Month: June 2022

Slavery Advertisements Published June 25, 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 (June 25, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (June 25, 1772).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (June 25, 1772).

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New-York Journal (June 25, 1772).

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New-York Journal (June 25, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (June 25, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Journal (June 25, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Journal (June 25, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (June 25, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (June 25, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (June 25, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (June 25, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (June 25, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (June 25, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 25, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 25, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 25, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 25, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 25, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 25, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 25, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (June 25, 1772).

June 24

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

“Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette, and Country Journal.”

Charles Crouch, printer of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, had far more content than would fit in a standard issue on June 23, 1772.  Like other newspapers printed throughout the colonies, his weekly newspapers consisted of four pages created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and then folding it in half.  On that particular day, Crouch devoted two pages to news and two pages to advertising.  That left out a significant number of advertisements of all sorts, including legal notices, catalogs of goods sold by merchants and shopkeepers, and notices that described enslaved people who liberated themselves and offered rewards for their capture and return.  Since advertising represented significant revenue for printers, Crouch did not want to delay publishing those advertisements, especially since his newspaper competed with both the South-Carolina Gazette and the South-Carolina and American General Gazette to attract advertisers.

To solve the problem, Crouch printed and distributed a supplement comprised entirely of advertising.  From New England to South Carolina, printers often resorted to supplements when they found themselves in Crouch’s position.  Even as he devised the supplement to accompany the June 23 edition, Crouch carefully considered his resources and the amount of the content he needed to publish.  He selected a smaller sheet than the standard issue, one that allowed for only two columns instead of three.  That could have resulted in wide margins, but Crouch instead decided to print shorter advertisements in the margins, rotating type that had already been set to run perpendicular to the two main columns.  That created room for four additional advertisements per page, a total of sixteen over the four pages of the entire supplement.  With a bit of ingenuity, Crouch used type already set for previous issues or that could easily integrate into subsequent issues rather than (re)setting type just to accommodate the size of the sheet for the June 23 supplement.  Crouch managed to meet his obligation to advertisers who would have been displeased had he excluded their notices while simultaneously conserving and maximizing the resources available in his printing office.

June 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Connecticut Courant (June 23, 1772).

“Country Traders may depend on having their Ware pack’d in the best Manner.”

In the early 1770s, Ebenezer Bridgham operated the “Staffordshire & Liverpool Ware-House in King-Street, BOSTON,” where he stocked “a very large and compleat Assortment of China, Glass, Delph & Stone WARE.”  The merchant advertised in newspapers published in Boston, but he also sought to cultivate customers far beyond the city.  In the fall of 1771, he inserted advertisement in the Essex Gazette, the Providence Gazette, the Connecticut Courant, and the New-London Gazette.  He likely believed that those advertisements generated business because he once again placed advertisements in the Connecticut Courant in the summer of 1772.

Bridgham informed residents of Hartford and others who read the Connecticut Courant that his inventory of “China, Glass, Delph & Stone WARE” constituted “the greatest Variety to be met with in any Store in America, or perhaps in the whole World.”  If that was the case, then how could he confine himself to serving solely customers in Boston and its hinterlands?!  In addition, he negotiated with the “several manufacturers in Staffordshire and Liverpool” to acquire his inventory “on such Terms” that he could match the prices in London rather than marking up prices after transporting his goods across the Atlantic.  Furthermore, Bridgham vowed that “he will not be undersold by any person in America.”  In a regional advertising campaign, he made a bold claim that applied throughout the colonies, signaling to prospective customers in Connecticut that they did not need to look to merchants beyond New England, especially in nearby New York, for better bargains.

In particular, Bridgham hoped that retailers in small towns would respond to his advertisement.  He concluded with a nota bene advising that “Country Traders may depend on having their Ware pack’d in the best Manner, there being Packers provided from England for that Purpose” at his store.  Bridgham assured shopkeepers and others that their orders would arrive intact, free from damage and ready to sell to their own customers.  Orders from just a few “Country Traders” may have sufficiently offset the costs to justify running an advertisement in the Connecticut Journal.  Colonial newspapers circulated far beyond the cities and towns where they were published, disseminating advertisements as well as news.  Many merchants considered that sufficient to meet their marketing needs, but that was not the case for Bridgham when he decided to become a regional supplier of “China, Glass, Delph & Stone WARE” manufactured in Staffordshire and Liverpool.  Instead, he placed advertisements in newspapers published in several towns in New England in his effort to expand his share of the market.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 23, 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 Courant (June 23, 1772).

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Essex Gazette (June 23, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 23, 1772).

June 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston Evening-Post (June 22, 1772).

“A great Variety of European & India Goods.”

