Month: July 2020

July 31

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

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

Jul 31 - 7:31:1770 South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770).

“The Gentlemen who please to favour us with their Subscriptions, shall have their Names carefully published in an alphabetical List.”

Like many books, maps were often published by subscription in the eighteenth-century.  Mapmakers published subscription notices to incite demand as well as gauge interest in their projects.  Doing so also allowed them to avoid some of the risk inherent in the enterprise.  Upon attracting a sufficient number of subscribers, they moved forward with confidence in the financial viability of the project.  On occasions that they lacked subscribers, they knew that it was not worth the time and resources required to publish a book or print a map.  Subscription lists also gave them a sense of how many copies to produce in order to avoid producing a large quantity that did not sell and counted against the financial success of the venture.

In the summer of 1770, James Cook and Tacitus Gaillard published “PROPOSALS FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR THE DRAUGHTS Of SOUTH-CAROLOINA,” their subscription notice for a map of the colony.  They presented this undertaking as a community endeavor, first noting that their work “has met with the Approbation of the Honourable the COMMONS HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY” and stating that they hoped their “Proposals will merit the Favour of the Public.”  Subscribers did not need to contact Cook and Gaillard directly.  Instead, they designated local agents who gathered names on their behalf, listing them at the conclusion of the advertisement.  Those agents included several prominent merchants and planters as well as Peter Timothy, the printer of the South-Carolina Gazette.  In addition, “sundry other Gentlemen of each Parish” also accepted subscriptions and reported them to Cook and Gaillard.  The mapmakers gave the impression that their project already had the support – and the financial backing through subscriptions of their own – of some of the most prominent men in the colony.

Cook and Gaillard offered subscribers an opportunity to join the ranks of those prominent men … and to enjoy public recognition that they had done so.  “The Gentlemen who please to favour us with their Subscriptions,” the mapmakers promised, “shall have their Names carefully published in an alphabetical List, unless they desire the contrary.”  Books and maps published by subscription often featured such lists that acknowledged the benefactors that made the projects possible.  Publishing subscription lists drew together in one place all the members of the community that supported these projects, giving subscribers the chance to associate with others in a manner that remained visible to the public long after they subscribed, paid for, and collected their books and maps.  These lists became lasting records of which colonists supported the publication of books and maps.  Cook and Gaillard’s marketing strategy suggested that securing a spot on their subscription list was nearly as alluring as acquiring a copy of their beautifully rendered map.  Subscribers purchased prestige along with the map.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 31, 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.

Jul 31 - Essex Gazette slavery 1
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 1
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 2
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 3
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 4
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 5
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 6
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 7
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 8
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

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Jul 31 - South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal slavery 9
South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 31, 1770)

July 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jul 30 - 7:30:1770 New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 30, 1770).

“TO BE SOLD, By ELIZABETH VAN DYCK.”

The front page of the July 30, 1770, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury featured a letter “To the PRINTER” reprinted from the Public Ledger and several advertisements for consumers goods.  Many of those notices used the names of the advertisers as headlines, setting them in larger type and often in capitals.  At a glance, readers saw that ABEEL & BYVANCK; GEORGE BALL; RICHARD CURSON; Herman Gouverneur; Greg, Cunningham and Co.; PHILIP LIVINGSTON; JOHN McKENNEY; and ELIZABETH VAN DYCK all offered goods for sale to consumers in the city and beyond.

In many ways, those advertisements each resembled the others.  With the exception of George Ball and the partnership of Abeel and Byvanck, each advertiser purchased a “square” of space and filled most of it with a short list of their merchandise.  Abeel and Byvanck’s advertisement occupied two squares and George Ball’s four.  Each of those longer advertisements divided the list of goods into two columns, as did Richard Curson’s advertisement.  With minor variations, these advertisements for consumer goods adhered to a standard format.

That meant that the most distinguishing feature of Elizabeth Van Dyck’s advertisement was that it promoted a business operated by a female entrepreneur.  Women comprised a substantial minority of shopkeepers in colonial American port cities, with some estimates running as high as four out of ten.  Yet they did not place newspaper advertisements in proportion to their presence in the marketplace as purveyors of goods rather than consumers.  Van Dyck was the only female shopkeeper who advertised in that issue of New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, while more than a dozen advertisements for consumer goods deployed men’s names as their headlines.  No female shopkeepers advertised in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Post-Boy published the same day, nor the New-York Journal three days later.

