Kelsey Savoy is a junior at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is majoring in Political Science with minors in Core Texts and Enduring Questions; Law, Ethics, and Constitutional Studies; and Philosophy. She is also a member of the Honors Program. Her ultimate goal is to go to law school and become a medical malpractice attorney. Her interests include American history and military history, specifically the eras of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II. She is currently working on her honors thesis project about realignment theory. She is a part of the varsity track and Field team and at home is a volunteer EMT in her town’s volunteer fire department. Kelsey made her 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.
Essex Gazette (May 26, 1772).
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Essex Gazette (May 26, 1772).
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Essex Gazette (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 26, 1772).
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (May 25, 1772).
“ALLEN … will sell … at a very little more than the Sterling Cost.”
Jolley Allen made his advertisements in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston Gazette, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter easy to recognize in the spring of 1772. Each of them featured a border comprised of ornamental type that separated Allen’s notices from other content. Allen previously deployed this strategy in 1766 and then renewed it in the May 21, 1772, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter. Four days later, advertisements with identical copy and distinctive borders ran in three other newspapers printed in town. Allen apparently gave instructions to the compositors at the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy. Those advertisements had copy identical to the notice in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, but the compositors made different decisions about the format (seen most readily in the border of Allen’s advertisement in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy). Allen’s advertisement in the Boston-Gazette, however, had exactly the same copy and format as the one in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter. For some of their advertisements, newspapers in Boston apparently shared type already set in other printing offices.
That seems to have been the case with Andrew Dexter’s advertisement. He also included a border around his notice in the May 21 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter. The same advertisement ran in the Boston Evening-Post four days later. It looks like this was another instance of transferring type already set from one printing office to another. The compositor for the Boston Evening-Post may have very carefully replicated the format of Dexter’s advertisement that ran in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury, but everything looks too similar for that to have been the case. In particular, an irregularity in closing the bottom right corner of the border suggests that the printing offices shared the type once a compositor set it. They might have also shared with the Boston-Gazette. Dexter’s advertisement also ran in that newspaper on May 25. It had the same line breaks and italics as Dexter’s notices in the other two newspapers. The border looks very similar, but does not have the telltale irregularity in the lower right corner. Did the compositor make minor adjustments?
It is important to note that these observations are based on examining digitized copies of the newspapers published in Boston in 1772. Consulting the originals might yield additional details that help to clarify whether two or more printing offices shared type when publishing these advertisements. At the very least, the variations in Allen’s advertisements make clear that he intentionally pursued a strategy of using borders to distinguish his advertisements in each newspaper that carried them. The extent that Dexter meant to do the same or simply benefited from the printing offices sharing type remains to be seen after further investigation.
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Left to Right: Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury (May 21, 1772); Boston-Gazette (May 25, 1772); Boston Evening-Post (May 25, 1772); Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (May 25, 1772).
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Left to Right: Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 21, 1772); Boston Evening-Post (May 25, 1772); Boston-Gazette (May 25, 1772).
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 (May 25, 1772).
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Newport Mercury (May 25, 1772).
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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 25, 1772).
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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 25, 1772).
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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 25, 1772).
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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 25, 1772).
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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 25, 1772).
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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 25, 1772).
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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 25, 1772).
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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 25, 1772).
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 21, 1772).
“Send their names to the Printers of this Paper.”
The supplement that accompanied the May 21, 1772, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette included “PROPOSALS FOR PUBLISHING BY SUBSCRIPTION, A MAP of the INTERIOR PARTS OF NORTH-AMERICA. By THOMAS HUTCHINS, Lieutenant in His Majesty’s Royal American Regiment, and Engineer.” Hutchins explained that the map depicted a region “which must soon become a most important and very interesting part of the British empire in America.” It included “the great rivers of Missisippi and Ohio, with the newest smaller streams which empty into them” as well as “Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan.” Hutchins asserted that the map “accurately delineated” the region, “a great part of the country and most of the rivers and lakes … laid down from surveys, corrected by the observation of latitudes, carefully executed by himself” during the Seven Years War and “since the final treaty with the western and northern Indians in 1764.” The map also incorporated “every considerable town of the various Indian Nations, who inhabit these regions.” The “extent of their respective claims,” Hutchins noted, “are also particularly pointed out.” Land speculators and settler colonizers certainly had their eyes on those “respective claims,” despite the Proclamation Line of 1763 that reserved that territory for indigenous peoples.
