Month: August 2023

August 14

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

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

Providence Gazette (August 14, 1773)

“Can be better recounted to any who shall be pleased to make personal Application.”

When Nicholas Tillinghast and William Holroyd built a new shop in the summer of 1773, they placed an advertisement in the Providence Gazette to inform “their old Customers, and the Public,” about their new location.  They provided extensive directions, but did not mention if the Sign of the Elephant continued to adorn their business.

The partners gave a brief overview of their “Assortment” or inventory, stating that it “consists of English Piece Goods, and Hard Ware of various Sorts, West-India Goods, Groceries and Wines of several Sorts.”  Some merchants and shopkeepers demonstrated the choices they made available to consumers with lists of merchandise.  Joseph Russell and William Russell, two of the most prominent merchants in Providence, did so in the advertisement immediately above Tillinghast and Holroyd’s notice.  In addition to declaring that they stocked a “general Assortment of ENGLISH and HARD-WARE GOODS,” they named dozens of items and arranged them into two columns.  Tillinghast and Holroyd took a different approach, exclaiming that “the Particulars” of their inventory “would be tedious to enumerate in an Advertisement.”  They had deployed that strategy in the past, asserting that “The Articles are too many to be particularly mentioned in an Advertisement.”

Instead, Tillinghast and Holroyd advised that their merchandise “can be better recounted to any who shall be pleased to make personal Application.”  They invited “old Customers, and the Public” to visit their shop, examine the merchandise, compare items, ask questions, get recommendations, and chat about the “Assortment.”  That gave Tillinghast and Holroyd opportunities to cultivate relationships with consumers and, in the process, encourage them to make purchases rather than merely browse.  They might even convince shoppers to buy items that they had not even previously considered before making “personal Application” at Tillinghast and Holroyd’s new shop.  In their advertisement, the partners emphasized interacting with “their good Customers” rather than treating sales as nothing more than transactions.  They apparently believed that many consumers responded better to that personal touch compared to lengthy lists of goods.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 14, 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 14, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (August 14, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (August 14, 1773).

August 13

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

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

New-Hampshire Gazette (August 13, 1773).

“Country Traders … will, perhaps, never again have an Opportunity of purchasing so cheap.”

For nearly two years, Ebenezer Bridgham pursued a regional advertising campaign for his “Staffordshire & Liverpool Warehouse, In King-Street, BOSTON.”  In addition to placing notices in newspapers published in Boston, he also advertised in the Essex Gazette (published in Salem), the Providence Gazette, the New-Hampshire Gazette (published in Portsmouth), the Connecticut Courant (published in Hartford), and the New-London Gazette.  He initially ran the same notice in several newspapers, but later his efforts became more sporadic.  An advertisement often appeared in newspapers in one or two towns, but not in all locations that Bridgham attempted to cultivate a clientele among consumers and, especially, retailers.  Overall, he was one of the few advertisers who attempted to serve a regional market by placing notices in newspapers in several towns in the early 1770s.

As fall approached in 1773, he once again advertised in the New-Hampshire Gazette, alerting prospective customers to the “very large and full ASSORTMENT of CROCKERY WARE” available at his warehouse.  He stocked “almost every Kind of CHINA, GLASS, DELPH, … and many other Kinds of FLINT WARE” in various colors.  To entice customers, he proclaimed that he set prices “little more than the Sterling Cost.”  In other words, when they made purchases at the Staffordshire and Liverpool Warehouse they did not pay a significant markup for imported goods.  Consumers regularly encountered claims about low prices, so Bridgham demonstrated his motivation to offer bargains.  He announced that he was “Intending soon for GREAT-BRITAIN” and wished to settle accounts before his departure.  That also meant reducing his inventory as much as possible, prompting him to offer good deals to his customers.

