Month: June 2020

June 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Jun 30 - 6:30:1770 Providence Gazette
Providence Gazette (June 30, 1770).

“BLANKS.”

John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, used the colophon to promote the various goods and services available “at his PRINTING-OFFICE, the Sign of Shakespeare’s Head.”  He advised the community that he accepted “Subscriptions, Advertisements, Articles and Letters of Intelligence” for the newspaper and performed “all Manner of PRINTING-WORK.”  In addition to job printing, Carter also produced a variety of blanks or printed forms for commercial and legal purposes, from “Bills of Lading” and “Policies of Insurance” to “Long and short Powers of Attorney” and “Summonses for the Superior and Inferior Courts.”  Carter did not, however, mention blanks in the colophon; instead, he regularly ran advertisements about them.

Consider the extant issues of the Providence Gazette for 1770.  The America’s Historical Newspapers database includes fifty-one of the fifty-two issues published on Saturdays that year.  (It includes the supplement, but not the standard issue, for February 10.)  Advertisements for blanks appeared in thirty-two of those issues, nearly two out of three published that year.  This suggests that Carter considered blanks an important supplement to the revenue he earned from subscriptions, advertising, and job printing.  Those advertisements took three forms.  A short version consisted of only two lines that informed readers “BLANKS of all Kinds Sold by the Printer hereof.”  It ran fifteen times.[1]  A variation ran twice more.[2]  It added two lines promoting “A fresh Parcel of DEEDS, printed on beautiful Paper.”  A lengthier advertisement listed a dozen blanks for use in Rhode Island as well as “various Kinds of Blanks for the Colony of CONNECTICUT.”  Carter served a regional market.  That advertisement ran fifteen times.[3]

In addition to increasing revenues, these advertisements had another purpose.  They operated as filler in the sense that they completed the columns and the pages of the Providence Gazette, often appearing at the bottom of a column.  The compositor chose the advertisement of the appropriate length to fill the space.  While that use of these advertisements should not be overlooked, it also should not be exaggerated.  The issues of the Providence Gazette that did not include any version of the advertisement for blanks tended to feature advertisements for almanacs, pamphlets, and books sold at the printing office.  Carter reserved space in his newspaper for advertisements about his own merchandise, highlighting new publications when they came off the press but reverting to notices about blanks on other occasions.

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[1] February 3, 17, 24; March 3; July 28; August 4, 18; September 1, 22; October 20, 27; November 3, 24; December 1, 8.

[2] November 10, 17.

[3] March 17, 24; April 14, 21, 28; May 12, 19, 26; June 2, 9, 16, 23, 30; July 7, 14.

June 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Jun 29 - 6:29:1770 New-Hampshire Gazette
New-Hampshire Gazette (June 29, 1770).

“A SQUIB—-To the Tune of Miss Dawson’s Hornpipe.”

In June 1770, watchmaker John Simnet was unrelenting in the criticism of rival Nathaniel Sheaff Griffith.  For three consecutive weeks, he published advertisements featuring new insults in the New-Hampshire Gazette.  For nearly a year and a half the two watchmakers traded barbs in the public prints, beginning almost as soon as Simnet set up shop in the colony, but their exchanges had previously been intermittent.  Neither had previously directed so many advertisements at the other so quickly.  Simnet likely incurred additional fees in choosing this manner of pursuing his vendetta against Griffith.  Advertisers usually paid a flat fee for setting type and running notices for several weeks; inserting a notice once and replacing it with a different advertisement the following week created more work in the printing office.  Auctioneers tended to run new advertisements with details about upcoming sales every week, but other purveyors of goods and services usually ran their advertisements for multiple weeks.

