Month: March 2022

March 9

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 9, 1772).

“Will be celebrated, the Anniversary of the REPEAL OF THE STAMP-ACT.”

A manicule called attention to an announcement about an upcoming event, a dinner commemorating the repeal of the Stamp Act, when the organizers advertised it in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury in March 1772.  “ON Wednesday the 18th,” the notice proclaimed, “at the House of Mr. DE LA MONTAGNIE, will be celebrated, the Anniversary of the REPEAL OF THE STAMP-ACT, by those Gentlemen, and their Friends, who associated there last Year.”  The gathering marked the sixth anniversary.  Even before colonizers declared independence, they established traditions for commemorating some of the events that caused the American Revolution.  In New York, they held annual dinners to celebrate colonial resistance that contributed to the repeal of the Stamp Act.  In Boston, colonizers gathered annually for orations about the Bloody Massacre in King Street.  In person and in print, colonizers participated in a culture of commemoration of the revolutionary era before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord.

The advertisement in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury invited newcomers to join those who had previously celebrated.  It alerted “Gentlemen … who associated there last Year” to return, but also encouraged “their Friends” to attend the dinner held on the sixth anniversary of the king giving royal assent on March 18 to a resolution to repeal the Stamp Act passed by Parliament on February 21, 1766.  News of the repeal arrived in the colonies in May, inciting a round of celebrations at that time as well.  The advertisement for the annual gathering “at the House of Mr. DE LA MONTAGNIE” reminded readers, even those who did not intend to attend, that the anniversary was approaching.  It likely prompted many to recall the protests and the nonimportation agreements that colonizers organized in opposition to the Stamp Act as well as subsequent actions taken against the duties imposed on certain imported goods in the Townshend Acts.  Merely announcing a dinner held to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act served as an abbreviated editorial about politics and recent events.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 9, 1772

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements 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-Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 9, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Chronicle (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (March 9, 1772).

March 8

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

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

Pennsylvania Journal (March 5, 1772).

“There is another edition, JUST PUBLISHED.”

Get a copy while they are still available!  That was the message that William Bradford and Thomas Bradford delivered to prospective customers in Philadelphia when they advertised their own edition of A Dissertation on the Gout, and All Chronic Diseases by William Cadogan, a “Fellow of the College of PHYSICIANS.”  The Bradfords noted that “a number of Gentlemen were disappointed in the purchase of the first publication” so they set about producing “another edition” in order to meet demand.  Still, copies went so fast the first time around that the Bradfords warned consumers not to miss their opportunity to purchase the volume this time.

The printers underscored the popularity of the book on both sides of the Atlantic, stating that it was “so much esteemed in England, that it has already past through Eight Editions.”  This testified to the reputation it had earned.  Printers would not have published so many editions, the Bradfords implied, if the public did not clamor for them.  Furthermore, all sorts of people, not just physicians, found the “rational METHOD of CURE” helpful.  “The Doctrines advanced,” the Bradfords advised, “are delivered in a familiar style, which renders them intelligible to Gentlemen of all professions, as well as to Physicians.”

The Bradfords were not alone in publishing American editions of Cadogan’s Dissertation on the Gout in 1772.  Printers in two other cities produced their own editions.  Hugh Gaine did so in New York, while John Boyle, Benjamin Edes and John Gill, and Henry Knox published competing editions in Boston.  In Philadelphia, Robert Aitken appended the work to William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine or, The Family Physician, perhaps as a bonus intended to make the entire volume more attractive to perspective customers.  With a “first publication” that sold out in 1771, the Bradfords confirmed that Cadogan’s Dissertation on the Gout likely had as much potential in American markets as it did in England.

March 7

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (March 7, 1772).

“Several Negroes to be sold, belonging to said Estate.”

Estate notices regularly ran among the advertisements in the Providence Gazette and other colonial newspapers.  On March 7, 1772, for instance, Deborah Paget and Joseph Olney inserted a notice calling on “ALL Persons who have any Accounts against the Estate of HENRY PAGET, Esq; late of Providence, deceased, … to bring them to us … for Settlement.”  Similarly, they requested that “all those who are in any Manner indebted to said Estate … make immediate Payment” so Paget and Olney “may be enabled to discharge the Debts due from said Estate.”