Bridgham concluded with a note to “Country Traders” in New Hampshire, informing them that they “would find a very great Advantage in immediately supplying themselves from said Store.”  The merchant asserted that retailers “will, perhaps, never again have an Opportunity of purchasing so cheap.”  With such bargains, they could increase their own sales and generate more revenue as they passed along the savings to their own customers.  Bridgham combined appeals to price and consumer choice in his advertisement in hopes of convincing shopkeepers and others to acquire “CROCKERY WARE” and other items from him rather than other merchants.

August 12

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

“PROPOSALS FOR PRINTING A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER, AT NORFOLK.”

It was a busy year for proposing and establishing new newspapers in the colonies.  In 1773, printers in several colonies announced their intentions to publish new newspapers, some in towns that did not yet have their own newspapers and others in places already served by one or more newspapers.  The first new newspaper of the year appeared in New York following an extensive campaign to attract subscribers in the city and far beyond.  James Rivington distributed the first issue of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer; or the Connecticut, New-Jersey, Hudson’s-River, and Quebec Weekly Advertiser on April 22, 1773.  Alexander Robertson, James Robertson, and John Trumbull sought subscribers during the summer and began publishing the Norwich Packet and the Connecticut, Massachusetts, New-Hampshire, and Rhode-Island Weekly Advertiser in the fall.  The first newspaper published in Norwich, it became the fourth published in Connecticut at the time.  In Baltimore, William Goddard launched the Maryland Journal and the Baltimore Advertiser on August 20 after disseminating subscription proposals for many months.  It was the first newspaper in a city not yet prepared for two weekly publications.  Robert Hodge and Frederick Shober did not manage to attract enough subscribers to make their proposed newspaper a viable venture.

William Duncan hoped for a different outcome when he placed “PROPOSALS FOR PRINTING A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER, AT NORFOLK,” in the August 12 edition of Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette.  Duncan hoped to gather enough subscribers to support the Norfolk Gazette and Virginia Advertiser.  If successful, it would be the first newspaper published in that town and the first one published in Virginia beyond Williamsburg.  Duncan indicated the cost for both subscriptions and advertisements “will be the same as those published in WILLIAMSBURG” in Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette and Rind’s Virginia Gazette.  According to the colophons in both newspapers, subscriptions cost twelve shillings and six pence per year and advertisements “of a moderate Length” ran for three shillings for the first week and then two shillings for each additional insertion.  Duncan pledged to subscribers that he would devote “Attention to their Interest, by procuring the earliest Intelligences” and selecting only “what may be really useful as well as entertaining” while avoiding filler that did not matter to readers.

To aid in this endeavor, “SUBSCRIPTIONS will be taken in by the different GENTLEMEN instructed with PROPOSALS,” a common practice for gauging interest in books, newspapers, magazines, and other publications in early America.  Printed proposals usually included both an overview of the purpose of the publication, the plan for taking it to press, and the conditions for subscribing, including cost and descriptions of the paper and type.  In his newspaper advertisement, Duncan acknowledged that a “Specimen or Paper, Size, and Arrangement, may be expected by some” who wished to examine a sample before subscribing.  However, he had not yet arrived in Virginia and in his absence “does not purpose that any Thing of that Nature should be shown until he carries the Work into Execution.”  Such circumstances may have made some prospective subscribers wary.  William Duncan and Company did eventually distribute the first edition of the Virginia Gazette or Norfolk Intelligencer on June 9, 1774, ten months after the subscription proposals first appeared in Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg.  Duncan began working on the project in the summer of 1773, but it took the better part of a year to commence publication.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 12, 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 (August 12, 1773).

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Maryland Gazette (August 12, 1773).

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Maryland Gazette (August 12, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (August 12, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (August 12, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Journal (August 12, 1773).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (August 12, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (August 12, 1773).

August 11

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

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (August 11, 1773).

“Weaver’s Reeds or Shuttles.”

