Month: July 2023

July 25

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

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

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (July 22, 1773).

“HORSEMANSHIP.”

“MR. BATES PROPOSES to perform on Tuesday next, and on Friday the 30th instant, and no more, before he leaves this City.”  That brief advertisement in the July 22 edition of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer put readers on notice that only limited opportunities remained to see Bates’s show.  From both his frequent advertisements in New York’s newspapers and the reputation that he cultivated in the city, most readers probably knew that Bates performed feats of horsemanship for the entertainment of his audiences.

New-York Journal (July 22, 1773).

A much longer advertisement in the New-York Journal on the same day deployed the usual headline, “HORSEMANSHIP,” and described him as “The ORIGINAL PERFORMER.”  Bates offered a spectacle of the “MANLY ARTS” that he previously performed for dignitaries that included “the Emperor of Germany, the Empress of Russia, the King of Great-Britain, the French King, the Kings of Prussia, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, and the Prince of Orange.”  Bates confided that he “received the greatest applause” for those performances, “as can be made manifest by the CERTIFICATES from the several courts now in his possession.”  Readers did not have to take his word for it that he presented his feats of horsemanship to monarchs and aristocrats.  For a mere four shillings, colonizers in New York could gain access to the same exhibition enjoyed by royals and nobles, but they had to purchase tickets in advance because “No money will be taken at the Doors, nor Admittance without Tickets.”  Bates welcomed “Ladies and Gentlemen” and provided “proper” seating for their comfort, but requested that “Gentlemen will not suffer any dogs to come with them” for fear of scaring or distracting the horses.

A manicule drew attention to the same appeal that appeared in the other newspaper, though stated differently.  “Mr. Bates proposes, but twice more, before he leaves this City, to exhibit his Performances in Horsemanship,” the equestrian daredevil stated.  That being the case, he intended to sell “the Boards, Scantling, &c. at his riding Inclosure, together with the Benches, Rails, &c.”  Dismantling the venue underscored that audiences had only a limited time to witness Bates performing “on one, two, three and four Horses, at the Bulls-Head, in Bowery-Lane.”  They risked missing a performance that would “excel any Horseman that ever attempted any thing of the kind” if they hesitated and did not buy their tickets as soon as possible.

July 24

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

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

Providence Gazette (July 24, 1773).

“Best ANCHORS … In NEW-YORK.”

For quite some time in 1773, William Hawxhurst “In NEW-YORK” advertised widely, seeking customers for the “Best ANCHORS, Made of Sterling Iron,” among mariners in several colonies.  Consider the notice that appeared in the Providence Gazette on Saturday, July 24.  During the previous week, the same advertisement ran in the Newport Mercury on Monday, July 19, the Connecticut Courant (published in Hartford) on Tuesday, July 20, and the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy and the New-London Gazette on Friday, July 23.  Curiously, Hawxhurst did not place notices in any of the newspapers published in New York.  Perhaps he relied on personal connections and the visibility of the anchors “in a Yard between [Burling’s] Slip and Byvank’s Store, on the Dock,” to market them to prospective customers in that busy port.  The publications he did choose for his advertisements represented every newspaper in Connecticut and every newspaper in Rhode Island, suggesting that he carefully crafted a regional marketing campaign.

In addition to the anchors, Hawxhurst advertised other goods.  Several years earlier, he “erected a Finer and great hammer, for refining the Sterling pig iron, into bar” in New York.  He continued to produce and sell “the best Sterling-refined Iron, warranted good” and “Pig-Iron of the Sterling new Mine, cast in Cinder, warranted good” as well as “Scythe [Iron]” and “Keen’s best Bloomery Iron.”  Hawxhurst also made clear that he was willing to barter, accepting several commodities, including “pickled Cod Fish, Mackarel, Liver-Oil, and New-England Tobacco,” in exchange for anchors and iron.  That list of commodities certainly reflected what mariners operating from ports in Connecticut and Rhode Island could offer as payment.  While he had the attention of readers of several newspapers, Hawxhurst also announced that he sought to hire a “Person well qualified to manufacture Steel from Pig Iron, in the German Way.”  Like many advertisements that appeared in early American newspapers, this one served multiple objectives that defied classification for a single purpose.  It ranged widely in terms of both distribution and the results that the advertiser wished to achieve.

July 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy (July 23, 1773).

“WATCHES are restored to their pristine vigour, and warranted to perform well, free of any expence for one year.”

