Month: May 2023

May 31

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

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 31, 1773).

“The above will be sold very low, as the subscriber has a great deal on hand.”

Appropriately enough, Jacob Wilkins advertised “ONE hundred and thirty pair of brass and iron and-irons” at the “Sign of the Gold And-iron and Candlestick” in the May 31, 1773, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury.  Prospective customers could choose from among the “newest patterns and … different sorts and sizes” to outfit their places.  Wilkins also carried several accessories, including “tongs and shovels and fenders to suit the and-irons.”  In addition, he made “sundry sorts of brass-work” and stocked “a quantity of earthen ware … and all sorts of coarse ware.”

Wilkins concluded his advertisement with a note that “[t]he above will be sold very low, as the subscriber has a great deal on hand.”  It was not clear if he meant the andirons and accessories or all of the merchandise listed in his advertisement, but he may have been willing to dicker with customers over the price of any item.  Unlike other advertisers who merely promoted “very reasonable prices” (as George Ball did in a notice on the same page), Wilkins gave consumers a reason to believe that they would indeed acquire his wares at bargain prices.  He had so much inventory that he was determined to offer good deals just to reduce how much he had on hand.  Whatever determinations he already made about the lowest prices he could offer, Wilkins allowed prospective customers to feel as though they had the upper hand.  They may have been more enthusiastic about visiting his shop with the confidence that the seller had confessed in the public prints that he needed to reduce his inventory.

Wilkins enhanced his appeal to price with additional commentary intended to demonstrate the veracity of his pledge to sell andirons and other housewares “very low.”  Other advertisers sometimes did so as well, though their strategies often involved stories about how they acquired goods directly from producers in England rather than going through middlemen.  Wilkins took a rather novel approach, one that gave consumers the impression that they had the stronger position when it came time to discuss prices.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 31, 1773

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 (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the Boston-Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Newport Mercury (May 31, 1773).

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Newport Mercury (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the Newport Mercury (May 31, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 31, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 31, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 31, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Chronicle (May 31, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Packet (May 31, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Packet (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 31, 1773).

May 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (May 27, 1773).

“Thursday next will be published … PROPOSALS for printing by Subscription, The ROYAL American MAGAZINE.”

Isaiah Thomas, the printer of the Massachusetts Spy, inserted a brief notice in the May 27, 1773, edition to advise the public that he would soon publish and distribute “PROPOSALS for printing by Subscription, The ROYAL American MAGAZINE.”  Those proposals, a description of the purpose, contents, and price of the magazine, likely appeared on a handbill or broadside, though the printer may have also devised a circular letter to send directly to likely subscribers.  Yet again, a newspaper notice provides evidence of other forms of advertising that circulated in early America in the absence of those materials surviving in research libraries, historical societies, and private collections.  Thomas eventually inserted the proposals in the Massachusetts Spy and other newspapers, providing a glimpse of the handbills or broadsides.  The Adverts 250 Project will examine those newspaper notices in the coming weeks and months.   Despite Thomas’s promotional efforts, he did not publish the first issue of the Royal American Magazine, or Universal Repository of Instruction and Amusement until eight months later in January 1774.

At the time, readers had access to more than two dozen newspapers printed throughout the colonies, including five in Boston, but imported magazines from London.  As Frank Luther Mott explains in A History of American Magazines, 1741-1850, “At the time the first number of the Royal American was issued, there had been no magazine of any kind in the colonies for more than a year and a half, and no general magazine for more than four years.”[1]  According to the “Chronological List of Magazines” that Mott compiled, the Royal American Magazine was only the sixteenth magazine published in the colonies (and that included the Censor, a newspaper-magazine hybrid published in Boston for less than six months from late November 1771 through early May 1772).  Thomas later recollected that his magazine “had a considerable list of subscribers.”[2]  Even so, it lasted for only fifteen months, the last issue published in March 1775. Thomas did not publish the magazine the entire time.  He suspended it in the wake of disruption caused by the Boston Port Bill and later relinquished it to Joseph Greenleaf.  The publication did not continue after the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord.

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[1] Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741-1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), 83.

[2] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 286.

May 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (May 29, 1771).

“POLLY CHACE … now carries on the Millinery Business.”

Purveyors of consumer goods and services placed advertisements in newspapers throughout the colonies.  Men constituted the vast majority of those advertisers.  In newspapers published in smaller towns, male merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans accounted for nearly all of the advertisers who hawked consumer goods and services, while in major urban ports – Boston, Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia – women, primarily shopkeepers and milliners, gained greater visibility in the marketplace via their newspaper advertisements.

