Month: October 2022

October 9

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-London Gazette (October 9, 1772).

“Staffordshire and Liverpool Warehouse, in Kingstreet, BOSTON.”

Ebenezer Bridgham continued his efforts to create a regional market for his “Staffordshire and Liverpool Warehouse” in Boston with an advertisement in the October 9, 1772, edition of the New-London Gazette.  That advertisement featured copy identical to a notice in the October 2 edition of the New-Hampshire Gazette, though the compositors in the two printing offices made very different decisions about the format of the advertisements.  Bridgham’s advertisement ran a second time in the New-Hampshire Gazette (less the headline announcing “Crockery Ware”) the same day that it first appeared in the New-London Gazette.  He likely dispatched letters to the printing offices on the same day, but, given the distance, the New-London Gazette received its letter later and published his advertisement in the next edition after its arrival.

With advertisements in newspapers in Connecticut and New Hampshire in the fall of 1772, Bridgham continued a project that commenced more than a year earlier with advertisements in the Connecticut Courant, the Essex Gazette, and the Providence Gazette in September 1771.  He added the New-London Gazette the next month.  He placed a subsequent notice in the Connecticut Courant in June 1772, but he did not pursue the same coordinated campaign that he launched in the fall of 1771.  Although his “Crockery Ware” advertisement appeared in both the New-London Gazette and the New-Hampshire Gazette in early October 1772, it did not run in the other newspapers at that time.

That may have been the result of Bridgham learning which advertisements in which newspapers generated orders from country shopkeepers and other customers … and which did not.  His prior experience may have constituted a rudimentary form of market research that guided his decisions about where to focus his advertising efforts.  Alternately, Bridgham may have been delinquent in submitting payment for his advertisements, causing printers not to run them until he settled his debts.  His “Crockery Ware” advertisement eventually ran in Hartford’s Connecticut Courant on November 17.  In February 1772, Ebenezer Watson, printer of the Connecticut Courant, inserted a notice that “No Advertisements will for the future be published in this paper, without the money is first paid.”  The delay in publishing Bridgham’s “Crockery Ware” advertisement may have been due to waiting for payment.  Beyond these possibilities, Bridgham may have been haphazard in submitting his “Crockery Ware” advertisement to various printing offices.  If so, that deviated from the coordination he demonstrated in the fall of 1771.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 9, 1772

Julia Tardugno Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Julia Tardugno

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Julia Tardugno served as guest curator for this entry. She completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2022. 

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Journal (October 9, 1772).

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New-Hampshire Gazette (October 9, 1772).

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New-London Gazette (October 9, 1772).

October 8

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

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

South-Carolina Gazette (October 8, 1772).

“Dancing & Fencing.”

“THE Sign of the Golden Cup.”

Mr. Pike, a dancing master, and Thomas You, a silversmith, both used graphic design to draw attention to their advertisements in the October 8, 1772, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette, yet they adopted different strategies.  Their notices further enlivened the vibrant graphic design that distinguished notices in that newspaper from those that ran in other newspapers.  The compositor for the South-Carolina Gazette made liberal use of varying font sizes, gothic letters for headlines, italics, capitals, and centering compared to advertisements.

That being the case, the compositor may have played a role in how the dancing master used decorative type and gothic letters to enhance his advertisement.  The headline “Dancing & Fencing” in gothic letters appeared inside a border composed of printing ornaments above a secondary headline spread over three lines: “PIKE’s ACADEMY / for / DANCING and FENCING.”  Compare that to a similar advertisement that Pike ran in the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal.  It featured only one headline, “DANCING and FENCING,” that did not appear in a different font than the rest of the advertisement.  Rather than constituting a second headline, “PIKE’s ACADEMY, for FENCING and DANCING” was part of the first paragraph of the advertisement.  An enterprising compositor at the South-Carolina Gazette likely played a significant role in designing Pike’s advertisement, perhaps assuming full responsibility without consulting the advertiser.

On the other hand, You almost certainly submitted instructions to include a woodcut depicting a golden cup in his advertisement for the merchandise he sold at the “Sign of the Golden Cup.”  You commissioned that image for his exclusive use, previously inserting it in advertisements in the South-Carolina Gazette in December 1770 and March 1771.  Prior to that, he used a different woodcut in his advertisements in December 1766 and July 1767.  He seemed to appreciate that images helped draw attention to his notices.  How to incorporate an image, however, he may have left to the discretion of the compositor.  In 1772, his woodcut of a golden cup appeared in the center, flanked by his name and location.  In earlier advertisements, it was positioned to the left, replicating the placement of woodcuts depicting ships that adorned other notices.

