not necessarily mean that advertisers did not have signs of their own. Two advertisements by Joseph Russell and William Russell ran in the Providence Gazette that week. Neither of them gave their location as “the Sign of the Golden Eagle,” although they advertised prolifically and frequently inserted that detail into their notices. The Golden Eagle became their logo, perhaps so well known that they considered it unnecessary to include it in every advertisement.

That being the case, Robert Punshon may have worked in a market for sign painting in Savannah that was much more vibrant than other advertisements in the Georgia Gazette indicated. Some eighteenth-century advertisers regularly associated their businesses with specific images, such as “Shakespear’s Head” or the Golden Eagle, as they experimented with developing brands and logos. Others who had shop signs did not necessarily advertise in newspapers or incorporate their signs when they did. That Punshon even listed sign painting along with house and ship painting suggests that either a market for signs already existed or he believed that one could be cultivated among the merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans of Savannah.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 26, 1769

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Samantha Surowiec

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 for slaves – for sale, wanted to purchase, runaways, captured fugitives – 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 colonists 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. Colonists who did not own slaves were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing slaves or assisting in the capture of runaways. 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 slaveholders rather than the slaves themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

Samantha Suroweic is serving as guest curator for the week of April 21-27, 2019.  She compiled these advertisements that appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Georgia Gazette (April 26, 1769).

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Georgia Gazette (April 26, 1769).

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Georgia Gazette (April 26, 1769).

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Georgia Gazette (April 26, 1769).

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Georgia Gazette (April 26, 1769).

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Georgia Gazette (April 26, 1769).

April 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR: Samantha Surowiec

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

Supplement to the Boston-Gazette (April 24, 1769).

“CHOICE CHOCOLATE … Cocoa manufactured for Gentlemen in the best Manner.”

When most people read the word “chocolate,” they probably pictures a Hershey’s chocolate bar. However, chocolate to the typical eighteenth-century colonist was a kind of frothy drink made from cocoa beans. According to Rodney Snyder, the chocolate drink originated in Mesoamerica, its first contact with Europeans being traced back to one of Christopher Columbus’s voyages in 1502. Chocolate was mentioned in a colonial newspaper for the first time in 1705, and it quickly became a colonial staple, since it was affordable and could be consumed by people from any class. Around the time of the printing of this newspaper, the colonies were importing over 320 tons of cocoa beans. So readily available was chocolate that it was actually given out as rations to soldiers in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Colonists commonly drank chocolate in coffeehouses, a place where they met to discuss politics, current events, and anything else.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

When Sam first consulted with me about this advertisement via email, I had a little difficulty finding it in the Boston-Gazette. She told me that it was on the third page, yet it is actually on the second page of the supplement. Sam did not, however, make an error. Instead, she reported the information available to her as a result of a design flaw for one of the databases of digitized newspapers that make the Adverts 250 Project possible.

I regularly sing praises for America’s Historical Newspapers. That database makes my research possible. It also allows me to bring my research into the classroom in meaningful ways, especially when I invite students to serve as guest curators for the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project. Beyond those projects, America’s Historical Newspapers is a valuable resource for examining primary sources in class, allowing me to present digital surrogates with much more context than modern editions in course readers allow.

That being said, I have learned from experience that the database does have a flaw in the manner that it incorporates supplements. Consider the April 24, 1769, edition of the Boston-Gazette. It consists of the standard four-page issue and a two-page supplement. Ideally, the database would present the standard issue first and then the supplement. However, when viewing this issue online the first page of the supplement appears first, then the first page of the standard issue, then the second page of the supplement, followed by the second, third, and fourth pages of the standard issue. The pages appear in the same order when downloading a PDF of the entire issue. For issues with four-page supplements, the pages are interspersed back and forth between the supplement and the standard issue. I have learned to collate the pages in the correct order when I print them out to mark them up.

Guest curators with less experience working with eighteenth-century newspapers, digitized primary sources, and, especially this idiosyncrasy, do not always realize that the pages presented online and in the PDF appear out of order … nor should they expect that the pages appear in any order other than first to last. When Sam consulted her digital copy of the Boston-Gazette for April 24, John Goldsmith’s advertisement for “CHOICE CHOCOLATE” appeared at the bottom of the third page in the document, hence her notation that I could find it there. I consulted a hard copy that I had collated into the proper order, which led me to a different page and created confusion. In the end, this yielded a teachable moment about how historians must continuously assess their sources, not just the contents but also the format and the media employed to make them available to us.