Month: January 2022

January 2

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

GUEST CURATOR:  Benjamin Andonian

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

Massachusetts Spy (January 2, 1772).

“WANTED immediately, a Journeyman COMPOSITER.”

This advertisement struck me because it was related to the production of the newspapers we were reading in class.  This advertisement “WANTED immediately” a compositor at a newspaper. I thought it would be interesting to learn about what a compositor is and how this might increase my knowledge of early American newspapers.

The invention of movable type opened the door for a new age of printing in Europe in the 1500s.  That meant new crafts and careers, including compositors. Compositors arranged the letters in advance of them being covered in ink.  Historian Liz Covart describes the job expectations step by step.  The compositor starts with the composition stick, placing letters in proper order.  The placement of letters is done in opposite order, right to left, so they appear right side up and left to right on final edition.  After a quick check to clean up errors, compositors place their work in a chase to be inked up and printed.

I found it very interesting how the printing press offered positions for compositors and others to make the newspapers we read in class and consulted for this project.  Each sentence, letter, and word or punctuation mark was positioned by a compositor like the one sought in this advertisement.  Seeing such a specific job and the steps involved made me think of the process today and the new jobs and careers that the internet has created, like the printing press did in early America.  Lily Talavera expands on this in an article about the booming market for social media jobs.  According to Talavera, “Social media has created a new category of jobs. You may have heard them as social media jobs or with other names relevant to the requested tasks. These jobs are in high demand, and many people already work full-time on social media.”  Innovations in delivering news today have a similar effect on creating new kinds of jobs as an innovation like the printing press had in creating jobs for compositors in the early modern period.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

When I taught a course about Revolutionary America, 1763-1815, in Fall 2021, I once again incorporated the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project.  I asked each of the twenty-three students in the class to serve as guest curators for those projects.  Each of them was responsible for compiling a digital archive of newspapers originally published during a particular week in 1772.  Then they scoured the newspapers to identify advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children for inclusion in the Slavery Adverts 250 Project.  For each of those advertisements, the guest curators composed tweets that included the project’s tagline, a quotation, and a citation.  For the Adverts 250 Project, each student selected one advertisement to research in greater detail, consulting at least one secondary source by an historian of early America, and then wrote an entry about what they learned and what the advertisement reveals about some aspect of commerce, politics, or daily life during the era of the American Revolution.

Ben is the first of the students from that class to have his work as a guest curator appear on the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project.  In many ways, it is very fitting that he starts the entries researched and written for that class with one that examines an advertisement about the printing trade.  We devoted a lot of time to discussing print culture, consumer culture, slavery, and their intersections during the era of the American Revolution.  Compositors set the type for the newspapers, broadsides (including the Declaration of Independence), and pamphlets (such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense) that kept colonizers informed during the imperial crisis and, ultimately, encouraged them to sever their political allegiance to Great Britain.  Compositors also set the type for the countless newspaper advertisements that offered enslaved people for sale or promised rewards for the capture and return of those who liberated themselves from their enslavers.  Liberty and slavery appeared side by side on the pages of newspaper published during the era of the American Revolution.  Compositors also set the type for advertisements for consumer goods as well as essays that critiqued consumption and editorials that advocated nonimportation agreements and promoted “domestic manufactures” as means of exerting economic pressure to achieve political ends.

I invited students to contemplate all of these developments, not only in the abstract but also taking into consideration actual people and their experiences during the era of the American Revolution.  This advertisement for a “Journeyman COMPOSITER” provides a springboard for considering the many themes woven throughout the Revolutionary America class that I designed and that Ben completed.  Throughout the colonies, compositors played a role in presenting news and opinions about current events to the public.  They also played a role in shaping consumer culture and perpetuating slavery.  Beyond their contributions to producing the printed page, compositors made decisions about their own political activities and what kind of society they wanted to emerge from the American Revolution.  That being the case, Ben’s choice of an advertisement to start a new round of entries from guest curators is very fitting indeed.

