Catherine Hurlburt is a sophomore at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is a double major in History and Secondary Education. She is especially interested in American History. Beyond her studies, Catherine is a member of the Assumption University Competition Dance Team as well as a recipient of the Light the Way Scholarship. She made her contributions to the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project while enrolled in HIS 359 Revolutionary America, 1763-1815, in Fall 2021.
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.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
New-York Journal (March 19, 1772).
“The manufacture he governs is 100 miles from real.”
It was probably only a matter of time before John Simnet, “WATCH-FINISHER, and Manufacturer, of London,” engaged in a war of words with a competitor in New York. In late 1768, he migrated to New Hampshire and began placing advertisements in the New-Hampshire Gazette. Over the next eighteen months, Simnet developed a rivalry with Nathaniel Sheaff Griffith, a watchmaker who already resided there. The two waged a feud in their advertisements in the public prints, though Simnet was often more aggressive. In a series of newspaper notices, the newcomer ridiculed his rival’s skill and intelligence before deciding to relocate to New York in the summer of 1770. He occasionally published advertisements in his new city, but focused on promoting his own business rather than denigrating competitors.
That changed in March 1772. In fairness to Simnet, another watchmaker, James Yeoman, seemed to start the dispute when he published an advertisement that seemed to critique the “WATCH-FINISHER, and Manufacturer, of London.” In an advertisement that first ran in the March 12 edition of the New-York Journal, Yeoman listed his credentials, stating that he “received his Instructions in the Business from the ingenious Mr. Neale, (whose great Knowledge in Mechanics was well known),” and declared that he “can with Propriety declare himself a real Manufacturer, having had the Government of a large Manufactory from its Infancy to its Maturity, one Hundred Miles from London.” Yeoman cast doubt on Simnet’s description of his occupation and work in London. As a further insult, he declared, “The above is not the Result of Vanity or Parade, for, should it be doubted, proper Testimonial shall be produced to prove the Assertion.” Yeoman suggested that Simnet’s advertisements consisted of nothing more than puffery.
Perhaps the argument started before anything appeared in print. Simnet and Yeoman may have exchanged words in person before Yeoman took to the pages of the New-York Journal. Once Yeoman published his advertisement, Simnet responded in the next issue, updating a notice that previously ran for four weeks. He doubled the length of his notice, starting with an introduction that instructed that “Persons who write in public on this art, where faith is be reposed, should consult their ability, and have strict regard to – not pull down truth.” Sinnet did not mention Yeoman by name, but it was clear that his description of “Hocus Pocus” addressed the content of Yeoman’s advertisement. In ridiculing an unnamed rival, Simnet remarked that the “manufacture he governs is 100 miles from real,” alluding to Yeoman’s claim that he managed “a large Manufactory … one Hundred Miles from London.” Simnet also quoted Yeoman’s proclamation that he repaired clocks and watches “as cheap as by any Person in this City” in his own notice. “As cheap as any person in this city,–can we save the value of a bowl of punch, or a turkey by reading that? –alas–No.” He further underscored that “words are wind, and declare the expresser full of emptiness” before concluding with a poem that cast aspersions on Neale, Yeoman’s mentor.
No matter who started the dispute, Simnet and Yeoman took their argument to the public prints. Simnet once again had a rival to denigrate in his advertisements. Purveyors of goods and services rarely resorted to negative advertising, usually preferring to promote their own businesses and largely ignoring their competitors. They often stated that they possessed the greatest skill or offered the lowest prices, but rarely did they directly critique or even address others who provided the same goods and services. That made Simnet and Yeoman’s advertisements all the more notable and perhaps even entertaining for readers.
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.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 16, 1772).
“Enquire of the printer.”
Printing offices were hubs for circulating information in colonial America, but not all of the information that passed through printing offices appeared in print. Printers obtained and managed far more information than they could publish in newspapers and pamphlets or on broadside and handbills. In addition, some of their customers gave instructions not to disseminate certain information in print. As a result, printers received and wrote letters and engaged in conversations with colonizers who visited their printing offices.