Many advertisers sought to convince prospective customers that they offered an array of choices to meet their tastes and budgets.  In the June 22, 1772, edition of the Boston Evening-Post, Timothy Newell promoted his “general Assortment of Hard Ware Goods.”  John Nazro hawked a “general Assortment of English, India, Irish and Scotch GOODS” and a “great Variety of Cutlery & Braziery Wares; with all Sorts of West-India Goods, Spices and other Groceries.”  Smith and Atkinson announced that they carried a large and very general Assortment of Piece GOODS.”  William Jackson even named his shop “Jackson’s Variety Store.”

Among the merchants and shopkeepers who made appeals to consumer choice in that edition of the Boston Evening-Post, William Scott published the lengthiest advertisement in an effort to demonstrate many of the different kinds of merchandise available at his “IRISH LINNEN Store.”  He listed dozens of items, from “Strip’d and flower’d bordered Aprons and Handkerchiefs” to “a variety of Ebony and Ivory paddle-stick & Leather Mount Fans” to “blue and white, red and white, green & white Furniture Checks with Nonesopretties to match” to “a variety of plain and striped and sprigg’d Muslins, such as Jaconets, Mull-Mulls, Mainsooks, Golden Cossacs, strip’d Doreas, and Book Muslins.”  The names of some textiles may seem unfamiliar to modern readers, but colonizers immersed in the consumer revolution readily identified Scott’s merchandise.  For some of these items, Scott offered an even larger selection, using descriptions like a “variety,” a “large assortment,” a “great variety,” and an “elegant assortment” to indicate that he often listed categories of goods rather than individual items.

In their advertisement, Smith and Atkinson declared it “would be equally tedious and unnecessary to enumerate” their inventory.  Scott disagreed … and he was willing to pay for the additional space necessary to transform his newspaper advertisement into a miniature catalog that accompanied the news in that issue of the Boston Evening-Post.  That did not stop him from adapting the strategy deployed by Smith and Atkinson.  Scott proclaimed that in addition to those items that he listed in his advertisement he also had “too great a Variety of small Goods to be inserted in this Advertisement.”  Where Smith and Atkinson signaled exasperation with lists of goods, Scott expressed disappointment that he could not provide an even more elaborate accounting of his merchandise for his customers.

Scott apparently considered this strategy worth the investment.  He ran the same advertisement in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and the Massachusetts Spy, thus placing it in three of the five newspapers published in Boston at the time.  He presumably expected an appropriate return on his investment or else he would have followed the lead of competitors who composed much shorter advertisement.  Scott encouraged consumers to imagine the many and varied choices that awaited them at his store, but he did not leave it solely to their imaginations.  He prompted them with a catalog of his wares in hopes that they would visit his shop to see for themselves.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 22, 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 Evening-Post (June 22, 1772).

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Boston-Gazette (June 22, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 22, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 22, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 22, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 22, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 22, 1772).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 22, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Chronicle (June 22, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Packet (June 22, 1772).

June 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New-York Journal (June 18, 1772).

“Those advantages cannot be obtained on carriages imported.”

Advertisers began encouraging consumers to “Buy American” before the American Revolution.  Such was the case in an advertisement that coachmaker William Deane placed in the New-York Journal for several weeks in May and June 1772.  He advised “the public in general and his customers in particular” that he made all sorts of carriages and did all of the painting, gilding, and japanning.  With an attention to detail, Deane “finishes all carriages whatever in his own shop without applying to any other,” utilizing his “considerable stock of the best of all materials fit for making carriages.”  Furthermore, the coachmaker declared his determination “to make them as good, sell them as cheap, and be as expeditious as there is a possibility.”

Deane competed with coachmakers in England.  Many colonizers preferred to purchase carriages from artisans on the other side of the Atlantic, but Deane asserted that imported carriages were merely more expensive but not superior in quality or craftsmanship to those he constructed in New York.  He proclaimed that he could “make any piece of work that is required equal to any imported from England, and will sell it at the prime cost of that imported.”  That accrued various benefits to his customers.  Deane explained that they “will save the freight, insurance, and the expences naturally attending in putting the carriages to right after they arrive.”  Why incur those addition expenses and risk purchasing carriages that needed repairs after shipping when Deane made and sold carriages of the same quality in New York?

In addition, Deane offered a guarantee, stating he “will engage his work for a year after it is delivered.”  That meant that “if any part gives way or fails by fair usage, he will make it good at his own expence.”  What did prospective customers have to lose by purchasing one of Deane’s carriages?  They paid less for the same quality, plus they had easy access to the maker for repairs, including repairs undertaken for free if the result of some defect.  “Those advantages cannot be obtained on carriages imported,” Deane trumpeted as he concluded making his case that consumers in the market for carriages should “Buy American” by choosing his carriages over any that they would import from England.  Two centuries later, car manufacturers deployed “Buy American” marketing campaigns as they competed in an increasingly globalized economy, but that strategy did not emerge from developments in the twentieth and twenty-first century.  Coachmakers like William Deane encouraged consumers to “Buy American” long before the creation of the modern automotive industry.