Eighteenth-century readers would have recognized the image that adorned George Lechler’s advertisement in the August 11, 1773, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, even though it does not possess the same familiarity for modern readers.  Lechler described himself as a “WEAVER AND REED-MAKER.”  The image that ran across the top of the notice, a long narrow rectangle divided by vertical lines at close intervals, depicted a reed.  As described by the Oxford English Dictionary, a reed is “part of a loom consisting of a set of evenly spaced wires known as dents (originally slender pieces of reed or cane) fastened between two parallel horizontal bars used for separating, or determining the spacing between, the warp threads, and for beating the weft into place.”  A reed also aids in guiding a shuttle across the loom.  Though the woodcut likely looks like a geometric design to most readers today, colonizers easily recognized a piece of equipment used when weaving.

That image helped draw attention to the lively copy that constituted the remainder of the advertisement.  Lechler expressed some exasperation that he “F[OU]ND myself once more under the necessity to acquaint the Public where in Philadelphia I live, since there are persons who say that I am removed.”  Such stories, he asserted, were “entirely false, as I live in the same house where I have lived these 12 years past, and shall continue in it till I move into eternity.”  Lechler had no intention, now or ever, of moving to another location.  Furthermore, following his death, “there will be another Lechler, who will continue to live there, as the house is my own, and he will make work as good as his father.”  The weaver demonstrated pride in owning his house and workshop, as sign of success, as well as pride in his own abilities and pride in the skills of his son who would continue the family business.  Yet he did not consider it necessary to go into greater detail about the “Weaver’s Reeds or Shuttles” that he made, stating that “it is not necessary for me to praise my work, for the work itself will praise the master.”  Customers who needed reeds and shuttles, Lechler declared, “may depend on getting them as good of me, as in any part of the world,” whether imported or made in the colonies.

The weaver had “a parcel of good Reeds ready made …for sale” at his house on Market Street, “the third door above the sign of the Three Kings.”  He intended for the image of the reed and the slightly cantankerous advertisement to entice weavers to acquire equipment from him at the usual place rather than trust in idle gossip (or perhaps even deliberate attempts to undermine his share of the market) that he had moved to another location.  He also encouraged the public to think of his workshop as a family business that would continue after his death, promoting customer loyalty among those satisfied with the reeds they purchased from him.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 11, 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 (August 11, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (August 11, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Journal (August 11, 1773).

August 10

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

Who were the subjects of advertisements in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

“NEW ADVERTISEMENTS … about One Hundred choice Gambia SLAVES.”

Advertising underwrote the dissemination of the news in eighteenth-century America.  Among the advertisements for consumer goods and services, legal notices, and real estate advertisements that usually filled at least half of any issue of any newspaper printed in the colonies in the 1760s and 1770s, advertisements about enslaved people described men, women, and children for sale and offered rewards for the capture and return of “runaways” who liberated themselves from their enslavers.  No printer rejected such advertisements on principle.  Indeed, when James Rivington launched a new newspaper in the spring of 1773, it took only three issues for him not only to publish an advertisement about a “Very fine Negro Boy” for sale but also to serve as a broker by instructing interested buyers to “Enquire of the Printer.”

From New England to Georgia, printers generate revenues by publishing advertisements about enslaved people, though such advertisements accounted for a greater proportion of all notices in newspapers in southern colonies.  The August 10, 1773, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, for instance, carried forty-four advertisements.  Fifteen of them concerned enslaved people.  Ten of those offered enslaved men, women, and children for sale, either individually “by private Contract” or at auctions for a “CARGO OF … SLAVES” recently arrived in Charleston after surviving the Middle Passage from Africa.  One offered a reward for a “new negro fellow named TOM” who liberated himself while another described five Black men and youths “Brought to the WORK-HOUSE” and held there until their enslavers claimed them and paid charges for holding them.  Yet another advertisement sought an overseer for a “Rice Swamp Plantation,” stating that it would be more agreeable if an applicant “has a Wife, who is used to the Management of, and will pay due Attention to sick Negroes and children.”  One more gave notice to “Residents and Non-Residents of the Parish of St. Thomas and St. Dennis” that they needed to submit a “Return upon Oath, of all their Male Slaves, liable to work in the High Roads … in Order that an Assessment may be made for defraying the Expences or Repairs.”  In addition to advertisements about enslaved people for sale and rewards for returning fugitives from enslavement, newspaper notices seeking employees and preparing for public works projects sometimes incorporated enslaved people as critical components.

