Month: June 2019

June 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

Jun 25 - 6:23:1769 New-Hampshire Gazette
New-Hampshire Gazette (June 25, 1769).

“He hereby offers, and assures a FREE PARDON.”

In late May 1769 Major General Alexander Mackay issued a pardon to “Soldiers who have deserted from His Majesty’s Troops quartered” in Boston, provided that they returned and surrendered by the last day of June. It was not, however, a blanket pardon; Mackay did exclude nearly twenty deserters who had committed other crimes. Instead of the promise of a pardon, he offered a reward for “apprehending and securing them in any of the public Goals [jails].” To get the word out about the pardons (and the rewards for the excluded soldiers), Mackay had one of his officers, “C. FORDYCE, Major of the Brigade,” insert notices in the public prints.

Dated May 23, the notice first appeared in the Boston Chronicle and the Boston Weekly News-Letter (published on the same broadsheet and distributed with Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette) on May 25. Within a week, the same notice ran in all of the newspapers published in Boston, appearing in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, and the Boston Post-Boy (published in the same broadsheet and distributed with Green and Russell’s Massachusetts Gazette) at the first opportunity on May 29.

Over the next several weeks, publication of the notice concerning Mackay’s pardon radiated out from Boston. It next appeared in the Essex Gazette on May 30 and then the New-Hampshire Gazette and the New-London Gazette on June 2. The notice soon found its way into both newspapers published in Rhode Island, running in the Providence Gazette on June 3 and in the Newport Mercury on June 5. A week later, the same notice appeared in Hartford’s Connecticut Courant. With the exception of the Connecticut Journal, published in New Haven, the notice about the pardon ran in every newspaper in New England. (Copies of the Connecticut Journal for June 9 and 23 were not available for consultation. The notice may have appeared in one or both of those issues of the newspaper published at the furthest distance from Boston.)

At the same time that more newspapers featured the notice, most continued to include it in subsequent editions. It ran in every issue of the Boston Chronicle, the Boston-Gazette, the Boston Weekly News-Letter, the Connecticut Courant, the Essex Gazette, the New-London Gazette, the Newport Mercury, and the Providence Gazette from the time of first insertion through the end of June. It appeared in most issues of the Boston Post-Boy and the New-Hampshire Gazette, though it quickly disappeared from the Boston Evening-Post after only two insertions. In total, the notice ran at least fifty-one times in at least eleven newspapers published in New England over the course of five weeks. It made sense to print the notice far and wide considering that deserters were likely to leave Boston to evade capture.

Although information about the pardon could have been considered news, in each instance the notice appeared among the advertisements in every newspaper that carried it. Purveyors of consumer goods and services sometimes published advertisements in multiple newspapers in their city, but a coordinated advertising campaign of this magnitude was extraordinary in 1769. Members of the book trade sometimes inserted subscription notices among the advertisements in as many newspapers as possible, but even their efforts did not usually match the campaign created by Fordyce. He harnessed the power of the press to spread news of the pardons throughout New England, depending on both distribution networks and subsequent word of mouth to inform deserters that they would receive forgiveness if they only returned to their posts.

June 24

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , ,

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

Jun 24 - 6:24:1769 Providence Gazette
Providence Gazette (June 24, 1769)

“All cheap for Cash, or West-India Produce.”

When John Fitton advertised several commodities in the Providence Gazette in the late spring and early summer of 1769 he did not specify any prices. In that regard, his advertisement did not differ from most others placed by merchants and shopkeepers in Providence and throughout the colonies. Purveyors of goods rarely listed prices in the eighteenth century, though they commonly made appeals to low prices to stimulate demand among potential customers. Fitton pledged to sell his wares “cheap for Cash” or barter for “West-India Produce.” He did not, however, reveal how much he charged for flour, pork, or peas. In a similar advertisement, Thomas Stelle advertised flour, ship bread, and bar iron without mentioning prices.

Readers gained a sense of how much they could expect to pay for most of those commodities from another portion of the newspaper. In the June 24 edition of the Providence Gazette, the compositor happened to position Fitton’s advertisement immediately above the “PRICE CURRENT in PROVIDENCE,” a list of prevailing prices for popular commodities in the local market. Although the price current did not include peas, it did indicate that pork sold at 66 shilling per barrel and flour at 16 shillings and 6 pence “By the Hundred Weight.” Before they finalized any transactions with Fitton, customers could consult the price current to determine if his prices actually qualified as “cheap” compared to what competitors charged. In turn, Fitton could also take advantage of the price current list, using it to set his own prices to offer bargains or to calculate the value of commodities that prospective clients offered in exchange for his flour, pork, and peas.