Though dated “Hartford, July 20, 1773,” Thomas Hilldrup’s advertisement in the July 23 edition of the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy had been composed much earlier.  The same copy first ran in Connecticut Courant, published in Hartford, on May 25.  It appeared in each issue of that newspaper since then, though Hilldrup dropped a short nota bene carried over from his previous advertisement after two insertions.  In this latest advertisement, Hilldrup, a “WATCH MAKER from LONDON,” declared that he had already met with so much success during his brief time in Connecticut, that he had been so “IMbolden’d by the encouragement receiv’d from the indulgent public,” that he “remov’d his shop” to a new location.  Prospective customers could find him at “the sign of the Dial” in the shop formerly occupied by Dr. Neil McLean near the courthouse in Hartford, “where Repeating, Horizontal and plain WATCHES are restored to their pristine vigour, and warranted to perform well, free of any expence for one year.”

After publishing this promotion in the Connecticut Courant for two months, Hilldrup extended that guarantee to readers of the Connecticut Journal.  It was not the first time, however, that the watchmaker took to the pages of a newspaper printed in another town in his efforts to build a large enough clientele to allow him to settle permanently in Hartford.  His advertising campaign commenced in the Connecticut Courant in the fall of 1772, but eventually expanded to the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy and the New-London Gazette during the winter months.  The newcomer ran advertisements in every newspaper published in the colony at the time, making it clear that local watchmakers who already established their reputations among prospective customers faced some new competition.  Placing an advertisement in the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy the first time may have been an experiment for a watchmaker who recently arrived in Hartford.  Opting to place another advertisement in that newspaper six months later, however, indicated that he believed the first one had been effective in generating business beyond clients served primarily by Hartford’s Connecticut Courant.  Even then, he did not consider merely announcing his presence in Hartford sufficient to draw clients to his shop.  Instead, he offered a one-year guarantee on repairs to convince prospective customers to give him a chance over his competitors.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 23, 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.

New-London Gazette (July 23, 1773).

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New-London Gazette (July 23, 1773).

July 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (July 22, 1773).

“An ELEGY on the affecting Tragedy at Salem.”

Three days after Ezekiel Russell first advertised a broadside “Decorated with the Figure of Ten Coffins” that gave the “Particulars of the late melancholy and shocking TRAGEDY,” the drowning of three men and seven women, “which lately happened at SALEM, near Boston, the 17th of June 1773,” in the Boston Evening-Post, he ran a similar advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy.  That new advertisement, repeated in the next issue, included all of the copy from the Boston Evening-Post with the addition of a note about a related item, “An ELEGY on the affecting Tragedy at Salem … By a friend to the deceased.”  These broadsides memorialized the deaths of ten colonizers, including five pregnant women, but they also commodified the tragedy in the form of a keepsake that Russell recommended as “very proper to be posted up in every house in New-England.”  To that end, he offered a similar deal for both broadsides to peddlers who purchased copies to sell near and far.  For the first broadside, the Particulars, Russell noted that “Great allowance is made to travelling Traders, who buy them by the Groce.”  For the other, the Elegy, he offered “an allowance to travelling traders.”

The broadsides each featured an image of ten coffins, each with the initials of one of the drowning victims, and thick mourning borders, but otherwise their contents differed.  In advertising them together, Russell suggested that customers might wish to acquire both as a means of memorializing “the most sorrowful event of the kind, that has happened in America since its first discovery.”  In addition, the broadsides expanded on the coverage that already appeared in newspapers published in Salem and Boston.  The Particulars included the report that first appeared in the Essex Gazette on June 22 as well as an introduction that reiterated the description in the advertisement first published in the Boston Evening-Post on July 12.  The “Names of the Deceased” appeared in the center, surrounded by mourning borders.  A short poem, “The Salem TRAGEDY.  Being a Relation of the drowning of Ten Persons, who were taking their Pleasure on the Water,” appeared below the newspaper account.  It consisted of five stanzas of four line each.  In addition to the ten coffins, an image depicted a strong gust of wind, so strong that it was visible, and a boat foundering in the water.  Mourning borders also surrounded that image.

The Elegy included a shorter introduction that gave the names of the victims and indicated their relationships to each other above a poem, fifteen stanzas in two columns with a double mourning border between them, and a remembrance attributed to “A FRIEND TO THE DECEASED.”  That anonymous friend stated, “Surely no one can fully express the horror and anguish of mind these People’s friends at MARBLEHEAD must suffer … resulting from this amazing catastrophe, and which must form such a shocking scene, that it can better be imagined than expressed.”  Yet neither that “FRIEND” nor Russell left the “Tragedy at Salem” to the imagination of consumers.  The “FRIEND” encouraged others to “make a right improvement” in the wake of “such an awful warning as this from GOD.”  Russell may have shared that perspective.  Whatever his views in that regard, he certainly leveraged current events in marketing a relic to consumers, playing on their emotions and curiosity about the extraordinary tragedy.