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

Advertisements about enslaved people were so ubiquitous in the August 10 edition that they appeared as the first and last notices that readers encountered.  After the list of ships that entered and cleared the customs house in Charleston, a header marked “NEW ADVERTISEMENTS.”  That header appeared immediately above the first of those advertisements, a notice about the upcoming sale of “about One Hundred choice Gambia SLAVES” currently in quarantine.  It included a brief overview of a boy who had smallpox during the voyage but recovered more than four weeks earlier.  In addition, the notice provided assurances that “not the smallest Symptom hath ever appeared on any of the other Slaves, who are now all in perfect Health.”  The issue concluded with two advertisements offering enslaved people for sale by a local broker, one for “FOUR valuable and seasoned Negroes” and the other for a “Likely young NEGRO FELLOW, … a good Bricklayer.”  The broker, Jacob Valk, also placed the advertisement for the four enslaved people in the South-Carolina Gazette the previous day, one of the sixteen notices about enslaved men, women, and children in that newspaper.  Those last two advertisements ran immediately above the colophon that provided publication information: “CHARLES-TOWN: Printed by CHARLES CROUCH, in Elliott-Street.”  Advertisements about enslaved people, so lucrative for printers, bookended the paid notices in that issue of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 10, 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 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (August 10, 1773).

August 9

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

South-Carolina Gazette (August 9, 1773).

“Lands, Houses, and Negroes, Bought and sold at private Sale, upon the usual Commissions.”

Jacob Valk opened a brokerage office in Charleston in the early 1770s.  For months in 1773, he ran an advertisement in the South-Carolina Gazette and the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal to alert “the PUBLIC in general, and his Friends in particular” about the various services he provided.  He presented five primary categories of tasks undertaken in his office:  “Merchants and Tradesmen may have their Books regulated,” “Sets of Books opened properly, for Persons newly commencing any Kind of Business and superintended with the utmost Care,” “Persons desirous of settling their yearly Business expeditiously, by sending their Books to him may have it done,” “Money borrowed and lent at Interest,” and “Lands, Houses, and Negroes, Bought and sold at private Sale, upon the usual Commissions.”  Among the various jobs that he did on behalf of colonizers who employed him, Valk facilitated buying and selling enslaved men, women, and children.

To that end, he also placed advertisements on behalf of his clients.  In the August 9, 1773, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette, one of those advertisements ran immediately below his weekly notice about his various services.  On behalf of his clients, the broker described “Four valuable and seasoned Negroes” available “by private Contract” rather than auction.  Two young men were “fit for the Field,” but another young man as well as a woman possessed skills for contributing to a household.  The “young FELLOW” had experience as a “complete Waiting-Man” who had also seen to the “Care and Management of Horses, and can drive a Carriage.”  The woman was a “complete” housekeeper, “who is also a good ordinary Cook.”  Valk concluded with instructions that prospective buyers should contact him for more information about the enslaved men and woman and the “Terms of Sale.”

In another advertisement in the same issue, the broker described a house and lot for sale.  Valk’s newspaper advertisements outlining his services likely helped generate business in his brokerage office.  In turn, he placed additional notices that increased his visibility and, when successful, augmented his reputation among his clients and the general public.  Those advertisement also demonstrated that the broker actively worked on behalf of his clients, confirming for prospective customers that they might do better by entrusting sales to him “upon the usual Commissions” rather than invest their own time and effort.  In addition, those additional advertisements testified to the fact that others did indeed employ Valk, perhaps elevating the confidence that prospective clients had in his abilities.