Month: August 2023

August 31

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

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

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 31, 1773).

“The most minute and trifling article, INDISPUTABLY CHEAPER than they could possibly do in London.”

Working on behalf of the beneficiary of George Thomson’s estate at the end of August 1773, Benjamin Villepontoux attempted to liquidate the remaining inventory in the store “lately occupied” by Thomson on Tradd Street in Charleston.  The merchandise included a “Large and valuable assortment of DRY GOODS,” most of them imported by Thomson “in the month of October last.”  Although nearly a year had passed, Villepontoux insisted that the goods were still in style, reiterating the word “fashionable” in the list of goods in the advertisement: “SUPERFINE fashionable broad cloths, with trimming,” Fashionable beaver hats, with gold and silver bands,” “fashionable cloaks,” and “the most fashionable ribbons.”  Similarly, he promoted a “variety of genteel articles in the millinary branch” and “very elegant embroidered brocade for waistcoats.”

Villepontoux hoped that such descriptions would attract both consumers and, especially, retailers.  To encourage prospective buyers to take a significant portion of the inventory, he allowed credit until January 1774 to anyone who made a purchase “of 50l. sterling, at one time.”  Otherwise, “immediate payment will be expected” for smaller sales.  This was an opportunity for “planters, shopkeepers, and others” to acquire even “the most minute and trifling article, INDISPUTABLY CHEAPER than they could possibly do in London.”  How could Villepontoux make such a promise about these fashionable wares?  How could the prices in Charleston beat the prices in London?  He asserted that the goods “were purchased, in large parcels, of the original manufacturers, with the utmost care and pains.”  He rehearsed a narrative often delivered by merchants who sought to convince shopkeepers and consumers that they offered the best deals.  Rather than dealing with English merchants, middlemen responsible for inflating prices, Thomson contracted with the producers directly.  That lowered his costs, as did purchasing in volume.  That meant that Thomson (and now Villepontoux) could give bargains to colonizers in South Carolina by passing along the discounts.

In his effort to clear out the merchandise at Thomson’s store, Villepontoux combined a variety of popular marketing appeals.  He invoked choice, fashion, price, and connections to the most cosmopolitan city in the empire.  To persuade prospective buyers that they did not want to pass on the deals now available, he presented an explanation about how he managed to set low prices.  Those circumstances suggested the possibility of negotiating favorable transactions with an already motivated seller.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 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.

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 31, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 31, 1773).

August 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Chronicle (August 30, 1773).

“THE Butchers who have no stalls in the market of this city … will sell their meat a Half-penny cheaper than those that have.”

By the end of August 1773, it was a notice familiar to readers of the Pennsylvania Chronicle.  Starting on August 9, the “Butchers who have no stalls in the market of this city” placed an advertisement to inform prospective customers of a considerable bargain available “at their stands in the street above the meal-market.”  Collectively, those butchers pledged that they “will sell their meat a Half-penny cheaper” than the butchers fortunate enough to have stalls in the city market.  They underscored that they did business on the site “where the new market was intended to have been built.”  Undercutting the competition was not merely a marketing strategy.  It was a political protest.

Candice L. Harrison provides an overview of the failed attempt to construct a new market in Philadelphia in the early 1770s.  “As both the rural and urban population thickened,” she explains, “Philadelphia’s public markets drew in increasing numbers of vendors and consumers.  With only a small space of about twenty stalls reserved for the use of ‘country people’ – the Jersey Market – and the rest of the shambles rented to town butchers, residents from the surrounding counties petitioned the colonial legislature for the erection of new market stalls in October 1772.”  Soon after, the colony’s General Assembly and the city’s Common Council collaborated on choosing a site to build new market stalls.  They planned to start the project in January 1773.

Not everyone, however, was happy about this development.  Colonizers who owned property near the proposed site objected.  Many expressed concerned that the location of the new market would reduce their property value as well as alter the character of the wide streets in the neighborhood.  According to Harrison, Owen Jones, the provincial treasurer, led the opposition, assisted by William Goddard, “the printer of the Pennsylvania Chronicle [who] lent his editorial and printing skills to muster broader public support” against the market.  Harrison, Goddard, and their allies wrote newspaper editorials and distributed handbills and pamphlets.  While most of the opposition remained peaceful and worked through legal channels, Goddard “issued a call for physical action in a handbill” in June 1773.  Building commenced, met with vandalism and theft by some of the opponents.  The project came to an end on June 29.  The opposition prevailed after “destroying the erection of the market and privileging their own private interests over the ‘public good.’”  In the process, they asserted that “their rights of property ownerships stretched out into the public streets” and “articulated a definition of public space that was neither common nor fully public.”

