Month: June 2019

June 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jun 30 - 6:30:1769 New-London Gazette
New-London Gazette (June 30, 1769).

“A neat BOAT, suitable for the reception of passengers.”

Readers encountered four advertisements for transportation via “Passage Boat” in the June 30, 1769, edition of the New-London Gazette. Ebenezer Webb sailed between New London and Sterling on Long Island “as usual,” though he advised prospective passengers that they “may be landed on any Part of the East End of the Island.” Peter Griffing charted a similar course across Long Island Sound, but kept a different schedule than his direct competitor, Webb. A brief advertisement reminded readers that “Truman’s Passage-Boat plies between Sagharbour and Norwich Landing, as usual.”

Samuel Stockwell inserted a much more extensive advertisement to address prospective passengers; it occupied as much space on the page as the other three advertisements combined. Unlike the others, Stockwell did not transport passengers and freight across Long Island Sound. Instead, he sailed up and down the Thames River between New London and Norwich. In order to pursue that enterprise, he had “lately built and has now fitted out a neat BOAT, suitable for the reception of passengers.” In a nota bene, he added that he provided food and wine “at a very reasonable rate.”

Griffing, Truman, and Webb did not comment on why readers of the New-London Gazette might wish to travel aboard their passage boats except to move freight and passengers from one place to another. Each implied that crossing Long Island Sound was much more efficient than making a journey by land. Stockwell, on the other hand, suggested that “Gentlemen or Ladies” might wish to make a voyage aboard his boat “for their health or pleasure,” presenting his business as part of a nascent tourism and hospitality industry that began to emerge in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Realizing that passengers seeking leisure activities likely would not sustain his new endeavor by themselves, he also made a practical appeal to “Gentlemen that have occasion to attend the courts” when they were in session in New London and Norwich. Stockwell set a regular schedule, but he adapted during those weeks that prospective passengers needed to attend “the sitting of the courts.” Hiring passage on his boat, he proposed, would “lessen the vast expence of the law” by eliminating the “great expense of horse hire and keeping.” Even though less than fifteen miles separated New London and Norwich, those who traveled between the two incurred significant expenses if they made the journey on land. Stockwell provided an attractive and more comfortable alternative, one that made the journey a “pleasure” even for those who traveled to attend to business at the courts.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 30, 1769

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 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.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 30 - New-Hampshire Gazette Slavery 1
New-Hampshire Gazette (June 30, 1769).

June 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Jun 29 - 6:29:1769 Boston Weekly News-Letter
Boston Weekly News-Letter (June 29, 1769).

“Any Branch of the Painting and Gilding Business.”

George Kilcup’s advertisement in the June 29, 1769, edition of the Boston Weekly News-Letter likely garnered attention due to it unique format and placement on the first page. The short advertisement ran across the bottom of the page, separated from the news items that appeared above it by a line that helped readers distinguish between the two types of content. Rather than run continuously across all three columns, the advertisement was also divided into three columns with three lines of text each. While it was not uncommon for advertisements to run on the front page of eighteenth-century newspapers, this format and placement was quite exceptional.

The needs of the printer rather than any sort of intentional design by the advertiser or compositor likely explain the unusual manner of presenting this advertisement. Notably, the advertisement did not appear in the same form in subsequent insertions. The following week it ran as a block of text confined to a single column, like all of the other advertisements on the page. It took the form readers were accustomed to seeing in the pages of newspapers. Apparently the compositor set the advertisement in three columns, rather than in lines that crossed the entire page like the masthead, for the sake of efficiency. Knowing that the advertisement would run again the following week, the compositor set it in columns that could be rearranged easily into a standard block of text rather than having to reset the type completely.

Inserting Kilcup’s advertisement on the front page at all seems to have been a decision made at the last moment as a partial solution to the lack of space for all the content the printer could have included in the June 29 edition. The issue ended with a brief note informing readers, correspondents, and advertisers that “The Articles of Intelligence and Advertisements omitted, will be in our next.” Yet advertisers paid to have their notices inserted, and newspaper printers depended on this important revenue stream. The text that bled through the second page to the first suggests that the compositor originally planned for shorter columns on the first page but later modified it to include Kilcup’s advertisement when running short of space elsewhere in the issue. The compositor managed to squeeze in one more advertisement to mollify a client who might not have been happy for his notice to be delayed by a week.