Women rarely placed advertisements about consumer goods and services in the Providence Gazette in the early 1770s, but in late spring and early summer of 1773 Polly Chace published advertisements alongside those inserted by Jabez Bowen, Nicholas Brown and Company, Joseph Russell and William Russell, Ebenezer Thompson, John Updike, Nathaniel Wheaton, Samuel Young, and other men who frequently ran newspaper notices.  Chace informed the public that “she now carries on the Millinery Business, in the Shop formerly occupied by her Father.”  In addition, she sold a “large Assortment” of accessories and a “Variety of Goods suitable for the Season, either for Town or Country.”

Most printers ran advertisements for three or four weeks for a set fee and then continued them for as long as the advertiser desired at a weekly rate.  Most advertisers who ran notices in the Providence Gazette opted for the standard package rather than extending the run, but that was not the case for Chace.  Her advertisement appeared for nine weeks, starting with the May 8 edition and concluding with the July 3 edition, before she decided to remove it.  As advertisements for textiles, accessories, and other goods came and went in the public prints, Chace’s notice became a familiar sight for readers.  If her circumstances had recently changed, perhaps due to the retirement or death of her father who “formerly occupied” her shop, Chace may have considered the prolonged exposure necessary to establish herself.  If she had previously worked in the shop under her father’s supervision, she may have wished to advise former customers that she continued offering the same goods and services.

In Providence and elsewhere, women had less visibility as purveyors of goods and services in newspaper advertisements than their numbers merited.  Many women worked in stores, shops, and workshops associated with the male entrepreneurs whose names appeared in those advertisements.  That may have previously been the case for Polly Chace, but for nine weeks in 1773 her name boldly appeared as the headline of an advertisement that promoted the business that she operated.

May 28

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

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

Connecticut Journal (May 28, 1773).

“Physician, Surgeon, and Man-Midwife.”

When Richard Tidmarsh arrived in town in the spring of 1773, he published “An Address to the Inhabitants of New-Haven, and the Public in general” to offer his services as “Physician, Surgeon, and Man-Midwife.”  Like others who provided medical care and placed newspaper notices, he included an overview of his experience and credentials in hopes of convincing prospective patients otherwise unfamiliar with him that he was indeed qualified.

Tidmarsh asserted that he “was regularly bred in London” to all three “Branches” of medicine.  In other words, he received formal training in the largest city in the empire.  Furthermore, he had the “Advantage of being Pupil and Dresser in one of the most considerable Hospitals” in London.  He eventually migrated to Jamaica, where he “practised some Years with good Success,” but ultimately decided to relocate to mainland North America because of what he considered an “unhealthy Climate” in the Caribbean.

The “Physician, Surgeon, and Man-Midwife” did not arrive in New Haven directly from Jamaica.  Instead, he “lately practised ay Hartford in this Colony.”  Tidmarsh attempted to bolster his reputation by declaring that “his Abilities are well known” in Hartford, especially since “he was particularly successful in several dangerous Cases, where the Patients were gave over and deemed incurable.”  Given the relative proximity, he likely believed that prospective patients and “the Public in general” were more likely to hear of those successes in Hartford through other sources than they were to learn about his training in London or his work in Jamacia.  Even if they did not, Tidmarsh may have believed that including the local angle made his entire narrative more credible.

Given his background and experience, Tidmarsh hoped that residents of New Haven and nearby towns would consider him a “useful Member of Society” and seek medical care from him.  To encourage them to do so, he stated that he “proposes to practice as reasonable as any Gentleman of the Faculty” at the college (now Yale University).  His services did not come at higher prices than those of other physicians, surgeons, and man-midwives (though Tidmarsh conveniently overlooked female midwives who cultivated relationships and provided care to patients in the area).  As a newcomer in New Haven, he recognized the importance of sharing a short biography and assuring prospective patients about the quality and cost of his services.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 28, 1773

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

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

Connecticut Journal (May 28, 1773).

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New-London Gazette (May 28, 1773).

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New-London Gazette (May 28, 1773).

May 27

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 News-Letter (May 27, 1773).

“Goods very Cheap.”