Simnet commenced this series of advertisements on June 15 with a two-part notice that first compared Griffith to a rat and then published one of his bills for the public to determine whether Griffith charged fair prices.  In another two-part advertisement on June 22, Simnet reiterated the rat metaphor and supplemented it with a poem that denigrated both Griffith’s character and skills as a watchmaker.  The advertisement in the June 29 edition of the New-Hampshire Gazetteagain had two parts.  The first was fairly innocuous, deploying strategies that any watchmaker might have incorporated into an advertisement.  It briefly stated, “WATCHES KEPT in REPAIR for Two Shillings and six pence Sterling per YEAR: Clean’d for thos who desire them done cheap, for a Pistereen, and Repairs in Proportion.  By J. SIMNET: Parade.”  It was in the second portion, “A SQUIB—-To the Tune of Miss Dawson’s Hornpipe,” that Simnet attacked Griffith.  That poem was not nearly as clever as the one Simnet published the previous week.  It mocked Griffith’s appearance and “foolish Face,” but did not mention his character nor the quality of his work.  Yet it may have been all the more memorable as a means of repeatedly demeaning Griffith since Simnet provided instructions for setting it to music.  Reader could sing or hum a bit to themselves, intentionally to see how Simnet’s lyrics fit the tune and unintentionally if the music got stuck in their heads.  Rather than create an advertising jingle that made his own business more memorable, Simnet attempted to use music in a manner that encouraged the community of readers to repeatedly belittle his competitor.

Slavery Advertisements Published on June 29, 1770

Parker Sears Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Parker Sears

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Parker Sears served as guest curator for this entry. Working on this project fulfilled his senior capstone requirement for completing the major in History at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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

Jun 29 - New-London Gazette slavery 1
New London Gazette (June 29, 1770)

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Jun 29 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette slavery 1
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 29, 1770)

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Jun 29 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette slavery 3
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 29, 1770)

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Jun 29 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette slavery 4
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 29, 1770)

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Jun 29 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette slavery 5
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 29, 1770)

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Jun 29 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette slavery 6
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 29, 1770)

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Jun 29 - South-Carolina and American General Gazette Slavery 2
South-Carolina and American General Gazette (June 29, 1770)

June 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Jun 28 - 6:28:1770 Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury (June 28, 1770).

“English GOODS, imported agreeable to the Non-importation Agreement.”

Joshua Gardner listed a variety of imported “English GOODS” in his advertisement in the June 28, 1770 edition, of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  Before even enumerating the “blue capuchin silks” or the “horn & ivory combs” or the “brass candlesticks,” Gardner first informed prospective customers and the entire community of readers that he imported his wares “agreeable to the Non-importation Agreement.”  Among the advertisers who promoted consumer goods and services in that issue of the News-Letter, Gardner was not alone in asserting when he had acquired his inventory.  Oliver Greenleaf advertised “Umbrilloes,” an exotic and fashionable accessory, as well as “a Variety of other Articles.”  Rather than a preamble, he incorporated a postscript pledging that “All … were imported agreeable to the Merchants Agreement.”  Similarly, Smith and Atkinson stated in a nota bene that they carried “A small Assortment of English Goods, (imported before the late Agreements of the Merchants).”  Other advertisers made similar claims in notices inserted in other newspapers published in Boston that week.

With the repeal of all of the Townshend duties on imported goods with the exception of tea, the fate of nonimportation agreements throughout the colonies became uncertain.  When word of the repeal arrived in the colonies in May 1770, merchants in New York quickly dissolved their agreement and resumed trade with their counterparts in England.  In late June, the agreements in Boston and Philadelphia still remained in effect, though neither would survive to the end of the year.  Gardner, Greenleaf, and Smith and Atkinson likely realized that the agreement adopted by Boston’s merchants might not last much longer; for the moment, their merchandise had the cachet of promoting political principles, but once the nonimportation agreement collapsed and competitors began importing new goods from England their wares imported before the agreement went into effect would become leftovers that had lingered on the shelves and in warehouses.  In composing their advertisements, Gardner and others may have suspected that they had one last chance to link their merchandise to patriotic principles before new goods flooded the market.

Slavery Advertisements Published on June 28, 1770

Parker Sears Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Parker Sears

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Parker Sears served as guest curator for this entry. Working on this project fulfilled his senior capstone requirement for completing the major in History at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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

Jun 28 1770 - Maryland Gazette Slavery 1
Maryland Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 1770 - Maryland Gazette Slavery 2
Maryland Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 1770 - Maryland Gazette Slavery 3
Maryland Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter slavery 1
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter slavery 2
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter slavery 3
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - New-York Journal slavery 1
New-York Journal (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - New-York Journal slavery 2
New-York Journal (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Pennsylvania Gazette slavery 1
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Pennsylvania Gazette slavery 2
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Pennsylvania Gazette slavery 3
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Pennsylvania Gazette slavery 4
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Pennsylvania Gazette slavery 5
Pennsylvania Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - Pennsylvania Gazette slavery 6
Supplement to the Pennsylvania Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 1
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 2
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 3
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 4
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 5
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 6
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 7
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 8
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 9
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 10
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 11
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 12
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

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Jun 28 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 13
South-Carolina Gazette (June 28, 1770).

