Month: September 2023

September 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (September 16, 1773).

“˙ɥsɐƆ ɹoɟ dɐǝɥƆ ǝɯǝɹʇxƎ”

Although likely resulting from an error in the printing office, Duncan Ingraham’s advertisement in the September 16, 1773, edition of the Massachusetts Spy almost certainly caught the attention of readers.  Except for a heading, “ADVERTISEMENT,” the entire notice appeared upside down at the top of the third column on the second page.  The placement of the advertisement, not just its orientation, was unusual.  In that issue, Isaiah Thomas, the printer, or a compositor who worked for the Massachusetts Spy reserved advertising for the final two pages, making Ingraham’s advertisement the only paid notice on the second page.  It appeared after news dated, “TUESDAY, September 13. BOSTON,” and above “EUROPEAN INTELLIGENCE” dated, “WEDNESDAY, September 14. BOSTON,” the date and location based on when ship captains delivered the news to the printing office, not when and where the events occurred.  Even without flipping the text, Ingraham’s advertisement was a juxtaposition from the rest of the contents on the page, meriting its own header.  No separate headers for “ADVERTISEMENTS” appeared on the third or fourth pages.  Had Thomas or the compositor originally intended for something else to appear in the space ultimately occupied by the upside-down advertisement?

When Ingraham’s advertisement next ran in the Massachusetts Spy, two weeks later on September 30, the compositor corrected the error.  It appeared right-side up, interspersed among other paid notices on the final page.  Working quickly to print the newspaper on a manually-operated press, those working in the printing office may not have caught the error after a compositor set the type for Ingraham’s advertisement and the entire block of text got rotated when added to the other contents of the second page.  How did readers react?  Did this work to Ingraham’s benefit?  When readers encountered the upside-down advertisement, did they turn their newspaper over so they could peruse it?  Upon realizing it was an advertisement rather than news, how many opted to look more closely?  How many decided to ignore it in favor of continuing with updates from England, Russia, Egypt, and other faraway places?  Did the unusual format at least make the advertisement’s headline, “Extreme Cheap for Cash,” more memorable for readers, even those not attentive to the remainder of the advertisement?  Ingraham advertised frequently enough that regular readers would have already been familiar with the merchant.  For marketing purposes, it may have been sufficient for some to see his name, “Extreme Cheap for Cash,” and a list of goods without reading through the entire inventory.

Printers, compositors, and advertisers sometimes experimented with typography in order to call more attention to certain newspaper notices.  While that does not appear to have been the intention in this instance, Ingraham’s upside-down advertisement still raises questions about how readers experienced advertisements with unusual formats or placed in unusual spots within newspapers.  Ingraham’s advertisement, flipped over and surrounded by news, may have garnered more notice than had it run alongside advertisements from his competitors that ran elsewhere in the Massachusetts Spy.

September 18

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

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

Maryland Journal (September 18, 1773).

“A lecture on the necessity, advantage, beauty, and propriety of a just vocal expression.”

When Mr. Rathell, “formerly of Annapolis, Teacher of the English Language, Writing-master and Accomptant,” opened a school and offered private lessons in Baltimore he introduced himself to prospective students and their families with an advertisement in the Maryland Journal.  Much of the lengthy advertisement focused on establishing his experience and credentials.  Rathell noted that he “for some time superintended the Academy of the late eminent Mr. Dove, professor of oratory in Philadelphia.”  That led to Dove recommended him as a private tutor who earned “the approbation of many respectable families” in the largest city in the colonies.  Rathell claimed that he “can produce indubitable proofs” of Dove’s approval of his endeavors as a private tutor.  He also promised to strive to continue “to do justice to the recommendation of the celebrated teacher … whose memory is justly revered by the first literary character in America.”  If prospective students and their families were not familiar with “the late eminent Mr. Dove,” Rathell implicitly suggested that reflected on them and gave all the more reason that those who wished to rank among the genteel needed to engage his services.

Furthermore, the tutor gained additional experience in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  “To give still greater weight to his credit as a private tutor,” Rathell exclaimed, “he cannot avoid mentioning, with very great respect, that at Lancaster he has been favoured with an attendance on several Ladies eminent for literary accomplishments.”  He lauded his former pupils, recognizing “their own happy genius,” while also insisting that their accomplishments “would give consequence to, and establish the reputation of, the most capital teacher at the first court in Europe.”  Despite the distance that separated Baltimore from London, Paris, and other centers of cultural and fashion, Rathell asserted that his students received instruction that rivaled that available to monarchs and nobles.