Hutchins declared that he would publish and deliver the map “as soon as the Subscribers amount to a number adequate to defray the unavoidable expence of the publication.” Like so many others who wished to publish books and maps, he did not intend to assume the financial risk without assurances that the project would meet with success. To that end, he invited “those in SOUTH-CAROLINA who may think proper to encourage” publishing the map to “as soon as possible, send their names to the Printers of this Paper.” Powell, Hughes and Company acted as local agents for subscribers. Hutching did not, however, restrict his marketing efforts to newspaper notices. He also distributed broadside subscription proposals that featured almost identical text. Measuring approximately thirteen inches by eight inches, a copy at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania includes blank space to insert the name of a local agent who could have posted the subscription notice in a retail shop or printing office. That accounts for the first variation in the text compared to the advertisement in the South-Carolina Gazette, an invitation for subscribers to “send their names to [blank]” rather than “send their names to the Printers of this Paper.” A short paragraph unique to the broadside notice followed that blank: “WE the Subscribers do agree to pay Lieutenant THOMAS HUTCHINS, or Order, for the above-mentioned Map and Analysis, ONE PISTOLE, on the receipt thereof, according to the Number affixed to our respective Names.” Additional blank space provided room for subscribers to add their names and indicate how many copies they wished to order. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s copy does not have any manuscript additions; no subscribers signed it to reserve their maps.
Newspaper advertisements provided the best opportunity to circulate subscription notices to the greatest number of prospective customers, but they were not the only means of inciting interest in books and maps. Hutchins and other entrepreneurs also distributed broadsides to local agents to facilitate recording the names of subscribers. I suspect that a greater number of those broadsides circulated in early America than survive today, increasing the frequency that colonizers encountered advertising media.
Broadside Subscription Proposal with Space for Subscribers to Add Names. Courtesy Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Providence Gazette (May 23, 1772).
“At the Sign of the BOOT, SHOE and SLIPPER.”
Joseph Gifford, a cordwainer, placed an advertisement in the May 23, 1772, edition of the Providence Gazette to inform prospective customers that he “NOW works in the Shop of Mr. THOMAS BURKET … on the main Street” and “makes and sells Boots, Half-Boots, Spatterdashes, Half-Spatterdashes, Shoes and Pumps of all Kinds.” To help clients find the shop, he clarified that “the Sign of the BOOT, SHOE and SLIPPER” marked its location.
Gifford was not the only advertiser who referenced a shop sign in giving directions, though not all of them matched their emblems so closely to their occupations. Jones and Allen sold “ENGLISH and INDIA GOODS” at the Sign of the Golden Ball on the west side of the Great Bridge. Thurber and Cahoon stocked a similar inventory at the Sign of the Bunch of Grapes on Constitution Street. In the North End of Providence, Edward Thurber carried a “fine Assortment of Grocery, Hardware, and Piece GOODS” at the Sign of the Brazen Lion. One advertisement for a “fine assortment of ENGLISH GOODS” did not name the purveyor of those items or give any directions other than stating that the goods were “At the GOLDEN EAGLE.” Anyone who resided in Providence for any length of time knew that Joseph Russell and William Russell, two of the city’s most prominent merchants, had a store at the Sign of the Golden Eagle. Further directions were not necessary. Even the colophon at the bottom of the final page of the newspaper made reference to a device that marked the location of the printing office. Subscribers, advertisers, and others could find John Carter, printer of the Providence Gazette, “at Shakespear’s Head, in King-Street, opposite the Court-House.”
Many more merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, tavernkeepers, and others marked their businesses with decorative signs, creating a rich visual landscape of advertising in colonial Providence and other towns. In many instances, those signs were synonymous with the proprietors of those businesses. Relatively few signs from the era survive, but newspaper advertisements testify to some of the sights that colonizers saw as they traversed the streets.