Given the situation, it was no accident that the butchers without stalls in the city market set up shop “where the new market was intended to have been built” as a rejoinder to the coalition of middling artisans and merchants who had successfully obstructed the project.  They likely intended that discounted prices would not only mean more customers and revenue for themselves but also greater annoyance for local residents.  In addition, it hardly seems a coincidence that they chose to advertise in Goddard’s newspaper.  Although they likely did not relish paying their adversary to publish the advertisements, they almost certainly took some satisfaction in using the printer’s own newspaper against him.  While Goddard could have refused to run the advertisement, he might not have noticed it if someone else who worked in the printing office accepted it and handled the details, especially considering that Goddard was in the process of opening a printing office in Baltimore and launching the Maryland Journal.  That might have been just the distraction the butchers needed to stick it to the printer by advertising their protest in the Pennsylvania Chronicle.

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For more on this incident, see Candice L. Harrison, “A Jack of All Spaces: The Public Market in Revolutionary Philadelphia,” paper presented to a joint seminar of the Program for Early American Economy and Society and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, February 16, 2006.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 30, 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 (August 30, 1773).

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Boston Evening-Post (August 30, 1773).

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Boston Evening-Post (August 30, 1773).

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Boston-Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Boston-Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (August 30, 1773).

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Newport Mercury (August 30, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (August 30, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (August 30, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Packet (August 30, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Packet (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the Pennsylvania Packet (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the Pennsylvania Packet (August 30, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (August 30, 1773).

August 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Rind] (August 26, 1773).

“WILLIAMSBURG: Printed by CLEMENTINA RIND, at the NEW PRINTING OFFICE.”

It was the first time that Clementina Rind’s name appeared in the colophon of the Virginia Gazette, formerly published by her late husband.  William Rind died on August 19, 1773.  A week later, his widow revised the colophon to read: “WILLIAMSBURG: Printed by CLEMENTINA RIND, at the NEW PRINTING OFFICE, on the Main Street.”  Clementina continued her husband’s practice of using the colophon as an advertisement for subscriptions and advertising.  “All Persons may be supplied with this GAZETTE,” the colophon continued to inform readers, “at 12s6 per Year.  ADVERTISEMENTS of a moderate Length are inserted for 3s. the first Week, and 2s. each Time after; and long ones in Proportion.”  A thick border, indicative of mourning, separated the colophon from the rest of the content on the final page.  Similarly, mourning borders appeared in the masthead as well, alerting readers of a significant loss.

Due to a variety of factors, the death notice in digitized copy of Rind’s Virginia Gazette is not fully legible.  His fellow printers, Alexander Purdie and John Dixon, however, ran an even more extensive tribute to their former competitor in their own Virginia Gazette, though lacking mourning borders.  They first described William as “an affectionate Husband, kind Parent, and a benevolent Man” before lauding his work as “publick Printer to the Colony.”  Purdie and Dixon memorialized a colleague whose “Impartiality on the Conduct of his Gazette, by publishing the Productions of the several contending Parties that have lately appeared in this Country, cannot fail of securing to his Memory the Estee, of all who are sensible how much the Freedom of the Press contributes to maintain and extend the most sacred Rights of Humanity.”  Purdie and Dixon underscored the important contributions of all printers in paying their respects to the departed William.  They also gave an extensive account of the funeral rituals undertaken by “the ancient and honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons” in memory of “so worthy a Brother.”

Clementina printed the Virginia Gazette for thirteen months.  Following her death on September 25, 1774, John Pinkney became the printer.  Clementina was not the only female printer producing and distributing a newspaper in the colonies at the time.  In Annapolis, Anne Catherine Green and Son published the Maryland Gazette.  The widow of Jonas Green, Anne Catherine printed the newspaper upon his death, sometimes as sole publisher and sometimes in partnership with a son.  The Adverts 250 Project has also traced some of the work of Sarah Goddard, printer of the Providence Gazette in the late 1760s.  Female printers joined their male counterparts in contributing to the dissemination of information (and advertising) during the era of the American Revolution.

Virginia Gazette [Rind] (August 26, 1773).

August 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (August 28, 1773).

“A large Quantity of Ordure, supposed to have been taken from some Privy-House Vault.”