Detail from “The Particulars of the Late Melancholly and Shocking Tragedy” (Boston: 1773). Courtesy Library of Congress.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 22, 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.

Maryland Gazette (July 22, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (July 22, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (July 22, 1773).

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New-York Journal (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 22, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (July 22, 1773).

July 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (July 21, 1773).

“At the Hunting Side Saddle.”

Elias Botner, “Sadler and Harness-maker,” ran a workshop “at the Hunting Side Saddle, next door to the London Coffee-house” in Philadelphia in the early 1770s.  In an advertisement in the July 21, 1773, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, he informed prospective customers that he made and sold various kinds of saddles for gentlemen and ladies as well as saddlebags, “jockey caps, of all sizes,” holsters, and fire buckets.  He declared that he made his saddles and “saddle-furniture” (or equipment) “in the newest and neatest fashion” to match the tastes of his discerning customers.  In addition, he marketed his fire buckets as the “strongest perhaps made in this city.”  He offered discounts to customers who purchased “a quantity” of fire buckets, while also promising “the lowest terms” for his other merchandise.

To draw attention to these various appeals, Botner adorned his advertisement with a woodcut that depicted a saddle.  That image distinguished his advertisement from the other paid notices in the same issue.  Four of them featured stock images of ships at sea, supplied by the printers, but all of the other advertisements relied solely on text without images.  Botner’s advertisement was the only one with an image commissioned for the exclusive use of that business.  It was not the first time, however, that the saddler deployed the image, though it had been a while since it appeared in the pages of the Pennsylvania Gazette.  More than three years earlier, Botner ran an advertisement in the Postscript Extraordinary to the Pennsylvania Gazette on May 3, 1770, adorning his notice with the woodcut and invoking the sign that marked the location of his shop.  That sign remained a constantly visible marker for residents and visitors who traversed the streets of Philadelphia in the intervening years, even though the woodcut disappeared from the public prints during that time.  Like many other entrepreneurs, Botner utilized visual images to promote his business, but used some, like his shop sign, consistently and others, like his woodcut in his newspaper advertisements, sporadically.  Botner and others experimented with the power of images in their marketing efforts, sometimes assuming additional costs for the advertisements they placed in colonial newspapers.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 21, 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 (July 21, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (July 21, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 21, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 21, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Journal (July 21, 1773).

July 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , ,

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

Connecticut Courant (July 20, 1773).

“He has been enabled to contract for a new Sett of neat and elegant Types.”

With Alexander Robertson, James Robertson, and John Trumbull disseminating subscription proposals for a new newspaper, the Norwich Packet, Ebenezer Watson, the printer of the Connecticut Courant in Hartford, faced more competition.  The Norwich Packet would bring the total number of newspapers published in the colony to four, including the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy and the New-London Gazette.  Watson already felt as though he “has hitherto laboured under peculiar Disadvantages and Embarrassments, by Reason of the Badness of his Types,” his anxiety likely magnified by the printers of the Norwich Packet declaring that their newspaper “will be Printed with Splended new Types.”  Watson did his best with the equipment he possessed, though “anxiously concerned to perform the various Branches of his Business in the neatest and most elegant Manner.”  In particular, he wished to print newspapers “as welcome and entertaining as possible to his kind Customers, and the Public,” but lacked the “where with all to furnish his Office with better Materials.”

Such confessions may have generated some sympathy and understanding among readers of the Connecticut Courant, but they did not improve the legibility of the newspapers that Watson printed.  He had acknowledged the issue several months earlier when he issued a call for subscribers and others to settle accounts.  Even without “the Complaints of his Customers,” Watson was “sensible that the Courant is very badly printed” because “his Types are worn out,” yet he could not “replenish the Office with a new Set of Printing Materials” when those same customers who complained did not pay their bills.  Fortunately for Watson, “through unexpected Interposition and Assistance of Friends, he has been enabled to contract for a new Sett of neat and elegant Types.”  He anticipated that they would arrive “by the Beginning of Winter.”  For the moment, however, he “asks the Patience and Candour of the indulgent Public till the Arrival of his Types.”  Once he had access to them, Watson anticipated that “the CONNECTICUT COURANT will appear with a Lustre and Brightness equal (if not surpassing that of the other Papers in this Colony).”  In addition, the printer realized that his newspaper circulated beyond Connecticut.  With new types, he looked forward to the day that his newspaper would “rank with any Publications throughout this extensive Continent,” including the other newspapers published in his own colony.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 20, 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.

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 20, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 20, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 20, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 20, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 20, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (July 20, 1773).