The advertisements in the South-Carolina Gazette testify to both the role of the compositor in designing newspaper notices and occasional collaboration or consultation involving both the compositor and the advertiser.  Rather than dense text, variations abounded in the advertisements in that newspaper, making the South-Carolina Gazette one of the most visually interesting publications in the early 1770s.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 8, 1772

Julia Tardugno Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Julia Tardugno

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Julia Tardugno served as guest curator for this entry. She completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2022. 

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Maryland Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (October 8, 1772).

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New-York Journal (October 8, 1772).

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New-York Journal (October 8, 1772).

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New-York Journal (October 8, 1772).

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New-York Journal (October 8, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (October 8, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (October 8, 1772).

October 7

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (October 7, 1772).

“A quantity of large and small silver work.”

In the fall of 1772, John David, a goldsmith, placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette to inform prospective customers that he recently imported a “Neat Assortment of JEWELLERY” as well as a “quantity of large and small silver work.”  To entice consumers, he provided some examples of the merchandise they would find at his shop near the drawbridge in Philadelphia.  The jewelry included “paste shoe, knee, and stock buckles,” “stone sleeve buttons, of different sorts,” “coral necklaces,” and “very neat paste and garnet ear-rings.”  He also stocked “silver soup and punch ladles” and “silver and steel top thimbles.”  He pledged that he would “dispose of” these goods “on the most reasonable terms,” leveraging price in his effort to attract customers.

David used an image of a silver teapot to draw attention to his advertisement.  The woodcut occupied the left third of his advertisement, accounting for a significant amount of the space he purchased in the Pennsylvania Gazette.  In addition, he paid to have the image created for his exclusive use.  Of the fifty advertisements that appeared in the October 7, 1772, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, only four included an image. The other three all used stock images of ships at sea in notices that alerted readers of ships seeking passengers and freight.  The printer provided those familiar woodcuts.  In contrast, David made special arrangements for his image of a silver teapot, an image not previously seen by readers of any of the newspapers published in Philadelphia at the time.

The use of images commissioned by advertisers seemed to accelerate in the early 1770s compared to their frequency in newspapers in earlier decades, especially newspapers published in major urban ports.  As merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and other entrepreneurs experimented with marketing strategies, a growing number decided that visual images augmented advertising copy.  Images commissioned for the exclusive use of particular advertisers remained relatively rare compared to the overall volume of advertising, due to both cost and technology, yet more advertisers decided to enhance their newspaper notices with images that replicated their shop signs or depicted their merchandise.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 7, 1772

Julia Tardugno Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Julia Tardugno

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Julia Tardugno served as guest curator for this entry. She completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2022. 

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Gazette (October 7, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 7, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 7, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 7, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 7, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 7, 1772).

October 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , ,

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

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (October 6, 1772).

“Advertisements omitted this Week, for want of Room, shall be in our next.”

Charles Crouch had more content than would fit in the September 29, 1772, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal.  To resolve the dilemma, he inserted a notice advising that “Sundry NEW ADVERTISEMENTS omitted this Week, in order to give Place to the LONDON NEWS, &c. shall have particular notice in our next.”  The following week, the October 6 edition consisted almost entirely of advertising.  A header for “NEW ADVERTISEMENTS” ran at the top of the first column on the first page.  Advertisements filled all three columns on that page.  Another header for “NEW ADVERTISEMENTS” appeared midway down the final column of the second page.  The first two and half columns featured news items, but the remainder of the second column as well as the entire third and fourth pages consisted entirely of advertising.  Crouch presumably made sure that “Sundry NEW ADVERTISEMENTS” that he omitted in the previous issue did indeed run in the October 6 edition.

Still, he found himself once again in the position of not having sufficient space to publish all of the advertisements received in the printing office.  He inserted a notice at the bottom of the final column on the third page: “Advertisements omitted this Week, for want of Room, shall be in our next.”  Why did the notice appear there instead of the bottom of the last page?  Understanding the process for producing newspapers on manually-operated presses reveals the answer.  A standard issue of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (and other colonial newspapers) consisted of four pages created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and then folding it in half.  Printers often produced the first and last pages first.  After the ink dried, they then printed the second and third pages on the other side of the sheet.  In his effort to give the advertisements omitted the previous week “particular Notice” in the October 6 edition, Crouch printed them first, placing them on the first page.  Other new advertisements also ran on the fourth page, interspersed with notices that appeared in previous editions.  Crouch made publishing all of those advertisements a priority.  He also made advertisements a priority for the second and third pages, though he realized that subscribers who expected to receive news would not be satisfied with an issue that served solely as a mechanism for delivering advertisements.  He opted for a couple of columns of news on the second page before filling the rest of the newspaper with advertisements.  The notice at the bottom of the final column on the third page would have been the last of the type set and placed into position for the October 6 edition once Crouch determined that he did not have space for all the advertisements he intended to publish.

Crouch did have other options.  He could have produced an advertising supplement to accompany the September 29 edition or the October 6 edition or both.  He may have decided, however, that he did not have enough additional content to warrant doing so.  He may not have had the time to print a supplement.  He may not have considered doing so worth the resources required.  He apparently believed that advertisers would be patient with a short delay, though he made certain to acknowledge that he owed them space in his newspaper.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 6, 1772

Julia Tardugno Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Julia Tardugno

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Julia Tardugno served as guest curator for this entry. She completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2022. 

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Essex Gazette (October 6, 1772).

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Essex Gazette (October 6, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (October 6, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (October 6, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (October 6, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (October 6, 1772).

October 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).

“THEIR WHITE and COLOURED PLAINS, which coming, as usual, from the first Hands, the quality will recommend itself.”

Robert Wells, the printer of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette, may have experienced a disruption in his paper supply in October 1772.  That would explain the unusual format of the October 5 edition.  The newspaper usually featured four columns per page.  The October 5 edition did indeed have four columns on each page, but one of those columns was narrower than the other three.  In order to reuse advertisements with type already set, Wells rotated the text ninety degrees to fill the fourth column with six short columns that ran perpendicular to the rest of the text.  In the past, he had sometimes adopted this strategy when forced to use paper of a different size than usual.  Wells usually selected short advertisements and left them intact.  In contrast, this time he used advertisements that overflowed from one column to another in the October 5 edition.

Whether Wells was forced to do so remains a mystery, due in part to working with digitized images of the newspaper rather than original documents.  Digitized images do not have any particular dimensions.  They fit the size of the screen of the viewer.  They can be magnified to see details betters.  They do not have a fixed size the reader can measure.  As a result, I cannot measure pages of the September 28 and October 5 editions to compare them.  An inspection of one visual aspect further suggests that Wells used a slightly smaller sheet on October 5.  There does not appear to be as much space between the title of the newspaper and the page number running across the top on pages from October 5 compared to pages from September 28.

Those page numbers introduce another uncertainty into figuring out why Wells might have decided to distribute an edition with an unusual format.  The September 28 edition concluded with page 244.  The available pages for the October 5 edition commence with page 249.  It does not have the standard masthead.  This was not a numbering error. Page 249 includes “EUROPEAN INTELLIGENCE. (Continued from Page 246.)”  The four pages with a narrow column of perpendicular text were likely an insert that accompanied the standard issue for the week.  Did Wells use the usual size sheet for the standard issue and then a slightly smaller size for the insert?  Printers sometimes did so with significantly smaller sheets when they did not have sufficient content to fill pages of the usual size, but these pages were not significantly smaller.  Rotating the type and breaking advertisements that previously appeared in a single column into shorter segments that ran in multiple columns seems like unnecessary labor when Wells could have instead inserted more “EUROPEAN INTELLEIGENCE” or “AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE” or even inserted an advertisement from a previous edition gratis to fill the space.

The combination of the missing pages and working with digital surrogates make it difficult to know for certain why Wells adopted an unusual format for the October 5 edition of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette.  Did that format work to the advantage of advertisers?  Did it draw attention to the items in the column set perpendicular to the rest of the page?  Readers may indeed have been curious to discover what kind of content ran along the edges.

Page 250: South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).

Slavery Advertisements Published October 5, 1772

Julia Tardugno Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Julia Tardugno

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Julia Tardugno served as guest curator for this entry. She completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2022. 

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Boston-Gazette (October 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the Boston-Gazette (October 5, 1772).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (October 5, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 5, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 5, 1772).

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Newport Mercury (October 5, 1772).

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Newport Mercury (October 5, 1772).

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Newport Mercury (October 5, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Packet (October 5, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Packet (October 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the Pennsylvania Packet (October 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the Pennsylvania Packet (October 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the Pennsylvania Packet (October 5, 1772).

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Supplement to the Pennsylvania Packet (October 5, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (October 5, 1772).