As May 1773 came to an end, Samuel Eliot and Thomas Walley continued publishing advertisements that included colorful commentary about their low prices.  In the supplement that accompanied the May 27 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, Eliot once again asserted that “Those who are acquainted with his Prices, will not need to be told that he sells at low Rates; those who are not, who will please to call on him, shall be satisfied he makes no idle Profession, when he engages to sell his Goods on the most similar terms.”  Elsewhere in the supplement, Walley expressed his exasperation with the elaborate stories that some of his competitors printed about how they “sell cheaper than cheap and lower than anybody else.”  Rather than publish tales with “little meaning,” he “rather chuses to inform his good Customers and others that he will sell at such Prices, as that both the Seller and Buyer may make a Profit.”

In contrast, Gilbert Deblois took a streamlined approach to promote the low prices he charged for a “large and beautiful Assortment” of textiles, accessories, housewares, tea, and a “great Variety of other Articles, too tedious to mention in an Advertisement.”  He deployed a headline that summarized his prices: “Good very cheap.”  He also inserted a nota bene to advise that “Country Traders may be supplied at as low Advance as can be bought at any Store in Town,” reinforcing the message in the headline.  In the standard issue, Herman Brimmer and Andrew Brimmer published an advertisement with a primary headline, “Variety of GOODS,” and a secondary headline, “Exceeding Cheap.”  The Brimmers listed dozens of items from among the “Assortment of English, India and Scotch GOODS” they recently imported, but they did not make additional remarks about the low prices of those items.  They relied on the secondary headline to market their prices.

Deblois and the Brimmers adopted a different approach than Eliot and Walley in their efforts to alert prospective customers to their low prices.  The former chose brevity, allowing short headlines to frame the remainder of their advertisements, while the latter offered narratives intended to engage and perhaps even entertain readers.  In both instances, the advertisers made price a defining factor in their newspaper notices.  They did not merely announce that they had goods for sale.  They presented a reason for consumers to select their shops over others.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 27, 1773

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.

Supplement to the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 27, 1773).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 27, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 27, 1773).

May 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Journal (May 26, 1773).

“He finds them too numerous to insert in a news-paper, and will therefore furnish the curious with proper catalogues.”

In an advertisement that appeared in both the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal on April 28, 1773, Nicholas Brooks promoted a “LARGE and curious collection of the most modern PRINTS and PICTURES” along with “stationary wares; jewellery, and dry goods.”  He pledged that “an advertisement of the particulars shall be inserted in a future paper.”  While he certainly preferred that prospective customers visit his shop and browse his inventory, Brooks also encouraged readers to look for that “advertisement of the particulars.”  An additional notice in the public prints gave him a second opportunity to entice consumers.

Three weeks later, Brooks placed a lengthy advertisement in the Pennsylvania Journal.  A notation at the end, “3w,” indicated that he intended for it to run for three weeks.  Extending two-thirds of a column, the advertisement listed many of the items from the “curious Collection of various GOODS.”  Brooks stocked everything from “Scotch thread and sewing silk” to “silver plated and other tea urns” to “best London made pen-knives and scissors” to “cards of history and geography, with and without Morocco cases.”  He mentioned “general atlases, containing 36 new and correct maps,” as he had done in his previous advertisement, yet he still did not have space for “the particulars” of that “LARGE and curious collection of the most modern PRINTS and PICTURES.”

Instead, the shopkeeper appended a nota bene at the end of his advertisement, advising that since he “has a very large quantity of elegant pictures, maps, copper plate writing, and music &c. he finds them too numerous to insert in a news-paper.”   Instead, he “will therefore furnish the curious with proper catalogues.”  Perhaps Brooks sent those catalogs to “the curious” who requested them, but he likely hoped that some prospective customers would visit his shop to pick up catalogs and, as long as they were there, examine his selection.  Distributing catalogs had the potential to increase foot traffic in his shop.

What form did that catalog have?  Was it a broadside or handbill with a list of pictures, maps, and other items printed on a single sheet that gave prospective customers an opportunity to glimpse all of the items at once?  Or was it a pamphlet with multiple pages that prospective customers had to flip through?  In different ways, both formats testified to the range of choices that Brooks made available.  How were the contents organized?  Did they have headers to help direct prospective customers to items of interest?  Did the catalog include commentary or blurbs about any of the items to aid in marketing them?  These questions remain unanswered since no copy of the catalog has yet been identified.  That Brooks disseminated catalogs, however, testifies to the wider distribution of advertising in early American than what has been cataloged among the holdings of research libraries, historical societies, and private collections.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 26, 1773

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 (May 26, 1773).