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?
Connecticut Journal (May 22, 1771).
“Mrs. SMITH takes this Method to acquaint the Ladies, That she makes up all Kind of Millenary.”
When Joseph Smith relocated from New York to New Haven, he took to the pages of the Connecticut Journal to “acquaint the Public, That he has open’d a Store … and has for Sale a Variety of fancy’d GOODS, proper for the Season.” He then listed a variety of textiles, including “Flower’d and plain Sattins of all colours,” “Strip’d Camblets,” and “Flower’d and strip’d Muslins.” He also carried accessories, such as “Black & white Silk & Thread Laces for Caps,” “Feathers & Flowers of all Colours,” and “All Kinds of Trimings for Cloaks.” In addition to enumerating dozens of items, Smith asserted that he stocked “sundry other Articles too tedious to mention.”
Although Smith presented himself as the primary purveyor of these goods, the advertisement revealed that his wife also contributed to the family business. In a brief note that followed the catalog of merchandise, she addressed prospective customers. “Mrs. SMITH takes this Method,” she declared, “to acquaint the Ladies, That she makes up all Kind of Millenary either plain or fashionable, such as Caps, Hats, Bonnets, Cloaks, Childrens Jockies, &c.” She provided an ancillary service that enhanced the retail business. She undoubtedly assisted her husband in serving customers, making recommendations about what was “plain or fashionable,” and taking care of other aspects of running the store, but her contributions did not end there. She was an entrepreneur in her own right, even if the advertisement emphasized Joseph as the proprietor and only made reference to her skills and labor at the very end. Still, Mrs. Smith gained greater visibility in the public prints than most wives, daughters, and other female relations who aided male heads of households in operating their businesses. Elsewhere in the same issue of the Connecticut Journal, Hubbard and Atwater, Isaac Beers and Elias Beers, and Paul Noyes advertised various goods, from medicines to textiles to leather breeches. None of their notices mentioned anyone other than the proprietors of their businesses, but all of them almost certainly benefited from invisible labor provided by women. Even in what appeared as a postscript to a much longer advertisement, Mrs. Smith gained greater public recognition as an entrepreneur than most other women did for their contributions to their family businesses.
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?
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 21, 1772).
“He will sell … at a very little more than the Sterling Cost.”
In an advertisement in the May 21, 1772, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, Jolley Allen announced that he adopted “an entire New Plan” for selling the “very LARGE and NEAT Assortment of English and India GOODS” at his shop on Marlborough Street. He declared that he would sell “HIS WHOLE Stock in Trade…, either by Wholesale or Retail, at a very little more than the Sterling Cost and Charges.” In other words, he did not mark up the prices significantly over what he paid to his suppliers. Allen expressed his confidence that “the Advantages that may arise to his Customers, will be equal if not superior to their purchasing at any Wholesale or Retail Shop or Store in Town or Country.” He was determined to beat his competitors.
The graphic design for Allen’s advertisement may have helped attract attention to his “new Plan” for selling imported goods. A border comprised of ornamental type enclosed the notice, setting it apart from the news and other advertisements on the page. That brought this advertisement in line with some that he previously published. He did not always incorporate a distinctive design element, but he more regularly did so than most advertisers. Sometimes ornamental type flanked his name in the headline of his advertisement. On other occasions he opted for borders. Both strategies appeared in more than one newspaper, suggesting that Allen gave specific instructions to the compositors rather than leaving the format to their discretion.
Curiously, Allen’s advertisement was not the only one in the May 21 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter to feature a border. Andrew Dexter’s advertisement had the same format, though a different printing ornament formed the border. This was not a standard format in that newspaper or any other newspaper published in Boston at the time. So how did two advertisements in the same issue happen to include borders? Did one advertiser overhear the other giving directions to the compositor when dropping off copy to the printing office? Or was it a coincidence? Whatever the explanation, the borders made their advertisements distinctive enough compared to the rest that readers likely took note of both of them.