The representation of the marketplace among the advertisements in New York’s newspapers presented it as primarily the domain of men, at least as far as wholesalers and retailers were concerned.  Even though women operated shops in the bustling port in the early 1770s, they did not establish a presence in the public prints in proportion to their numbers.  When Van Dyck chose to join the ranks of her male counterparts who advertised, she composed a notice that conformed to the standard format.  She struck a careful balance, calling attention to her business but not calling too much attention to it.  In so doing, she claimed space for herself in the market, both the actual market and the representation of it in the newspaper, while demonstrating that women’s activities as entrepreneurs need not be disruptive to good order.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 30, 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.

Jul 30 - Boston Gazette slavery 2
Boston Gazette (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - Boston Gazette slavery 3
Boston Gazette (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - Boston Gazette slavery 4
Boston Gazette (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - Boston-Gazette slavery 1
Boston Gazette (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - Connecticut Courant slavery 1
Connecticut Courant (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury slavery 1
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury slavery 3
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury slavery 5
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - New-York Gazette, and Weekly Mercury slavery 2
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - New-York Gazette, and Weekly Mercury slavery 4
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - New-York Gazette or Weekly Post-Boy slavery 1
New-York Gazette or Weekly Post-Boy (July 30, 1770)

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Jul 30 - New-York Gazette or Weekly Post-Boy slavery 2
New-York Gazette or Weekly Post-Boy (July 30, 1770)

July 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jul 29 - 7:26:1770 Virginia Gazette Rind
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770).
“He purposes to return to this LAND of LIBERTY.”

In the summer of 1770, William Wylie, a watchmaker, took to the pages of William Rind’s Virginia Gazette to inform the community that he would soon depart for Britain.  He made “his grateful acknowledgments to those Ladies and Gentlemen, who have hitherto employed him,” but he had other purposes for placing his advertisement.  He requested “that those who have omitted sending the money for the repairing their watches” would settle accounts before his departure.  He did not explain why he was making the voyage, but did state that he needed the money “to accomplish his design, in going to Britain.”  Wylie also pledged to return to Virginia and wanted former and prospective customers to keep him in mind for their watchmaking needs.  He hoped that loyal customers would once again hire him after his temporary absence.

Wylie also injected politics into his advertisement.  He proclaimed that he planned “to return to this LAND of LIBERTY as soon as possible,” using capital letters for added emphasis for his description of Virginia.  Paying to insert his advertisement in the newspaper also allowed the watchmaker an opportunity to express political views in the public prints as he went about his other business.  As printer and editor, Rind selected the content when it came to news, editorials, and entertaining pieces, but he exercised less direct control over the content of advertisements.  Wylie could have submitted a letter to the editor in which he extolled the virtues of “this LAND of LIBERTY,” but with far less certainty that Rind would print it than an advertisement in which the watchmaker commented on his political views in the course of communicating with his customers.  Besides, presenting a homily on politics to readers of Rind’s Virginia Gazette does not appear to have been Wylie’s primary purpose in publishing the advertisement.  All the same, he made a deliberate choice to deviate from the standard format for the type of advertisement he placed.  Nothing about the goals he wished to achieve required that he opine about politics at all, but Wylie purchased the space in the newspaper and had the liberty to embellish his advertisement as he wished.  In turn, readers of Rind’s Virginia Gazette encountered political commentary among the advertisements in addition to the news and editorials elsewhere in the newspaper.

July 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jul 28 - 7:28:1770 Providence Gazette
Providence Gazette (July 28, 1770).

“JOSEPH AND Wm. RUSSELL.”

Joseph Russell and William Russell were among Providence’s mercantile elite in the decade prior to the American Revolution.  They conducted business at a shop marked by the Sign of the Golden Eagle, a device that became inextricably associated with the Russells.  Their name and the sign were interchangeable in advertisements that ran in the Providence Gazette.  Sometimes their notices included their names and the sign, sometimes just their names, and sometimes just the sign.  When advertisements included just their names, readers knew that they could find the Russells at the Sign of the Golden Eagle.  When advertisements directed readers to the Sign of the Golden Eagle, they knew that they would be dealing with the Russells.  No matter which configuration appeared in their advertisements, the Russells’ use of the public prints to promote their various enterprises enhanced and contributed to their visibility as prominent merchants.