Rathell also used his advertisement to preview a program that he envisioned, one that had the potential to enhance his reputation in Baltimore and attract more students to his school.  He proposed “to read, in public, a few pieces from the most eminent English authors.”  The elocution of the “Teacher of the English Language” would be on full display for his audience.  In addition, he planned “to deliver a lecture on the necessity, advantage, beauty, and propriety of a just vocal expression, wherein the use and elegance of accent, quantity, emphasis, and cadence will be illustrated.”  Again, Rathell made an implicit argument to prospective students and their families.  It did not matter how expansive their knowledge of literature or how fashionably they dressed if their manner of speaking betrayed them as not truly genteel.  Learning to express themselves with “elegance” was an aspect of personal comportment vital to demonstrating status and sophistication.  Those who did not master their speech risked being considered imposters when they gathered with the better sort.  Like many other tutors, whether they taught elocution or dancing or French, Rathell played on the anxieties and insecurities of prospective students and their families while also trumpeting his experience successfully teaching others skills associated with gentility and social standing.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 18, 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 Journal (September 18, 1773).

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Maryland Journal (September 18, 1773).

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Maryland Journal (September 18, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (September 18, 1773).

September 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-Hampshire Gazette (September 17, 1773).

“It is hoped will induce all Book-buyers to look at those cheap Editions, before they lay out their Money elsewhere.”

Colonial newspapers circulated throughout entire regions rather than just the towns where they were published and nearby villages.  In the 1770s, many bore the names of a colony, such as the New-York Journal or the Pennsylvania Packet, as a testament to their dissemination far beyond the busy urban ports of New York and Philadelphia.  More elaborate titles, such as the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal and Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer; or the Connecticut, New-Jersey, Hudson’s-River, and Quebec Weekly Advertiser, also suggested the reach of those newspapers.  Accordingly, advertising in colonial newspapers was not exclusively local to the town of publication.  Instead, newspapers ran advertisements from purveyors of goods and services throughout the regions they served, though the vast majority did originate in the place of publication.  Readers would not have been surprised, for instance, to see an advertisement from Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Wilmington, Delaware; or Trenton, New Jersey, in any of the several newspapers published in Philadelphia.

Advertisements that originated on the other side of the Atlantic, however, rarely appeared in colonial newspapers.  Merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans certainly hawked imported goods in the public prints, but they assumed responsibility for their own marketing.  The producers of those goods usually did not participate in advertising to American consumers.  That made J. Donaldson’s advertisement in the New-Hampshire Gazette and other newspapers published in New England all the more noteworthy.  Donaldson promoted “NEW BOOKS” that he sold at “the only Shop for cheap Books” in London.  To demonstrate the bargains, he devised columns for “Donaldson’s Prices,” the titles of books he sold, and “London Prices.”  An edition of “Mr. Pope’s Works, with all his Notes” in six volumes typically sold for eighteen shillings, but Donaldson charged only fourteen shillings.  Similarly, Milton’s Paradise Lostsold for three shillings and six pence, but Donaldson’s customers saved a shilling.  He charged only two shillings and six pence for the same book.

In total, the bookseller listed twenty-six titles that amounted to more than £27 if purchased at “London Prices” but just over £14 at “Donaldson’s Prices,” approximately half the price.  Donaldson prefaced his list with an explanation that “many People are not acquainted with the Prices Books are commonly sold for” so “by reading what follows, they will see it their Interest to buy at his Shop.”  Below the list, he further elaborated that “By the above Comparison of Prices, it is evidence that you can buy of J DONALDSON for Fourteen Pounds and Six Pence, the same Articles which the London Booksellers charge at Twenty-seven Pounds two Shillings and six Pence.”  Donaldson calculated the savings: “in this small Parcel, Thirteen Pounds and two shillings are saved.”  He considered that argument enough to “induce all Book-buyers to look at those cheap Editions, before they lay out their Money elsewhere.”  Although Donaldson may have welcomed orders from individual consumers in the colonies, he more likely hoped to attract the attention of printers and booksellers looking to import quantities of books.  American printers produced a limited number of titles; printers, booksellers, and others who stocked books in their shops imported the vast majority of books.  Donaldson offered them a means of acquiring their inventory at lower prices and increasing sales by passing along the savings to their own customers.

September 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (September 16, 1773).

“EVERY ONE THEIR OWN PHYSICIAN, BY THE USE OF Dr. KEYSER’s PILLS.”

Dr. Keyser’s Pills may have been the most widely advertised patent medicine in colonial American newspapers.  Apothecaries included the remedy among the lists of patent medicines that they stocked, as did merchants and shopkeepers who did not specialize in drugs and medicines.  Printers also frequently advertised a variety of patent medicines, especially Dr. Keyser’s Pills, in their efforts to supplement revenues earned from job printing, newspaper subscriptions, advertising fees, and selling books and stationery.  In the summer of 1772, printers in Charleston, South Carolina, even engaged in a feud over which of them sold genuine Dr. Keyser’s Pills and accusing the other of peddling counterfeit medicines.