The notice also included a nota bene that advised, “Several Negroes to be sold, belonging to the said Estate.”  That was not the only mention of enslaved people for sale in that edition of the Providence Gazette.  Another advertisement proclaimed, “TO BE SOLD, FOR no Fault, but for Want of Employ, a stout, likely NEGRO MAN, who understands Farming, and almost all other Kinds of Business.”  No colonizer signed that advertisement.  Instead, it instructed anyone interested in purchasing the enslaved man to “Enquire of the Printer.”  In this instance, John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, not only generated revenue from disseminating the advertisement but also served as a broker in the slave trade.  Throughout the colonies, newspaper printers regularly assumed that dual role.

Elsewhere in the March 7 edition of the Providence Gazette, Carter reprinted an essay that ran in the Essex Gazette two weeks earlier.  It made a case for the colonies united in a “Grand American Commonwealth” to become “an independent state,” noting that “liberty has taken deep root in America, and cannot be eradicated by all the Tories in the universe.”  The author, who adopted the pseudonym “FORESIGHT,” challenged printers to fill the pages of newspapers “with essays against the present tyranny” perpetrated by Britain.  Carter may have believed that he joined that effort by reprinting the essay, but his decision to publish advertisements offering enslaved people for sale and to act as a broker in those transaction demonstrated the juxtaposition of liberty and enslavement in the era of the American Revolution.  Over and over, throughout the colonies, printers promoted the rights of colonizers against the tyranny of Britain while simultaneously perpetuating slavery and the slave trade.  Revenues generated from advertisements offering enslaved people for sale helped fund essays that advocated for the liberties of American colonizers.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 7, 1772

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements 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.

Providence Gazette (March 7, 1772).

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Providence Gazette (March 7, 1772).

March 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-Hampshire Gazette (March 6, 1772).

“A few of the New-Hampshire Registers … may be had at the Printing-Office.”

The “Civil, Military & Ecclesiastical REGISTER of the Province of New-Hampshire, for the YEAR 1772” apparently did not sell as well as the printers, Daniel Fowle and Robert Fowle, hoped.   They first advertised the volume in their newspaper, the New-Hampshire Gazette, on December 13, 1771.  That notice included a lengthy list of the contents.  A week later, they supplemented the original copy with an explanation intended to convince colonizers to purchase a copy of their own.  “Every Gentleman who holds an Office,” the Fowles declared, “and has the Honor of having it recorded in the above Register, undoubtedly ought and will furnish himself with one.”  Furthermore, “other Persons should have them, in order rightly to know their Superiors.”  From the “Governor, Council and House of Representatives” to “Justices of the Peace through the Province and for each County,” the Register listed officials throughout the colony.

Nearly three months after first advertising the Register, the Fowles inserted a shorter notice (but in much larger type) to alert prospective customers that “A few of the New-Hampshire Registers, very necessary for all sorts of People, may be had at the Printing-Office.”  They continued to insist that they sold an invaluable resource for colonizers to consult in a variety of circumstances, but they no longer devoted as much space to making that assertion.  Prospective customers likely needed more convincing.  The Fowles did not publish an updated register in 1773 nor in any subsequent year.  Other printers did so in 1779 and 1787, but the Fowles seemingly did not encounter enough success with the project in 1772 to justify making another attempt.  Perhaps more extensive advertising might have helped to create a more robust market, but the Fowles may have determined that no amount of marketing would so significantly improve sales to make another edition worthy of the time and expense necessary to produce it.  Even with their access to the press and ability to run as many advertisements as they wished, the Fowles had surplus copies of the register that cut into any profits they might have earned.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 6, 1772

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements 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 Journal (March 6, 1772).

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New-London Gazette (March 6, 1772).

March 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (March 5, 1772).

“MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS … At the Head of the Long-Wharf, King-Street, BOSTON.”

Thick black mourning borders enclosed the columns of the March 5, 1772, edition of the Massachusetts Spy.  Isaiah Thomas, one of the most ardent patriots among the printers in Boston, commemorated the second anniversary of the Bloody Massacre, the Massacre in King Street, better known today as the Boston Massacre.  Colonial printers most often used mourning borders when announcing the death of an official (including Francis Fauquier, lieutenant governor of Virginia, in March 1768) or a prominent figure (including George Whitefield, a minister associated with the revivals now known as the Great Awakening, in September 1770), but in the 1760s and 1770s American printers also deployed mourning borders to lament the death of liberty, doing so in response to the Stamp Act and the “HORRID MASSACRE! Perpetrated in King-street.”