They achieved that visibility with a variety of novel approaches to advertising, including full-page advertisements and multiple advertisements in a single issue.  In November 1766, they published what may have been the first full-page advertisement for consumer goods in an American newspaper.  (This excludes book catalogs that printer-booksellers inserted into their own newspapers, taking advantage of their access to the press.)  In addition, placing multiple advertisements per issue helped keep their names in the public eye, a strategy adopted by a small number of advertisers in the largest port cities.  Consider the July 28, 1770, edition of the Providence Gazette.  It featured fourteen paid notices and a short advertisement for blanks inserted by the printer.  Of those fourteen advertisements, the Russells placed two, one on each page that had advertisements.  One of them presented various commodities for sale, while the other offered cash in exchange for potash and salts.  The Russells certainly were not the only American entrepreneurs to use the strategy of drawing readers’ attention to their names multiple times in a single issue of a newspaper, but they were the only ones who did so regularly in the Providence Gazette, a publication that tended to run fewer advertisements than its counterparts in Boston, Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia.  As a result, their advertisements were all the more noticeable because they competed with fewer others for attention.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 28, 1770

Parker Sears Slavery Adverts 250 Project, Uncategorized

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.

Jul 28 - Providence Gazette slavery 1
Providence Gazette (July 28, 1770)

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Jul 28 - Providence Gazette slavery 2
Providence Gazette (July 28, 1770)

July 27

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Jul 27 - 7:27:1770 New-Hampshire Gazette
New-Hampshire Gazette (July 27, 1770).

“TEA … West-India and New-England RUM … handsome colour’d WILTONS.”

Thomas Martin advertised an assortment of goods available at his store in Portsmouth in the July 27, 1770, edition of the New-Hampshire Gazette.  He listed everything from coffee, tea, and sugar to hammers, nails, and files to handkerchiefs, stockings, and shoes.  His inventory was so extensive that his advertisement filled half a column and still concluded with “&c. &c.” to indicate that he did not have space to include everything consumers could find at his store.  (Colonists used “&c.” as an abbreviation for et cetera.)

Like many other advertisements of the era, Martin’s notice looked like a dense block of text.  To modern readers, this has little visual appeal, but Martin likely focused on other aspects of the advertisement in his efforts to market his wares.  In particular, he may have expected the length to attract the attention of prospective customers.  Few advertisements for consumer goods and services in the New-Hampshire Gazette occupied so much space.  Martin borrowed a strategy from advertisers in larger port cities where newspapers much more often ran such lengthy advertisements for consumer goods.  The long list of goods communicated the variety and consumer choice that Martin offered his customers.  They could acquire all sorts of grocery items, hardware, housewares, clothing, and accessories during a single visit to Martin’s store, combining choice and convenience.

Despite the density of the prose, Martin did deploy a couple of visual elements to aid readers in navigating his advertisement.  At various points he inserted lengthy dashes to break what otherwise would have been an undifferentiated paragraph into smaller pieces.  He also capitalized two words to draw attention to those products:  “West-India and New-England RUM” and “handsome colour’d WILTONS,” a popular kind of carpet.  (“TEA” was also capitalized, but that was standard for the first item listed in advertisements of this sort.)  While Martin did not make elaborate use of typography to lend visual appeal to his advertisement, he did not overlook using it entirely.  His advertisement incorporated more variation than the news articles that appeared elsewhere in the same issue of the New-Hampshire Gazette.  The effectiveness of Martin’s advertisement should be considered in relation to other items, both advertisements and news items, that it ran alongside.

July 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jul 26 - 7:26:1770 South-Carolina Gazette
South-Carolina Gazette (July 26, 1770).

“LIBERTY.  A POEM”

“A NEGRO CARPENTER.”

On July 26, 1770, at least thirty-one advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children appeared in newspapers published throughout the thirteen colonies that declared independence from Great Britain later in the decade.  Those advertisements ran in newspapers in every region of colonial America, not just the southern colonies with the largest populations of enslaved people.  In New England, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury carried such advertisements, as did the New-York Journal, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the Pennsylvania Journal in the Middle Atlantic.  In the Chesapeake, the Maryland Gazette and Rind’s Virginia Gazette ran more of these advertisements.  Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette almost certainly did as well, but the July 26, 1770, edition has not been digitized for consultation by scholars and other readers.

In the Lower South, the South-Carolina Gazette also circulated advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children, including one that offered a “NEGRO CARPENTER” and a “young NEGRO WENCH” for sale.  That advertisement ran immediately below an advertisement for “LIBERTY. A POEM. Dedicated to the SONS OF LIBERTY in SOUTH-CAROLINA” offered for sale in the printing offices where Peter Timothy published the South-Carolina Gazette and Charles Crouch published the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, another newspaper that regularly distributed advertisements offering enslaved people for sale or offering rewards for the capture of enslaved people who liberated themselves by running away from colonists who attempted to hold them in bondage.