Welcome, Guest Curator Benjamin Andonian

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , ,

Benjamin “Ben” Andonian is a sophomore double majoring in History and Education at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. His considers ancient Egypt and ancient Rome especially intriguing. Outside the classroom, Ben is actively involved in the sports world, playing pickup basketball and soccer.  He also closely follows the NBA and the NFL. Ben hopes to take his interests in education and history to become a high school history teacher while simultaneously pursuing his sports interests, possibly creating a sports podcast with friends. He conducted the research for his contributions as guest curator for the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project when he enrolled in HIS 359 Revolutionary America, 1763-1815, in Fall 2021.

Welcome, guest curator Ben Andonian!

Slavery Advertisements Published January 2, 1772

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Benjamin Andonian

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 about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – 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 colonizers 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. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. 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 enslavers rather than enslaved people 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.

Pennsylvania Gazette (January 2, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (January 2, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (January 2, 1772).

January 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Packet (December 30, 1771).

“JOHN CARNAN … AT THE GOLDEN LION.”

In its exploration of advertising and daily life in colonial America, the Adverts 250 Project features an advertisement originally published in an American newspaper 250 years ago that day … on most days.  It is not always possible, however, to select an advertisement from the exact date.  Two factors play significant roles.  First, no printers produced newspapers on Sundays, which means that once a week the Adverts 250 Project instead features an advertisement published sometime during the previous week 250 years ago.

Second, most newspapers were weekly publications.  Even though printers staggered the dates they distributed new issues (with clusters on Mondays and Thursdays), at least one newspaper appeared somewhere in the colonies every day of the week (Sundays excepted) throughout most of the late 1760s and early 1770s, the period covered by the Adverts 250 Project.  (I say most of the late 1760s and early 1770s because several newspapers ceased publication while the Stamp Act was in effect in late 1765 and early 1766.  As a result, fewer newspapers appeared on fewer days of the week for several months.)  Even though printers published and disseminated newspapers every day except Sundays, copies of those newspapers have not necessarily survived in research libraries, historical societies, and other collections.  Those still extant have not all been digitized, making them difficult to access for inclusion in the Adverts 250 Project.

January 1, 1772, is one of those days without any digitized newspapers to consider.  The first day of 1772 fell on a Wednesday, a day that printers did indeed publish newspapers.  Yet no newspapers for January 1, 1772, are available in any of the several databases that I consult in producing the Adverts 250 Project.  James Johnston printed the Georgia Gazette on Wednesdays, but that newspaper has not been part of the Adverts 250 Project since May 23, 2020, because the May 23, 1770, edition was the last one digitized.  According to Edward Connery Lathem’s Chronological Tables of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, no copies of the Georgia Gazette are extant from 1771 and very few have survived from 1772 and 1773.  Complete or extensive coverage exists for 1774 and 1775, but no copies published after 1770 have been digitized.

Johnston likely published a new edition of the Georgia Gazette on January 1, 1772.  It likely included at least a page of advertisements, including multiple notices about enslaved people for sale and others offering rewards for the capture and return of those who liberated themselves from their enslavers.  Yet no copy is available for examination and inclusion in the Adverts 250 Project, a reminder of one of the many factors that makes the curation of this project incomplete despite efforts to be as extensive as possible.  In addition, the Slavery Adverts 250 Project does not include every advertisement about enslaved people originally published in American newspapers 250 years ago, only those in newspapers that have been digitized.  Such advertisements were even more ubiquitous than the Slavery Adverts 250 Project demonstrates.

All of this means that the Adverts 250 Project does not begin 2022 with an advertisement from 1772.  Instead, I have selected an advertisement that ran in the Pennsylvania Packet on December 30, 1771.  Regular visitors to the Adverts 250 Project will recognize John Carnan’s notice with its distinctive woodcut depicting a golden lion, an image that has appeared on the project’s homepage since its inception.  I previously examined another advertisement placed by Carnan, that one in the Pennsylvania Gazette on August 1, 1771, the first time he included the image in one of his notices.  Tomorrow the Adverts 250 Project will feature its first advertisement from 1772, one selected by a student in my Revolutionary America class in Fall 2021.  We’ll get 1772 and 2022 started with an advertisement seeking a “Journeyman COMPOSITER” that Isaiah Thomas inserted in his own newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy.