Year: 2022

Slavery Advertisements Published December 21, 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 (December 21, 1772).

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Newport Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (December 21, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette Extraordinary (December 21, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette Extraordinary (December 21, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette Extraordinary (December 21, 1772).

December 20

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

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

Massachusetts Spy (December 17, 1772).

“It is requested that those thoughts may be published, at this alarming season.”

In November and December 1772, an author who identified himself as “A BRITISH BOSTONIAN” placed a newspaper advertisement addressed to “the Inhabitants of the Town of BOSTON” in which he proposed publishing “a concise Essay upon the Beauties of LIBERTY in its Political and Sacred branches.”  As a relative newcomer to the city, he considered it “very unpolite [for] a stranger to take this freedom” of publishing “The AMERICAN ALARM, Or, a Confirmation of the Boston Plea, for the Rights and Liberties of the People” without first requesting “the approbational leave of the Gentlemen of Boston.”  The “Gentlemen” of the city could demonstrate their approbation or support for the project by entering their names on the subscription lists kept by printers David Kneeland and Nathaniel Davis.

Although historians and bibliographers formerly attributed American Alarm to Isaac Skillman, the pastor at the Second Baptist Church of Boston, John M. Bumsted and Charles E. Clark convincingly demonstrate that John Allen, “a Baptist minister and a recent émigré from England, politically disenchanted and personally discredited,” penned both American Alarm and An Oration, Upon the Beauties of Liberty, Or the Essential Rights of the Americans.[1]  Kneeland and Davis printed these “small but inflammatory political pamphlets” in 1773, suggesting that the advertisement in the Boston-Gazette and the Massachusetts Spy helped in recruiting subscribers for American Alarm.[2]  Bumsted and Clark describe the Oration as “one of the best-selling pamphlets of the pre-Revolutionary crisis, passing through seven editions in four cities between 1773 and 1775.”[3]

They devote less attention to American Alarm, but do provide essential context for understanding events that would have resonated with newspaper readers and prospective subscribers to the pamphlet when they encountered the advertisement.  Allen wrote American Alarm in response to Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s announcements that the colonial legislature would no longer pay the salaries of the governor and judges.  Instead, those officers would receive their salaries from the Crown, an arrangement that many colonizers believed made the governor and judges beholden to the monarch and, especially, Parliament.  According to the British Bostonian, “The plan is laid, the foundation is fixed, to make them [the governor and judges] dependant for place and payment, upon the arbitrary will, and power of the British ministry; upon that power that has for years been seeking the destruction of your RIGHTS.”[4]

Bumsted and Clark describe Allen as “New England’s Tom Paine,” a counterpart to the author of the political pamphlet, Common Sense, widely considered to have had the most significant impact in convincing colonizers to declare independence.  Bumsted and Clark assert that some colonizers did not need as much pushing in that direction as their leaders.  The arguments made by the British Bostonian and the popularity of American Alarm and, especially, the Oration “suggest that in attitude if not in ideology, a large portion of the population may have been well in advance of its leadership” in 1772 and 1773.[5]  Those colonizers expressed their politics by buying the pamphlets and imbibing their contents.  Though he may have exaggerated how much support and encouragement he initially received, Allen asserted that after he delivered “my thoughts in public, upon the Beauties of LIBERTY” that listeners “requested that those thoughts may be published, at this alarming season.”

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[1] John M. Bumsted and Charles E. Clark, “New-England’s Tom Paine:  John Allen and the Spirit of Liberty,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 21, no. 4 (October 1964): 562.

[2] Bumsted and Clark, “New-England’s Tom Paine,” 561.

[3] Bumsted and Clark, “New-England’s Tom Paine,” 561.

[4] British Bostonian [John Allen], The American Alarm, or the Bostonian Plea, for the Rights, and Liberties of the People (Boston:  D. Kneeland and N. Davis, 1773), 17.

[5] Bumsted and Clark, “New-England’s Tom Paine,” 570.

December 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (December 19, 1772).

“He proposes to tarry in Providence, and continue the Practice of Physic and Surgery.”

Thomas Truman was an obvious choice for assisting the executors of the estate of Samuel Carew in December 1772. Truman placed an advertisement in the Providence Gazette “to give Notice to all Persons who have Accounts unsettled with Doctor SAMUEL CAREW … that his Books are put into my Hands, by the Executors.”  Truman had previously served an apprenticeship with Carew, making him familiar with the doctor’s business and, likely, some of the patients and others who had outstanding accounts.  The former apprentice stated that anyone wishing to settle accounts could find him “at the House and Shop lately occupied by Doctor CAREW.”

Truman used this notice in the Providence Gazette for more than assisting the executors in finalizing Carew’s estate.  He also informed readers that he planned to remain in town and “continue the Practice of Physic and Surgery” at the same location where Carew previously saw patients.  That made it all the more important that Truman remind the community of “his Apprenticeship with Doctor CAREW” and that many “Gentlemen and Ladies” were already familiar with him because they “kindly favoured him in the Way of his Business” during that apprenticeship.

Truman adroitly positioned himself as Carew’s successor, hoping to acquire and expand that clientele.  He had learned “the Practice of Physic and Surgery” from Carew, knew many of his patients, and now provided services at the same location, “the well known Shop, lately improved by Dr. CAREW.”  In this endeavor, patients could expect him to “giv[e] the closest Attention” and that “his Bills will be reasonable.”  All of this meant that Carew’s patients did not need to experience any sort of disruption in the services he formerly provided if they opted to treat Truman as the doctor’s successor.  Simultaneously, the advertisement also advised readers who had not been Carew’s patients that a new doctor provided care and sold “an Assortment of genuine Medicines” in Providence.

Slavery Advertisements Published December 19, 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 (December 19, 1772).

December 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-Hampshire Gazette (December 18, 1772).

“PROPOSALS for Re-printing by Subscription, ENGLISH LIBERTIES.”

In the first week of November in 1772, John Carter, printer of the Providence Gazette, issued a proposal for “Re-printing by Subscription, ENGLISH LIBERTIES, OR, The free-born Subject’s INHERITANCE,” a volume “Compiled first by HENRY CARE, and continued with large Additions, by WILLIAM NELSON, of the Middle Temple, Esq.”  The contents of the book included the “Magna Charta, or the Great Charter of English Liberties,” “a short History of the Succession, not by any hereditary Right,” “a Declaration of the Liberties of the Subject, and of the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy,” and other essays.

Carter inserted the subscription proposal in the Providence Gazette, sometimes placing it on the front page to give it greater prominence.  Except for notices about goods and services available at his printing office, advertisements appeared on the final pages of that newspaper.  Carter also arranged to have the subscription proposal published in other newspapers in New England, including in the New-Hampshire Gazette.  The proposal stated that ‘SUBSCRIPTIONS are received by JOHN CARTER, the Publisher, and by T. and J. FLEET,” printers of the Boston Evening-Post, as well as “by a Number of Gentlemen in the neighbouring Towns and Governments, to whom Subscription Papers are sent.”  Daniel Fowle and Robert Fowle, printers of the New-Hampshire Gazette, likely had subscription proposals, either broadsides posted in their office or handbills to distribute to customers, and collected names of those who wished to reserve copies of the book.

In the proposal, Carter advised that he would not take the work to press without first knowing that he had generated sufficient interest to make it a viable venture.  “As soon as the Names and Residences of 500 Subscribers are collected,” he declared, “the Work will be immediately put to the Press, & compleated with all Expedition.”  It apparently took some time for Carter to convince that many consumers to subscribe to the project.  Unlike many books advertised via subscription proposal, however, he was eventually successful, publishing English Liberties more than a year later in 1774.  True to his word, Carter included a list of subscribers, six pages at the end of the book.  The “Friends of Libertyand useful Knowledge” that the printer addressed in the subscription notice could see their names listed among other “Friends of Liberty and useful Knowledge.”

Slavery Advertisements Published December 18, 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.

New-London Gazette (December 18, 1772).

December 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Supplement to the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury (December 17, 1772).

“Stirrups … immediately disengaged.”

Richard Sharwin placed an advertisement for “the new invented SPRINGS For the Stirrups of Ladies and Gentlemens Saddles” in the December 17, 1772, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  In an advertisement he placed in another newspaper a year and a half earlier, Sharwin described himself as a “Sadler and Jockey Cap-Maker, from LONDON.”  He did not list his occupation or origins in his new advertisement, perhaps believing that he had so sufficiently established his reputation among local consumers that he no longer needed to do so.  Instead, he simply directed prospective customers to “the White Horse in King-Street, BOSTON.”

With the exception of a nota bene that provide a general overview of Sharwin’s services that followed his signature, the saddler devoted his advertisement to those “new invented SPRINGS,” using the word “springs” in capital letters as a headline for the notice.  Sharwin explained that when a rider fell from a horse, the springs “immediately disengaged” from the stirrups and “prevented the Danger of being drag[g]ed.”  In offering assurances about quality, the saddler asserted that his springs “are made as compleat as from the Patentee in London.”  In addition, they “may be fixed to any Lady’s or Gentleman’s Saddle.”  Sharwin could make riding safer for any client.

He was not the only saddler in New England emphasizing safety as a marketing strategy in the final months of 1772.  Three weeks earlier, John Sebring, “Sadler, Chaise and Harness Maker, from London,” inserted an advertisement that included detachable stirrups in the Providence Gazette.  He advised prospective customers that he “makes Men and Womens Saddles on such a Construction, that if the Horse should throw his Rider, and the Foot should hang in the Stirrup, the Stirrup will leave the Saddle before the Horse takes three steps.”  Given that colonial newspaper circulated far beyond the cities and towns where they were printed, both Sharwin and other residents of Boston may have seen Sebring’s advertisement in the Providence Gazette.  Sharwin certainly wanted prospective customers to know that they did not need to order saddles with that feature from artisans in Providence or London.

In marketing their saddles, Sharwin and Sebring combined appeals to safety and innovation, a strategy that became increasingly common as advertising continued to develop in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The saddlers encouraged consumers to acquire new inventions with enhanced safety features rather than settle for products that may have seemed more familiar but lacked such important elements.

Slavery Advertisements Published December 17, 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 (December 17, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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Maryland Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (December 17, 1772).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (December 17, 1772).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (December 17, 1772).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (December 17, 1772).

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New-York Journal (December 17, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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South-Carolina Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (December 17, 1772).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (December 17, 1772).

December 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Journal (December 16, 1772).

“Physicians prescriptions, or family receipts put up in the most careful manner.”

Moses Bartram ran a shop that he called “the OLD MEDICINAL STORE.”  In December, 1772, he ran a newspaper advertisement advising residents of Philadelphia that he “CONTINUES to carry on the business in its various branches” and offered a variety of goods and services.  He stocked “a fresh and general assortment of DRUGS and MEDICINES, Chymical and Galenical preparations of the best quality.”  He also carried patent medicines and, like many apothecaries, both “shop furniture for Practitioners” and “painters colours for either oil or water.”  Bartram filled “orders from town and country.”  He also prepared “Physicians prescriptions” and “family receipts” or remedies “in the most careful manner.”

In marketing the goods and services available at the Old Medicinal Store, Bartram placed his advertisement in three of the five newspapers published in Philadelphia at the time.  Doing so helped him achieve greater market saturation with his notices.  His notice first appeared in the Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote, a German-language newspaper, on December 15.  A note that ran across the bottom of the masthead advised “All ADVERTISEMENTS to be inserted in this Paper, or printed single by HENRY MILLER, Publisher hereof, are by him translated gratis.”  The following day, Bartram’s advertisement ran in both the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal.

Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote (December 15, 1772).

The apothecary chose not to place his advertisement in the two newest newspapers published in the city, the Pennsylvania Chronicle and the Pennsylvania Packet.  Both of them had a healthy number of advertisements each week, suggesting that other advertisers had confidence in the circulation numbers for those newspapers.  The Pennsylvania Packet frequently distributed a two-page supplement to accommodate all of the advertisements submitted to the printing office.  In making his choices about where to advertise, Bartram clustered the dissemination of his notices on Tuesdays (Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote) and Wednesdays (Pennsylvania Gazette and Pennsylvania Journal).  He could have spread out the days by placing his advertisements in the Pennsylvania Packet, published on Mondays, or the Pennsylvania Chronicle, published on Saturdays.

Given that all of these newspapers were published only once a week rather than daily, allowing readers more time to peruse the contents before discarding an earlier issue in favor of the newest one, Bartram may not have considered it necessary to spread out the days that his advertisements initially appeared in print.  Other factors, including price, his existing relationships with the various printers, and his perceptions of the circulation of each newspaper, may have been more important to Bartram in choosing where (and when) to advertise.

Slavery Advertisements Published December 16, 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.

Pennsylvania Gazette (December 16, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (December 16, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Journal (December 16, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Journal (December 16, 1772).

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Pennsylvania Journal (December 16, 1772).