The price current list provided an overview of the marketplace in Providence. It aided merchants in making decisions about when and where to buy, sell, and trade commodities, but it was also an important resource for consumers as they determined whether merchants, shopkeepers, and other purveyors of goods set fair prices. Just as readers could sometimes work back and forth between advertisements for consumer goods and the shipping news from the customs house to assess how recently merchandise had arrived in shops and stores, they could also consult another feature in the newspaper – the price current list – for additional information before making purchases.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 24, 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 24 - Providence Gazette Slavery 1
Providence Gazette (June 24, 1769).

June 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jun 23 - 6:23:1769 New-Hampshire Gazette
New-Hampshire Gazette (June 23, 1769).

“FREE and ACCEPTED MASONS … propose to celebrate the FEAST of St. JOHN the Baptist.”

Any of the “BRETHREN of the Antient and Honourable Society of FREE and ACCEPTED MASONS in New-Hampshire” who read the colony’s only newspaper could hardly have missed the calls to attend gatherings on Saturday, June 24, 1769. Not one but two advertisements about their events ran in the June 23 edition of the New-Hampshire Gazette, both of them placed in prominent places on the page. In addition, an announcement dated June 14 also appeared in the previous issue published on June 16.

Of the two notices that circulated on June 23, one was the first item in the first column on the second page, making it difficult for readers to overlook. Even those who skimmed the contents of the page were more likely to give that first item more attention. In it, John Marsh invited his “BRETHREN” to celebrate the Feast of St. John the Baptist at the King George Tavern the following day. A nota bene further clarified that dinner would be “on Table precisely at Two o’Clock.” Readers encountered a similar advertisement the previous week, though it had since been updated to reflect that the feast would occur “TO-MORROW” rather than later in the month. This required the compositor to reset some, but not all, of the type for the advertisement. Marsh had to make special arrangements (and may have incurred additional expenses) for this when he submitted the copy to the printing office.

Jun 23 - 6:16:1769 New-Hampshire Gazette
New-Hampshire Gazette (June 16, 1769).

The other notice in the June 23 edition ran across all four columns in the margin at the bottom of the first page. Wider than the masthead (due to the continued disruption on the paper supply), its unique placement on the page also would have attracted the attention of the curious. This advertisement notified masons of another event taking place the following day. Marsh instructed them “to attend at the Lodge-Room” at nine o’clock in the evening “to proceed thence in procession to Queen’s-Chapel, where a Sermon suitable to the Occasion, will be preached by the Rev. Mr. BROWN.” Its position in the margin suggested that this notice had been a late submission to the printing office, inserted after the type had been set. Given that Marsh could not wait a week to insert the notice in the next edition, the printers made special provisions to include his notice (and collect the fees).

Limited to only two pages, that edition of the New-Hampshire Gazette featured an advertisement from the masons on both pages. Many readers likely read them in quick succession, first the notice at the bottom of the front page and then, flipping over the broadsheet, immediately the first item in the first column on the other side. Informing “BRETHREN” of the gatherings taking place on June 24 was not merely a matter of inserting notices in the newspaper. Where those notices appeared on the page also facilitated getting the word out, especially for the sermon that had not previously been promoted in the public prints.

Jun 23 - 6:23:1769 Page 1 New-Hampshire Gazette
New-Hampshire Gazette (June 23, 1769).

June 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Jun 22 - 6:22:1769 Pennsylvania Gazette
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 22, 1769).

“BETWEEN the sixth and seventh day, / MARY NOWLAND ran away.”

Advertisements for runaway servants and slaves regularly appeared in the pages of the Pennsylvania Gazette in the 1760s. The June 22, 1769, edition, for instance, featured several such advertisements. To distinguish his notice from others, Abraham Emmit opted for a format other than the usual dense block of text that provided a description. Instead, he published a poem about Mary Nowland, deploying a style intended to encourage readers to give the advertisement more than a cursory glance and, as a result, better remember how to recognize this particular runaway. In addition, the novelty of his poem imbued his advertisement with greater entertainment value, further contributing to the likelihood that readers would take note.