Samuel Young and William Tyler were not happy.  Who could blame them?  Who, that is, except for “some evil-minded Person or Persons” who had befouled their well?  Upon making an unpleasant discovery, Tyler and Young took to the pages of the Providence Gazette with an advertisement describing how the perpetrators had, “in a most filthy Manner, bedaub[ed] the Stones, Curb and Bucket, of Tyler and Young’s Well, with a large Quantity of Ordure.”  The victims of such a disgusting act of vandalism suspected that the miscreants had taken the excrement “from some Privy-House Vault.”  What explained such an assault?  Tyler and Young attributed it to “the Instigation of the Devil.”

The aggrieved colonizers did not exclude any possible suspects, describing the “Party or Parties concerned” as “he, she, or they.”  Whoever was responsible for carrying out the devil’s work, Tyler and Young wanted them held accountable.  They had not published their advertisement to advise the public about what had happened to their well but rather to enlist the aid of anyone with information that would allow them to identify or “discover” the perpetrators that they “may be brought to Justice.”  Tyler and Young offered a reward, conditional on the conviction of the “Offender or Offenders.”

As was often the case, an advertisement supplied readers with a combination of local news and gossip … and perhaps even a bit of amusement, depending on their predilections for scatological humor or how they felt about Tyler and Young.  Other advertisements in the August 28, 1773, edition of the Providence Gazette also delivered news, gossip, or a combination of the two.  Uzal Green, for instance, advised others not to extend credit to his wife, Martha, because he would not pay any of her bills since she “hath eloped from me, and refuses to return to my Bed and Board.”  Another advertisement recounted how “the Shop of Robert Leonard, Taylor, was feloniously broke open … and robbed.”  That notice offered rewards for recovering the stolen goods and capturing the thief.  In an estate notice, the executors of Dr. Samuel Carew encouraged “all those who have unsettled Accounts” to “pay their respective Debts” or face legal action.  In yet another advertisement, Nehemiah Underwood promised a reward for the capture and return of his sixteen-year-old runaway apprentice, Daniel Sanders.  None of those advertisements may have been as remarkable as Tyler and Young’s effort to identify the villain or villains who defiled their well, but each of them did incorporate local news that did not appear elsewhere in the newspaper.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 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.

Providence Gazette (August 28, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (August 28, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (August 28, 1773).

August 27

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New-London Gazette (August 27, 1773).

“WATCHES are restored to their pristine vigour.”

A month had passed since Thomas Hilldrup, a “WATCH MAKER from LONDON” who recently relocated to Hartford, inserted an advertisement that originally ran for several weeks in the Connecticut Courant, published in Hartford, in the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy as well.  When he did so, he revised the dateline to “July 20, 1773,” but did not otherwise alter his advertising copy.  Near the end of August, he decided that he wished for the same notice to run in the New-London Gazette.  He once again altered the dateline, this time to “Aug. 20, 1773,” but did not make other changes.  Apparently, the watchmaker felt confident in his address to prospective customers as it appeared in the Connecticut Courant for the past two months.

By the time he placed that notice in the New-London Gazette, Hilldrup had been in Connecticut for the better part of a year.  He had been there long enough that it was not the first time that he attempted to extend his share of the market by saturating the newspapers published in the colony with his advertisements.  He initially published an advertisement in the September 15, 1772, edition of the Connecticut Courant and then revised it a month later.  Over time, he placed the revised advertisement in the Connecticut Journal on January 8, 1773, and in the New-London Gazette three weeks later.  The watchmaker established a pattern of starting with a single newspaper, the one printed in his own town, and then attempting to reach other prospective customers in the region though the same advertisement in other newspapers.

Such industriousness may have caught the attention of John Simnet, a watchmaker in New York, as newspapers published in Connecticut circulated beyond that colony.  Simnet learned his craft in London and had decades of experience working with clients there, a point of pride that he frequently highlighted in his advertisements.  Given his background, Simnet also promoted himself as the only truly skilled watchmaker in the area.  He had a long history of denigrating his competitors in his advertisements.  The cantankerous Simnet may have taken exception to Hilldrup’s arrival on the scene, considering Hartford too close for a competitor who listed similar credentials in his advertisements.  He had not previously placed notices in any of the newspapers printed in Connecticut, but decided to run an advertisement in the January 26, 1773, edition of the Connecticut Courant.  In choosing the newspaper published in Hartford, Hilldrup’s new location and a town more distant from New York than New Haven and New London, Simnet increased the chances that Hilldrup would see his advertisement.