June 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (June 20, 1772).

“A Negro Man Servant, named CAESAR … sometimes pretends to be free.”

If readers perused the June 20, 1772, edition of the Providence Gazette from the first page to the last, the first advertisement they encountered concerned “a Negro Man Servant, named Caesar” who “RAN away” earlier in the month.  On behalf of Mrs. Payson, a widow in Woodstock, Connecticut, Paul Tew placed a notice that described Caesar, offered a reward for his capture and return, and threatened anyone who assisted him with prosecution.  That advertisement appeared immediately below a short news article about a spinning bee that took place in Barrington, Rhode Island, a few days earlier.  Even as John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, celebrated the industriousness and patriotism of “a Number of Ladies” who participated in safeguarding liberty by producing linen yarn as an alternative to imported textiles, he disseminated an advertisement that sought to deprive Caesar of his liberty.  The revenue Carter generated from that advertisement helped to make coverage of the spinning bee possible.

Tew provided an extensive description of Caesar that included his age, physical characteristics, linguistic ability, and clothing.  He invited colonizers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island who read the Providence Gazette, whether or not they were enslavers themselves, to participate in the surveillance of Black men to determine if anyone they saw or met matched the description in the newspaper.  Tew encouraged colonizers to take note of the appearance, comportment, and speech of Black men, judging for themselves what constituted “speak[ing] tolerable good English.”  Complicity in perpetuating slavery extended beyond Tew, the widow Payson, and the printer of the Providence Gazette to include readers who scrutinized Black men and, especially, those who confronted and detained anyone they suspected of being Caesar.  Tew reported that Caesar “sometimes pretends to be free,” but even being free did not protect Black men and women from inspection and harassment by colonizers accustomed to slavery as part of everyday life, even in New England, during the colonial era.

Slavery Advertisements Published June 20, 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 (June 20, 1772).

June 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-Hampshire Gazette (June 19, 1772).

“A Subscription … for the Amusement of the Public.”

The performance of “several serious and comic Pieces of Oratory, interspers’d with Music and Singing” first advertised in the June 5, 1772, edition of the New-Hampshire Gazette expanded into a series, even though the initial advertisement promoted an event for “This EVENING.”  The following week a similar advertisement appeared, with a few modifications.  It clarified that the performance would “begin at Eight o’Clock” and cautioned “No Person to be admitted without a Ticket.”  That implied that the previous performance had been so popular or had incited so much interest the next performance that colonizers interested in attending needed to secure admission in advance.

The advertisement ran in a third consecutive issue of the New-Hampshire Gazette, though greatly expanded with news that “the Exhibitor” had received such “great Encouragement” that he wished to satisfy “the natural Propensity the Ladies and Gentlemen seem to have [for] Dramatic Entertainments” that he created a subscription series to include “new and surprising Performances never seen in this Country, consisting of Italian Dances, and Pantomimical Interludes in Grotesque Characters, with elegant Scenes and Machinery and every other Decoration.”  The Exhibitor compared the elaborate productions to performances at the famous Sadler’s Wells Theater in London, suggesting that audiences would partake in similar cosmopolitan entertainments in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The Exhibitor, who also referred to himself as “the Projector,” listed ticker prices for both subscribers and non-subscribers.  He promised that “Tickets will be transferable,” encouraging colonizers to invest in subscriptions together if they were not interested in attending twelve performances or found the price for the entire series too exorbitant.  He assured readers that “Subscribing is only fixing the same Price,” but purchasing subscriptions had the advantage of making it possible “to put the Design in Execution.”  If the Projector did not receive “a certain Number” of subscriptions then he would not be able to stage the performances; he warned that he “cannot proceed till a sufficient Number is subscribed.”  Anyone interested in the proposed series needed to act quickly, especially since the Projector planned “to go Southward” in October.  He encouraged “Ladies and Gentlemen who are inclined to favour the above Scheme” to “be expeditious in signing.”

Residents of Portsmouth and nearby towns had an opportunity to attend a series of performances at which “no Expence will be spared to have every Decoration the Country can afford,” but only if enough of them purchased subscriptions to support the endeavor.  The advertisement’s decorative border, unique in the New-Hampshire Gazette, suggested that the Exhibitor fulfilled his promise of visual spectacles to amuse his audiences.  The Exhibitor also intended for his descriptions of upcoming acts and comparison to a renowned theater in London to incite interest in a subscription series, even among those who attended previous performances.  Today, theaters and performing arts centers market subscriptions to their patrons, but that method of selling tickets is not a recent innovation.  The practice was already in place in the eighteenth century.