Printers and compositors and, sometimes, advertisers experimented with graphic design elements of advertisements in eighteenth-century newspapers, yet not all innovations derived from intentionally attempting to devise a combination of format and placement to draw the attention of readers to advertisements. In the case of Kilcup’s advertisement, transformed into the standard block of text at the first opportunity, it seems that necessity prompted the compositor to play with the usual format and placement after the printer compiled too much content to fit all of it in the newspaper that week. That does not negate the fact that Kilcup’s advertisement benefited from enhanced visibility for its first insertion, but that does not seem to have been the first priority of anyone involved in producing the advertisement.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 29, 1769

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 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.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 29 - Boston Chronicle Slavery 1
Boston Chronicle (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - New-York Chronicle Slavery 1
New-York Chronicle (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - New-York Chronicle Slavery 2
New-York Chronicle (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - New-York Journal Supplement Slavery 1
Supplement to the New-York Journal (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 1
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 2
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 3
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 4
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 5
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 6
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon Slavery 1
Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon Slavery 2
Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon Slavery 3
Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon Slavery 4
Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon Slavery 5
Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon Slavery 6
Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon Slavery 7
Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon Slavery 8
Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Rind Slavery 1
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Rind Slavery 2
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Rind Slavery 4
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (June 29, 1769).

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Jun 29 - Virginia Gazette Rind Slavery 3
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (June 29, 1769).

June 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Jun 28 - 6:28:1769 Georgia Gazette
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

“To be sold at the Printing-Office … An HUMBLE ENQUIRY.”

An advertisement for a pamphlet about politics appeared among the various notices inserted in the June 28, 1769, edition of the Georgia Gazette. The advertisement consisted almost entirely of the pamphlet’s title: “An HUMBLE ENQUIRY INTO The NATURE of the DEPENDENCY of the AMERICAN COLONIES upon the PARLIAMENT of GREAT BRITAIN, and the RIGHT of PARLIAMENT to lay TAXES on the said COLONIES.” James Johnston, the printer of the newspaper, informed readers that they could purchase copies at the printing office. He also listed the price, but did not further elaborate on the contents of the pamphlet.

He may have considered doing so unnecessary because an excerpt from Humble Enquiry comprised the entire first page of that issue, with the exception of the masthead. By the time readers encountered the advertisement on the third page most would have also noticed, even if they had not read carefully, the “EXTRACT from a Pamphlet” on the first page. Johnston presented an opportunity for prospective customers to read a substantial portion of the pamphlet in the pages of his newspaper. He also promised that “The remainder [of the excerpt] will be in our next” issue. By providing a portion of the pamphlet to readers of the Georgia Gazette for free, Johnston hoped to entice some of them to purchase their own copy and explore the arguments made “By a FREEHOLDER of SOUTH CAROLINA” on their own. He devoted one-quarter of the space in the June 28 edition to this endeavor.

In addition to marketing the pamphlet, the excerpt served another purpose. Even for readers who did not purchase a copy of their own to read more, the excerpt informed them of the debates that dominated much of the public discourse in the late 1760s. Together, the advertisement and the excerpt demonstrate some of the many trajectories of print culture in shaping the imperial crisis and, eventually, calls for independence. Newspapers informed colonists about events as they unfolded, weaving together news and editorials that often encouraged readers to adopt a particular perspective. At the same time, printers like Johnston invited readers to learn more about current events by purchasing books and pamphlets that addressed the rupture between Parliament and the colonies. In the case of Humble Enquiry, Johnston simultaneously offered within the pages of the Georgia Gazette an overview in the form of an excerpt that doubled as an editorial and instructions for learning more in the form of an advertisement for the entire pamphlet.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 28, 1769

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 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.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 1
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

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Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 9
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

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Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 2
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

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Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 3
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

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Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 4
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

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Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 5
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

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Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 6
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

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Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 7
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

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Jun 28 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 8
Georgia Gazette (June 28, 1769).