Advertisements that appeared in colonial newspapers made clear that printers possessed much more information than fit on the page or that the advertisers wanted made public. Hugh Gaine, the printer of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, and printers throughout the colonies regularly published “enquire of the printer” advertisements that instructed readers interested in learning more details to contact the printing office. In some cases, but not all, the names of the advertisers did not even appear. Instead, advertisers often entrusted printers with the responsibility of an initial exchange with readers who responded to newspaper notices.
Printers have recently received attention for the role they played in perpetuating the slave trade by serving as brokers for “enquire of the printer” advertisements, but those were not the only instances of printers acting as agents on behalf of advertisers by disseminating additional information that did not appear in print.[1] Consider some of the advertisements that Gaine published in the March 16, 1772, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury. One offered for sale the “TAN-YARD belonging to the Estate of Mr. John Robbins … with the Utensils thereunto belonging.” It advised readers to “apply to Mr. Abraham Mesier … or the Printer hereof” for particulars. The employment advertisement that ran immediately below it instructed “a young lad” interested in assisting in “taking care of a large store, in a very agreeable part of the country, about 50 miles from this city” to “Enquire of the printer” for more details. Gaine served as a local agent for an advertiser who resided some distance from New York. In another advertisement, a local resident who “FOUND the case of a gold watch” let the owner know that they could claim it by “proving their property, and paying the charges of this advertisement, by applying to the printer.”
Gaine managed the flow of information through his printing office at the Bible and Crown in Hanover Square in New York in the 1770s. He often acted as an agent or broker on behalf of advertisers, supplying additional information that did not appear in newspaper notices to colonizers who heeded the instruction to “enquire of the printer.” From real estate deals to employment opportunities to lost and found items to enslaved people for sale, printers throughout the colonies often assumed responsibilities beyond printing notices in newspapers.
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[1] For printers’ role in perpetuating the slave trade, see 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.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Essex Gazette (March 17, 1772).
“A large ASSORTMENT of Hard-Ware GOODS.”
I found that this advertisement interesting because Jacob Ashton owned a shop in Salem, Massachusetts, about 50 miles from my hometown. I connected with this advertisement because my grandfather was a carpenter who owned a small shop and sold similar materials. Jacob Ashton sold a wide variety of hardware and other goods, including nails, case knives, hammers, teaspoons and tablespoons, frying pans, knitting needles, gun powder, cinnamon, brass clocks, and just about anything in between.
In the “Meet the Carpenter” podcast from Colonial Williamsburg, master carpenter Garlin Wood explains what it was like to be a carpenter during the era of the American Revolution. In particular, he describes the differences between different woodworkers. A carpenter focused on the construction of the timber frame. A joiner used similar tools as a carpenter but focused on the finishing of the house, such as panel doors and paneling. A cabinetmaker focused on constructing furniture that belonged inside the house. Garlin describes the importance that carpenters and other woodworkers had in early America. In Colonial Williamsburg, then and now, carpenters built everything by hand and used tools such as chisels and mallets. According to Garlin, many carpenters in early America were savvy businessmen who used their trade to move into the gentry. When it comes to his work as a carpenter, he likes the idea of putting a roof over other people’s heads.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
When I invite students enrolled in my classes to serve as guest curators for the Adverts 250 Project, I am always interested in which advertisements they choose to feature and which aspects of those advertisements they choose to examine in greater detail. I appreciate that they select advertisements that I might have otherwise overlooked, that they investigate aspects that did not initially resonate for me and, in the process, demonstrate the significance of something that I might have otherwise dismissed, and that they identify a range of sources about early American history. As guest curators, my students are junior colleagues who help me to continue learning and asking new questions about familiar sources even as I engage in mentoring and teaching them.