Among the rhyming couplets, Emmit provided a physical description of Nowland. Although in verse, it simultaneously described and denigrated the runaway servant. She had “Brown hair, red face, short nose, thick lips” and was “large and round from neck to hips.” Indeed, the aggrieved Emmit suggested that Nowland was so chubby that it affected her movement – “Short, thick, and clumsy, in her jog” – so much so that he compared her to a “fatten’d hog.” Like many other advertisements for servants, this one reported Nowland’s origins as a means of helping readers identify her. Emmit did not, however, simply state that Nowland had been born in Ireland. Instead, he mentioned that she was “The same religion with the Pope” and “Upon her tongue she wears a brogue,” expecting readers to reach the conclusion that Nowland was an Irish Catholic. In presenting this puzzle, albeit not a particularly difficult one, Emmit encouraged greater participation by readers from their first encounter with the text than most runaway advertisements expected of them. This notice did not merely charge readers with reporting or capturing a runaway if they happened to spot her; it invited them first to engage with the printed page much more actively than they would have when perusing other advertisements concerning runaways.

The clever Emmit did not merely sign his verse. He incorporated his own name into the final couplet, promising a reward of forty shillings to anyone who delivered Nowland to him: for any reader “Who brings her home I will give them it, / Your humble servant, ABRAHAM EMMIT.” These last lines were just as stilted as the rest of the poem, but composing a piece of great literature had not been Emmit’s purpose. Given how many notices about runaway servants and other advertisements ran in the Pennsylvania Gazette, he sought a means to differentiate his advertisement and draw greater attention from readers. The format of the poem alone, compared to dense paragraphs of text in other advertisements, separated it from others on the page, encouraging readers to have a closer look. Emmit speculated that once they discovered the novelty he had composed that they would pay more attention to his description of the runaway Nowland. Providing this simple entertainment increased the chances that someone would recognize Nowland and either return her to Emmit’s household or send word of her whereabouts.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 22, 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 22 - Boston Chronicle Slavery 1
Boston Chronicle (June 22, 1769).

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Jun 22 - New-York Chronicle Slavery 1
New-York Chronicle (June 22, 1769).

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Jun 22 - New-York Chronicle Slavery 2
New-York Chronicle (June 22, 1769).

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Jun 22 - New-York Journal Slavery 1
New-York Journal (June 22, 1769).

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Jun 22 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 1
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 22, 1769).

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Jun 22 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 2
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 22, 1769).

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Jun 22 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 3
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 22, 1769).

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Jun 22 - Pennsylvania Gazette Slavery 4
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 22, 1769).

June 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Jun 21 - 6:21:1769 Georgia Gazette
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

“RUN AWAY … A NEGROE FELLOW named WILL.”

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project aims to demonstrate that eighteenth-century newspapers contributed to the perpetuation of slavery in colonial America and the new nation. Yet this was not a relationship that merely benefited slaveholders through the continued exploitation of enslaved men, women, and children. Printers also benefitted, as did the public that consumed all sorts of information that circulated in newspapers. The revenues generated from advertisements concerning enslaved men, women, and children made significant contributions to the economic viability of eighteenth-century newspapers.

Consider, for example, the final page of the June 21, 1769, edition of the Georgia Gazette. Advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children have been outlined in red. Ten appeared on that page (as well as two others on the previous page). Of the ten on the final page, five offered enslaved people for sale, one sought to purchase enslaved people, two offered rewards for runaways who escaped from bondage, and two described fugitives that had been captured and imprisoned. Collectively, these advertisements bolstered not only the market for buying and selling human property but also a culture of surveillance of Black people.

These advertisements also represented significant revenue for James Johnston, the printer of the Georgia Gazette. Like most other newspapers published in 1769, a standard issue of the Georgia Gazette consisted of four pages created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and then folding it in half. With two columns per page, Johnston distributed a total of eight columns of content to subscribers and other readers in each issue. The advertisements concerning enslaved men, women, and children in the June 21 edition accounted for an entire column, a substantial proportion of the issue.