June 27

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Jun 27 - 6:27:1769 South-Carolina and American General Gazette
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 27, 1769).

“SUBSCRIPTIONS are taken in … in different parts of America.”

In the spring of 1769, William Goddard inserted a subscription notice for his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Chronicle, in several newspapers published in other cities. It ran in the Connecticut Courant, the Connecticut Journal, the Newport Gazette, the New-York Journal, and the Providence Gazette in May. The printers who ran the advertisement likely did not expect that subscribers would choose the Pennsylvania Chronicle over their own newspapers but rather as a supplement, especially since Goddard marketed his own publication as “a repository of ingenious and valuable literature, in prose and verse,” in addition to “a Register of the best Intelligence.”

Goddard printed the news and more, distinguishing the Pennsylvania Chronicle from other newspapers printed in the colonies. His subscription notice made the Pennsylvania Chronicle sound as much like a magazine as a newspaper, placing it in competition with the American Magazine. Lewis Nicola, the publisher, and William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the American Magazine (and also the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal), embarked on their own advertising campaign, placing subscription notices in several newspapers beyond Philadelphia, their local market. Although the Pennsylvania Chronicle carried advertisements from Philadelphia and the surrounding area, Goddard’s subscription notice promoted the other contents of the publication as a rival to the American Magazine.

An eighteenth-century newspaper was not a local publication in the sense that it served just the city where it was printed. Most newspapers served an entire colony or even larger regions, circulation radiating out from the place of publication. Yet printers did not tend to advertise their own newspapers in newspapers published in other cities. Yet Goddard aggressively advertised the Pennsylvania Chronicle in newspapers in New England and New York in the spring of 1769 and in the South-Carolina and American General Gazette early in the summer. The latter concluded with a familiar note for interested readers: “SUBSCRIPTIONS are taken in by the Printer in Market-street [Philadelphia]; by most of the Postmasters, Booksellers and Printers, and many other Gentlemen, in different parts of America.” In addition, it specified that Robert Wells, the printer of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette, accepted subscriptions in Charleston.

Goddard was not content to cultivate a regional audience for the Pennsylvania Chronicle. The contents of the publication, the distribution network envisioned by Goddard, and the participation of newspaper printers in collecting subscriptions positioned the Pennsylvania Chronicle as akin to a magazine. Goddard’s counterparts apparently did not consider it a rival to their own newspapers, though the time required to deliver it to faraway subscribers may have influenced their views as much as the contents Goddard described in his subscription notice. The reach of his advertising campaign helped to distinguish the Pennsylvania Chronicle as a different sort of publication when compared to other newspapers printed in the colonies at the time.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 27, 1769

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 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.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 27 - Essex Gazette Slavery 1
Essex Gazette (June 27, 1769).

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Jun 27 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 1
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 27, 1769).

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Jun 27 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 2
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 27, 1769).

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Jun 27 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 3
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 27, 1769).

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Jun 27 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 4
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 27, 1769).

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Jun 27 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 5
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 27, 1769).

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Jun 27 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 6
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 27, 1769).

Slavery Advertisements Published June 26, 1769

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 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.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Jun 26 - Boston Chronicle Slavery 1
Boston Chronicle (June 26, 1769).

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Jun 26 - Boston Evening-Post Slavery 1
Boston Evening-Post (June 26, 1769).

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Jun 26 - Boston Post-Boy Slavery 1
Boston Post-Boy (June 26, 1769).

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Jun 26 - Connecticut Courant Slavery 1
Connecticut Courant (June 26, 1769).

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Jun 26 - New-York Gazette Weekly Mercury Slavery 1
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 26, 1769).

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Jun 26 - New-York Gazette Weekly Mercury Slavery 2
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 26, 1769).

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Jun 26 - New-York Gazette Weekly Mercury Slavery 3
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 26, 1769).

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Jun 26 - Newport Mercury Slavery 1
Newport Mercury (June 26, 1769).

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Jun 26 - Newport Mercury Slavery 2
Newport Mercury (June 26, 1769).