That was the case when working with Matt on this entry. In his absence, I would have chosen a different advertisement in the Essex Gazette, one in which Abraham Cornish offered a guarantee on the fishhooks he made in Boston and pledged to provide two new hooks for each one found defective. In his role as guest curator, however, Matt determined which advertisement he wanted to examine … and then demonstrated why his choice was just as sound as the one I would have made. If I had chosen to analyze Ashton’s advertisement for “Hard-Ware GOODS,” I would have focused primarily on the range of choices he offered to consumers and the low prices that he promised. Matt, inspired by his grandfather, instead opted to examine the kinds of work undertaken by the customers who purchased many of the items listed in Ashton’s advertisement. He identified the various roles of woodworkers in early America, outlining the contributions of carpenters, joiners, and cabinetmakers. To do so, he sought information from a public historian who interprets the past through re-creating the experiences of eighteenth-century carpenters at Colonial Williamsburg. In working on a digital humanities project for his college course about the era of the American Revolution, Matt consulted the expertise of a public historian, demonstrating that no one kind of historian has a monopoly on knowledge about the past. Matt’s experience as a guest curator, the many ways in which his contribution enhances the Adverts 250 Project, underscores why I believe it is so important to incorporate my own research and digital humanities projects into the classes I teach.
Matthew Holbrook is a sophomore at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is from Grafton, Massachusetts. He is a Business major with a minor in Sports Management. His interests in History include World War II, Holocaust, and the Great Depression. Outside of the classroom, he is on the baseball team at Assumption. He also enjoys doing community service at local elementary schools in Worcester. In the future, Matthew hopes to work for a professional sports team in the front office. Her made his contributions to the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project when enrolled in HIS 359 Revolutionary America, 1763-1815, in Fall 2021.
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.
Connecticut Courant (March 17, 1772).
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Addition to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Addition to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Addition to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 17, 1772).
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Pennsylvania Packet (March 16, 1772).
“Proposes to engage his performance for one year, provided the owners do not abuse the same.”
When Thomas Morgan, a watch- and clockmaker, relocated from Philadelphia to a shop on Gay Street in Baltimore in the early 1770s, he placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Packet, published in Philadelphia. Why did he advertise in a newspaper published in the town he left rather than one published in his new town? Baltimore did not yet have its own newspaper. Colonizers in Baltimore and the surrounding area depended on the Maryland Gazette, published in Annapolis, and several newspapers published in Philadelphia, including the Pennsylvania Packet, as regional newspapers. When he placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Packet, Morgan anticipated that prospective customers in Baltimore would see it.
In addition, he deployed other marketing strategies. He marked his new location in Baltimore with “THE SIGN OF THE ARCH DIAL,” a visual statement to all passersby about what kind of business he operated. He also offered a guarantee for repairing and cleaning watches and clocks, stating that he would “engage his performance for one year, provided the owners do not abuse the same.” In other words, the guarantee remained in effect only if customers treated their clocks and watches well. That included not subjecting their timepieces to “unskilful hands” who did more harm than good. Morgan lamented that “many good watches are greatly abused for want of experience” by artisans who purported to possess skills that they did not. In so doing, Morgan made appeals similar to those that John Simnet, a watchmaker in New York, included in his newspaper advertisements. He also offered guarantees of his work, contingent on how customers treated their clocks and watches, and warned against trusting inexperienced watch- and clockmakers who damaged the timepieces entrusted to them.
Morgan invited “Any Gentleman” to visit his new location in Baltimore, promising that they may “have new Watches and Clocks made after the neat and best construction.” To encourage those previously unfamiliar with his work, he indicated that he already attracted new clients and “most gratefully acknowledges the many favours received from the Public, and hopes for the continuance of them.” Morgan hoped that advertising in the Pennsylvania Packet would further ease the transition after setting up shop in a new town.
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.
Boston Evening-Post (March 16, 1772).
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Supplement to the Boston-Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (March 16, 1772).
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Pennsylvania Packet (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 16, 1772).