Welcome, Guest Curator Parker Sears!

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features ,

Parker SearsParker Sears is a 2020 graduate of Assumption College.  He double majored in History and Political Science. He is planning to attend graduate school to get a master’s degree in Statecraft and International Relations. He specializes in political philosophy, diplomacy, politics of the Middle East, European history, and American political thought. During his senior year at Assumption College, he received a Daniel Patrick Moynihan Scholarship and participated in the Model Senate. Parker earned Dean’s List honors throughout his junior and senior years.  Parker served as guest curator for the Slavery Adverts 250 Project during the Fall 2019 semester as part of his senior capstone seminar.  He composed tweets for advertisements republished by the project during the fall and conducted the research and prepared the entries for six weeks in late June through early August 2020.

Welcome, guest curator Parker Sears!

June 27

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jun 27 - 6:26:1770 South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

“RUN AWAY … a NEGRO fellow, named July.”

No newspaper advertisements concerning enslaved people appear via the Slavery Adverts 250 Project today, but that does not mean that no such advertisements were published in the American colonies on June 27, 1770.  The absence of these advertisements is a consequence of the Georgia Gazette no longer being part of the Slavery Adverts 250 Project as of May 23.  James Johnston continued publishing the Georgia Gazette into 1776, but many editions have been lost over time.  Any surviving copies published after May 23, 1770, have not been digitized, making them less accessible to scholars and others who wish to consult them.  Of the newspapers published in 1770 that have been digitized, the Georgia Gazette was the only publication regularly distributed on Wednesdays (with dates that correspond to Saturdays in 2020), though printers in Charleston occasionally published newspapers on Wednesdays.  As a result, the Slavery Adverts 250 Projectnow inadvertently gives the impression that no advertisements concerning enslaved people circulated in colonial America on Wednesdays in 1770 even though the Georgia Gazette usually included at least half a dozen such advertisements and often significantly more.

Unfortunately, the absence of these advertisements further obscures the stories that they tell about the experiences of enslaved people in the era of the imperial crisis that resulted in the American Revolution.  Today’s featured advertisement about an enslaved man who liberated himself, a man known to his enslavers as July, comes from the June 26, 1770, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal.  Filtered through the perspective of July’s enslaver, the advertisement tells a truncated story of Black agency and resistance similar to the stories told in advertisements that likely appeared in the Georgia Gazette on the following day.  Other advertisements in that missing issue likely told other kinds of stories, some of enslaved people for sale as individuals or in groups or “parcels” and others of enslaved people who attempted to liberate themselves but were captured and imprisoned until those who asserted mastery over them claimed them.  Advertisements that ran in other newspapers tell similar stories as those from the missing issues of the Georgia Gazette.

Relying on those proxies, however, does not as effectively reveal the number and frequency of advertisements concerning enslaved people that circulated in early American newspapers.  The Slavery Adverts 250 Project seeks not only to tell representative stories of enslaved people but also to demonstrate the magnitude of newspaper advertising as a means of perpetuating slavery in early America by identifying and republishing as many advertisements as possible, making the evidence impossible to ignore.  Like any examination of the past, work on the Slavery Adverts 250 Project is sometimes constrained by which sources have survived and are accessible and which have not survived or are not accessible. Despite its endeavor toward comprehensiveness, the Slavery Adverts 250 Project is not presenting newspaper advertisements originally published on June 27, 1770; that does not mean that advertisements concerning enslaved people did not circulate in the American colonies on that day, only that the sources are not known to exist at this time.

June 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jun 26 - 6:26:1770 South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

“BLANK QUIRE BOOKS … for the Benefit of Merchants and Shopkeepers.”