Elsewhere in the newspaper Johnston inserted news items, many of them concerning the deteriorating relationship between Britain and the colonies. These articles originated in Boston, London, and other faraway places. Readers of the Georgia Gazette had access to information about the imperial crisis, including resistance efforts throughout the colonies, in part because the fees generated from advertisements for enslaved men, women, and children contributed to the ongoing publication of the colony’s only newspaper. Enslavement and liberty appeared in stark contrast in the pages of the newspaper but also in the ledger kept by the printer. Articles and editorials advocating liberty found their way before the eyes of readers thanks to advertising fees paid for the purpose of sustaining slavery.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 21, 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 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 12
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 1
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 2
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 3
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 4
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 5
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 6
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 7
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 8
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 9
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 10
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

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Jun 21 - Georgia Gazette Slavery 11
Georgia Gazette (June 21, 1769).

June 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jun 20 - 6:20:1769 Essex Gazette
Essex Gazette (June 20, 1769).

“CANDLES … Very cheap.”

On Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, selecting which advertisement to feature on the Adverts 250 Project is often particularly difficult due to three factors: the original publication schedule in 1769, incomplete digitization of extant eighteenth-century newspapers, and the limits of my own ability to read German.

The project incorporates approximately two dozen newspapers printed in the American colonies in 1769. Each newspaper was published once a week, with the exception of the semi-weekly Boston Chronicle. For a few months near the end of the year, the New-York Chronicle also experimented with circulating two issues each week. (This innovation did not save the New-Chronicle from ending its run with its January 4, 1770, edition.) The publication days were not spread evenly throughout the week. The majority of newspapers were published on Mondays and Thursdays (the corresponding dates in 2019 falling on Wednesdays and Saturdays). For the purposes of the Adverts 250 Project, this means many newspapers and many advertisements to choose among on those days. On other days, however, the featured advertisement comes from the single newspaper published on that day. Such is the case for the Georgia Gazette, published on Wednesdays (corresponding to dates that fall on Fridays in 2019) and the Providence Gazette (corresponding to dates that fall on Mondays in 2019). The number of advertisements, especially advertisements promoting consumer goods and services, varied from week to week in those newspapers, often limiting the choices available for this project.

Although more than one newspaper was published in colonial America on Tuesdays in 1769 (corresponding to dates that fall on Thursdays in 2019), incomplete digitization also limits the available choices. Issues of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal published in 1769 have been transcribed, but not digitized. Issues published in both 1768 and 1770 have been digitized; advertisements drawn from that newspaper regularly appeared in the Adverts 250 Project in 2018 and will return in 2020. Published in the bustling port of Charleston, this newspaper usually ran two entire pages of advertising and often four. In contrast, the Essex Gazette, founded in 1768, has been digitized, but it did not feature nearly as many advertisements in 1769 as its counterparts in the largest port cities. The number of advertisements more closely matched newspapers from smaller towns on the same days as those published in Boston, Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia. As a result of the abundance of advertisements in those newspapers, the publications from smaller cities and towns are often eclipsed because they ran far fewer paid notices. As the only newspaper available to consult on Thursdays, however, the Essex Gazette (like the Providence Gazette on Mondays and the Georgia Gazette on Fridays) is disproportionately represented in the Adverts 250 Project due to the methodology that calls for selecting advertisements published 250 years ago that day.

The Essex Gazette, however, is not the only newspaper published on Tuesdays in 1769 that has been digitized. All fifty-two issues of the Wochentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote, published to serve the growing population of German settlers in Philadelphia and its environs, have been digitized. Despite their availability, I rarely include advertisements from that newspaper in this project because I do not read German well enough to work with the Wochentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote regularly. This means that the range of newspapers that appear in the Adverts 250 Project on Thursdays has been circumscribed compared to those published in 1769 on the corresponding days. The choice has been narrowed from three – the Essex Gazette, the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, and the Wochentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote – to only one – the Essex Gazette alone. As a result, the Essex Gazette has been overrepresented in the Adverts 250 Project throughout 2019.

In addition to examining what advertisements from 1769 tell us about commerce, politics, and everyday life in the era of the imperial crisis, it is important to realize how the methodology of the project shapes which advertisements receive attention. Despite the relatively small number of advertisements in the Essex Gazette and the Georgia Gazette, perhaps it is beneficial that the methodology forces their inclusion in the project. Otherwise, it might be tempting to turn almost exclusively to newspapers published in the largest and busiest port cities, newspapers that overflowed with advertising. Some particular newspapers may be overrepresented in the project, but overall their inclusion insures a balance between newspapers published in major ports and their counterparts in smaller towns.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 20, 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 20 - Essex Gazette Slavery 1
Essex Gazette (June 20, 1769).