As the Slavery Adverts 250 Project demonstrates, advertisements about enslaved people were ubiquitous in newspapers printed throughout the colonies.  The same newspapers that carried those advertisements also documented the events and debates of the imperial crisis that culminated in the American Revolution.  As printers shaped public discourse about how Parliament abused the colonies, they simultaneously profited from publishing advertisements that perpetuated the enslavement of Africans and African Americans.  David Waldstreicher offered an overview in “Reading the Runaways:  Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic” in 1999.[1]  In 2020, Jordan E. Taylor provides a much more extensive examination in “Enquire of the Printer:  Newspaper Advertising and the Moral Economy of the North American Slave Trade, 1704-1807.”[2]  Colonial printers facilitated the slave trade and played an integral role in the surveillance of Black bodies in eighteenth-century America.

Those activities occurred within the same pages of newspapers that ran articles and editorials … and advertisements for consumers goods … that advocated “LIBERTY” for white colonists.  Sometimes advertisements about enslaved people and editorials about liberty appeared on different pages, but considering that most newspapers of the era consisted of only four pages (or six when they included a supplement) they were always within close proximity.  Such was the case for an advertisement for a “Likely young Negro Girl” that ran in the supplement that accompanied the March 26, 1768, edition of the New-York Journal.  The supplement also included letters from “A TRUE PATRIOT” and “POPULUS” that warned that Parliament actively eroded American liberties.  In other instances, as Taylor demonstrates, advertisements about enslaved people ran next to articles and editorials that demanded liberty for white colonists.  Sometimes advertisements delivered the news, such as a notice about a “new Non-Importation Agreement” that ran immediately above an advertisement offering an enslaved man and woman for sale in the January 25, edition of the New-York Journal.

Other times, advertisements about consumer goods and commerce played slavery and liberty in stark juxtaposition.  Consider an advertisement for a “Likely Negro LAD,” a skilled cooper, that ran immediately above Nathaniel Frazier’s advertisement for “a very good assortment of Fall and Winter GOODS” in the October 3, 1769, edition of the Essex Gazette, published in Salem, Massachusetts.  Frazier assured prospective customers and the entire community that he acquired those goods prior to the nonimportation agreement adopted to protest the duties on certain imported goods imposed by the Townshend Acts.  Frazier offered white colonists an opportunity to defend American liberties and practice politics via their choices about consumption at the same time that an “Enquire of the Printer” advertisement reduced an enslaved cooper to a commodity to be traded in the marketplace.

The paradox of liberty and enslavement was vividly apparent in the advertisements that ran in the South-Carolina Gazette 250 years ago today.  In a single glance, readers encountered an invitation to purchase an ode to “LIBERTY” dedicated to the Sons of Liberty and a notice that perpetuated the enslavement of a Black carpenter and a young Black woman who possessed several domestic skills.  This example provides a particularly stark demonstration of unevenly applied ideologies of liberty in the era of the American Revolution and the founding of the nation.  Eighteenth-century readers regularly encountered such contradictions in the contents of newspapers.

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[1] David Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 56, no. 2 (April 1999): 243–272.

[2] Jordan E. Taylor, “Enquire of the Printer:  Newspaper Advertising and the Moral Economy of the North American Slave Trade, 1704-1807,” Early American Studies:  An Interdisciplinary Journal 18, no. 3 (Summer 2020):  287-323.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 26, 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.

Jul 26 1770 - Maryland Gazette Slavery 1
Maryland Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 1770 - Maryland Gazette Slavery 2
Maryland Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 1770 - Maryland Gazette Slavery 3
Maryland Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter slavery 1
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - New-York Journal slavery 1
New-York Journal (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - New-York Journal slavery 2
New-York Journal (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - New-York Journal slavery 3
New-York Journal (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - New-York Journal slavery 4
New-York Journal (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - New-York Journal slavery 5
New-York Journal (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Pennsylvania Gazette slavery 1
Pennsylvania Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Pennsylvania Journal slavery 1
Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Pennsylvania Journal slavery 2
Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Pennsylvania Journal slavery 3
Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser slavery 4
Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser slavery 5
Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 1
South-Carolina Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 2
South-Carolina Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 3
South-Carolina Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 4
South-Carolina Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 5
South-Carolina Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - South-Carolina Gazette slavery 6
South-Carolina Gazette (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 1
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 2
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 3
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 4
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 5
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 6
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 7
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 8
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 9
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)

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Jul 26 - Virginia Gazette Rind slavery 10
Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 26, 1770)