Charles Crouch, the printer of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, frequently distributed advertisements for his own goods and services throughout the newspaper.  Readers regularly encountered those notices as they perused the others.  The June 26, 1770, edition, for instance, featured four advertisements promoting Crouch’s business.  At least one appeared on every page that included advertising.  Two were short notices, one advising readers that Crouch sold blanks (printed forms) and writing paper and the other announcing “A new CATECHISM for CHILDREN” for sale “by the Printer hereof.”  A lengthier advertisement called on “all Persons indebted to him” to settle accounts or risk facing legal action.  In it, Crouch also noted that he “has plenty of Hands, and will undertake any Kind of Printing-Work.”

The printer aimed all or part of each of those advertisements to all readers.  His other advertisement, however, offered products of particular interest to merchants and shopkeepers.  For their recordkeeping needs, he provided “BLANK QUIRE BOOKS, ruled and unruled” as well as “Blank Receipt Books.”  In addition, he also sold “an Abstract of An Act for regulating and ascertaining the Rates of Wharfage of Ships and Merchandize, and also for ascertaining the Rates of Storage in Charles-Town, passed the Twelfth Day of April, 1768.”  Published “for the Benefit of Merchants and Shopkeepers,” such reference material would aid them in making decisions related to their businesses.  Crouch likely wished to bundle the blank books and the “Abstract of An Act,” increasing sales by selling them together.  Introducing the idea in the newspaper advertisement set the stage for making the suggestion when customers visited his printing office. Those who already contemplated purchasing both yet remained undecided when they arrived at the printing office might have been more susceptible to a recommendation offered at the point of sale.  Given how Crouch sprinkled short advertisements for his own goods and services throughout the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, he could have created two shorter advertisements, one about blank books for recordkeeping and the other about the “Abstract of An Act.”  Instead, he chose to advertise them together, associating each with the other in the minds of prospective customers.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 26, 1770

Jenna Smith Guest Contribution, Slavery Adverts 250 Project

Guest Curator: Jenna Smith

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Jenna Smith served as guest curator for this entry. Working on this project fulfilled her senior capstone requirement for completing the major in History at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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

Jun 26 - Essex Gazette Slavery 1
Essex Gazette (June 26, 1770).

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Jun 26 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 1
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

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Jun 26 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 2
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

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Jun 26 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 3
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

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Jun 26 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 4
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

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Jun 26 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 5
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

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Jun 26 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 6
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

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Jun 26 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 7
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

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Jun 26 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Slavery 8
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 26, 1770).

June 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , ,

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

Jun 25 - 6:25:1770 Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (June 25, 1770).

“The above Goods were imported before the Merchants Agreement.”

John Nazro sold a variety of goods at his shop in Boston.  In an advertisement in the June 25, 1770, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, he listed dozens of items, mostly textiles and accessories to adorn garments.  He concluded the notice with a nota bene directing prospective customers and the entire community to take note that it “may be depended upon” that “the above Goods were imported before the Merchants Agreement.”  In so doing, Nazro acknowledged that the nonimportation agreement was still in effect, at least in Boston.

Word of the repeal of the Townshend duties on imported goods, with the exception of tea, had arrived in the colonies in May.  Almost immediately, merchants in New York abandoned their nonimportation agreement, eager to resume trade.  The agreements in Boston and Philadelphia, however, continued throughout the summer; some merchants in those cities hoped to continue to use economic leverage to exert influence over British imperial policy.  They unsuccessfully attempted to convince their peers to extend the nonimportation agreement.  In September, Philadelphia followed New York.  By the end of October, merchants in Boston also voted to resume trade with Britain, even as some still wished to arrange a meeting with their counterparts in other cities.

As debates about resuming trade took place in Boston, Nazro proclaimed that he abided by the nonimportation agreement.  Some readers of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy might have interpreted that a form of encouragement for continuing the agreement.  At the very least, Nazro sought to demonstrate to the community that even in those uncertain times he followed the pact that had been adopted and not yet formally dissolved.  He took his cue from the community of merchants in his city, not the actions of Parliament in repealing most of the Townshend duties or the merchants in New York who so quickly returned to business as usual.  Nazro suggested that customers could feel confident making purchases at his shop because neither he nor they deviated from the nonimportation agreement still in place in Boston.