On the second anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Thomas did more than frame the content of the Massachusetts Spywithin mourning borders.  A woodcut depicting a skull and bones, familiar from the Stamp Act protests, appeared near the top of the first column on the front page, just below several lines about massacre that Thomas attributed to Shakespeare.  The printer also inserted a letter written on the occasion of the anniversary of the “fifth of March … to appear with the labours of those able and assiduous patriots, who have rendered the Spy the terror of tyrants, the scourge of traitors, and expositor of the violent and fraudulent usurpations of a set of villains partaking largely the nature of both.”  Thomas also published a memorial to “FIVE of your fellow countrymen, GRAY, MAVERICK, CALDWELL, ATTUCKS and CARR … most inhumanly MURDERED … By a Party of the XXIXth Regiment, Under the command of Capt. Tho. Preston.”  The memorial linked the Boston Massacre to the murder of Christopher Seider, an “innocent youth,” by Ebenezer Richardson, “Informer, And tool to Ministerial hirelings,” on February 22, 1770, just two weeks before the events in King Street.  The memorial expressed dismay that even though Richardson “was found guilty By his Country On Friday April 20th, 1770,” he “Remains UNHANGED” on “This day, MARCH FIFTH! 1772.”  The memorial concluded with a proclamation that “the PRESS” should “Remain FREE” as “a SCOURGE to Tyrannical Rulers.”

The mourning borders did not enclose just the memorial, editorials, and other content related to the Boston Massacre.  Instead, they appeared on all four pages, enclosing even the advertisements for cookbooks, “ENGLISH GOODS,” almanacs, and mathematical instruments.  Even if readers chose to skip over the dense essays that appeared elsewhere in the newspaper, they could not miss the mourning borders when they perused the advertisements.  Merely reading the advertisements on the final page of the Massachusetts Spy required colonizers to engage with the politics of the period.

Slavery Advertisements Published March 5, 1772

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements 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.

Maryland Gazette (March 5, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (March 5, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (March 5, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (March 5, 1772).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (March 5, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (March 5, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (March 5, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (March 5, 1772).

March 4

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

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

Boston-Gazette (March 2, 1772).

“THE FRUGAL HOUSEWIFE … By SUSANNAH CARTER.”

In 1772, Benjamin Edes and John Gill, printers of the Boston-Gazette, published an American edition of The Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook by Susannah Carter of London.  The book included “Five Hundred approved Receipts” for everything from roasting and frying to sauces and soups to tarts and puddings to jellies and custards as well as instructions for preserving, pickling, and candying various foods.  In addition, Carter provided “Various BILLS of FARE, For DINNERS and SUPPERS in every Month of the Year” to guide readers in consulting the many recipes and choosing which items to prepare together.  The book also featured “a copious Index of the whole” to help readers find the recipes.  Edes and Gill promised that “Any Person, by attending to the Instructions given in this Book, may soon attain to a compleat Knowledge in the Art of Cookery.”

The printers marketed The Frugal Housewife in their own newspaper, but they also turned to other publications in their effort to create a larger market for what they believed had the potential to be a popular American edition of a cookbook first published in London in the 1760s.  On March 2, 1772, they ran advertisements in both the Boston Evening-Post and the Boston-Gazette.  Three days later, they placed an advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy.  The notices in the other newspapers were not as elaborate as the one that appeared in their own.  The version in the Boston-Evening Post, for instance, did not include the price nor the nota bene assuring prospective customers that they would acquire “a complete Knowledge” of cooking.  The version in the Massachusetts Spy, on the other hand, included both of those items as well as a note that the book “contains more in Quantity than most other Books of a much higher Price.”  It did not, however, feature the distinctive typography with only two items on each line that made the notices in the other newspapers occupy significantly more space.  Instead, a dense list of the contents comprised most of the content of the advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy.

Edes and Gill sought to expand their marketing and sales by placing advertisements in multiple newspapers.  Though they exercised control over the copy, they did not exert as much influence when it came to the format.  Compositors who labored in other printing offices made decisions about the appearance of Edes and Gill’s advertisements for The Frugal Housewife.