For his part, Hilldrup did not respond directly to Simnet in the public prints, but he did follow the other watchmaker’s lead in making veiled references to competitors in an advertisement in the April 27 edition of the Connecticut Courant.  The headline for that advertisement, “WATCHES! only,” seemed to comment on a notice in which Enos Doolittle offered his services repairing clocks and watches in the previous issue.  In addition, Hilldrup included a nota bene that seemingly mocked Doolittle for hiring a journey who completed an apprenticeship in London, proclaiming that “I am capable of going through the business myself without any assistance.”  That nota bene also appeared in the original iteration of Hilldrup’s second advertisement that eventually found its way into multiple newspapers, though he removed it after several weeks in the Connecticut Courant.

As Hilldrup worked to cultivate a clientele that would secure his position in Hartford, he published advertisements in newspapers in several towns.  Achieving that kind of reach with his notices was only part of his marketing strategy.  In addition to engaging prospective customers, those advertisements put Hilldrup in conversation with competitors, directly and indirectly.  Rather than mere announcements that readers might easily dismiss, the watchmaker crafted messages that resonated beyond any single issue of a colonial newspaper.  In an advertisement that eventually appeared in all three newspapers published in Connecticut, he requested “the favour of those gentlemen who are or may be satisfied of his abilities, to assist in recommending” his services to others.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 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.

Connecticut Journal (August 27, 1773).

August 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (August 26, 1773).

“THE trial and defence of the Rev. JOHN ALLEN, (author of the Oration on the Beauties of Liberty).”

In several entries for the Adverts 250 Project, I have traced advertisements for The American Alarm, or the Bostonian Plea, for the Rights, and Liberties, of the People and An Oration, Upon the Beauties of Liberty, or the Essential Rights of the Americans, both signed by “A British Bostonian,” in late 1772 and 1773.  According to John M. Bumsted and Charles E. Clark, the Oration “proved to be one of the best-selling pamphlets of the pre-Revolutionary crisis, passing through seven editions in four cities between 1773 and 1775.”[1]  Both pamphlets had been attributed to Isaac Skillman for some time, but work undertaken by Thomas R. Adams in the early 1960s “conclusively identified the author of the pamphlets as one John Allen.”[2]

Curious about the evidence that settled any dispute over the authorship of these pamphlets, I consulted the entries for each in Adams’s bibliographical study, American Independence: The Growth of an Idea.  Adams pointed to the December 10, 1772, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, stating that it “identifies John Allen as ‘The British Bostonian’ who wrote An Oration Upon the Beauties of Liberty.”[3]  The local news included in that issue includes the reference: “Last Thanksgiving P.M. Mr. Allen, a British Bostonian, preached a Sermon at the Rev. Mr. Davis’s Baptist Meeting-house from those Words, Micah VII. 3.”  An advertisement in the February 2, 1773, edition of the Essex Gazette promoted “An Oration on the Beauties of LIBERTY, from Mic. vii. 3. Delivered at the Second Baptist Church in Boston, on the last Thanksgiving Day.”  That does indeed present conclusive evidence of Allen’s authorship of the Oration.

Newspaper advertisements provide additional evidence.  A notice in the August 26,1773, edition of the Massachusetts Spy explicitly associates Allen with the Oration.  David Kneeland and Nathaniel Davis, the publishers of the Orationand the American Alarm, advertised “THE trial and defence of the Rev. JOHN ALLEN, (author of the Oration on the Beauties of Liberty) … Published at the request of many.”  As Bumsted and Clark explain in their biographical sketch of Allen, he “was tried in the Old Bailey for forging and uttering a promissory note for pounds” in January 1769.  Allen claimed that he discovered the note in a memorandum book and, unaware that it was a forgery, attempted to claim a reward for returning it to the rightful owner.  He gave a misleading account about how he came into possession of the note.  In the end, “Allen was acquitted of the charge of forgery, but obviously he had not conducted himself as a clergyman should in the affair.”  Rumors traveled with Allen when he migrated from London to Boston, making some colonizers hesitant to allow him to preach and, eventually, inciting interest in publishing a transcript of his trial, though “whether by his friends or his enemies is not clear.”[4]

Identity of the author of An Oration, Upon the Beauties of Liberty may have been temporarily obscured, but residents of Boston knew that Allen was the “British Bostonian” who penned that pamphlet, originally a sermon, and other political tracts published in the early 1770s.  Newspaper advertisements play a role in confirming Allen’s authorship centuries later, providing key evidence for bibliographical work.

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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): 561.

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

[3] Thomas R. Adams, American Independence: The Growth of an Idea: A Bibliographical Study of the American Political Pamphlets Printed between 17634 and 1776 Dealing with the Dispute between Great Britain and Her Colonies (Providence: Brown University Press, 1965), 68-9.

[4] Bumsted and Clark, “New England’s Tom Paine,” 562-3.