James Rivington, printer of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, managed to avoid such controversy in the fall of 1773, though he competed with Hugh Gaine, printer of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, in selling Dr. Keyser’s Pills.  Neither of them placed the kind of extensive notice, complete with descriptions of the symptoms that the medicine alleviated and testimonials to the effectiveness of the pills, that sometimes appeared in colonial newspapers.  Gaine did briefly note that he “has now by him many Proofs of their Utility in curing Inflamations, Rheumatism, [and] White Swellings,” an invitation to readers to examine testimonials on hand in his printing office.  For his part, Rivington deployed a headline that proclaimed “EVERY ONE THEIR OWN PHYSICIAN” when they used Dr. Keyser’s Pills to treat a “DISEASE, not to be mentioned in a News-Paper.”  Consumers knew that patients afflicted with venereal disease commonly turned to Dr. Keyser’s Pills, not just those who suffered from rheumatism (though Rivington did join Gaine in stating the pills “are also wonderfully efficacious” in alleviating those symptoms).  For prospective customers seeking to protect their privacy and avoid embarrassment by acting as “THEIR OWN PHYSICIAN,” Rivington asserted that Dr. Keyser’s Pills “infallibly cure” the unnamed disease “without the Knowledge of the most intimate Friend” (or perhaps even spouses or other partners).  Like other purveyors, Rivington sold the pills in boxes of different quantities so customers could select how many pills they thought they needed to treat themselves.

In the eighteenth century, Dr. Keyser’s Pills were as widely known to consumers as many over-the-counter brands are to customers today.  Accordingly, advertisers did not always need to publish lengthy advertisements to market the pills.  Instead, Rivington and others believed that short notices with bold proclamations, like “EVERY ONE THEIR OWN PHYSICIAN” effectively marketed the popular patent medicine.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 16, 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 (September 16, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (September 16, 1773).

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Massachusetts Spy (September 16, 1773).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (September 16, 1773).

September 15

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

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

Pennsylvania Journal (September 15, 1773).

“JUST PUBLISHED … THE WILMINGTON ALMANACK, for 1774.”

It was a sign of the changing seasons, the arrival of fall, for readers of the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal.  On September 15, 1773, James Adams published one of the first advertisements for almanacs for 1774.  Soon, many other printers and booksellers would advertise other almanacs in the Pennsylvania Gazette, the Pennsylvania Journal, and other newspapers throughout the colonies.  That would include Hall and Sellers, the printers of the Pennsylvania Gazette, and William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, inserting advertisers for almanacs they published.  The next day, Clementina Rind, printer of the Virginia Gazette, ran an advertisement for the Virginia Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1774, drawing readers into the same annual ritual of marketing, selecting, and purchasing the popular pamphlets.

For readers in Philadelphia and its hinterlands, James Adams advertised two almanacs that came off the presses at his printing office in Wilmington, Delaware.  Both included the kinds of information that made almanacs both entertaining and useful.  The Wilmington Almanack, for instance, contained the usual astronomical observations as well as extracts from The Family Physician, “shewing people what is in their own power both with respect to the prevention and cure of diseases,” an “address to the Ladies, on the present fashions” (conveniently ignoring that men just as eagerly participated in consumer culture), and both “jests” and “wise sayings.”  The reference material included “tables of interest at 6 and 7 per cent,” schedules for courts, fairs, and “Friends yearly meetings,” and descriptions of roads in the region.  Adams also sought to compete with printers in Philadelphia by publishing his own Pennsylvania Town and Country-Man’s Almanack.  Like the Wilmington Almanack, its contents included astronomical observations, schedules for courts, fairs, and Quaker meetings, descriptions of roads, and tables of interest.  For the edification of readers, it also featured “two extraordinary letters, one of them from Sir Walter Rawleigh, to his wife, after his condemnation; the other from James Earl of Marlborough, a little before his death, to his friend” as well as “memoirs of several other great and worthy men” and an essay “concerning casualties and adversities.”  Adams listed Jonathan Zane and William Wilson, both on Second Street in Philadelphia, as local agents who sold the Pennsylvania Town and Country-Man’s Almanack.

Throughout the fall, the pages of the Pennsylvania Gazette, Pennsylvania Journal, and other colonial newspapers would become increasingly crowded with advertisements for almanacs.  As the new year approached, printers and booksellers would offer dozens of titles for consumers to select.  Some printers would also market discounts for purchasing in volume, hoping to enlist shopkeepers in town and country in selling and distributing almanacs.  As much as changes in the weather and fewer hours of daylight, the appearance of advertisements for almanacs signaled the arrival of fall for the reading public.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 15, 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 (September 15, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Journal (September 15, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Journal (September 15, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (September 15, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (September 15, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (September 15, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (September 15, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (September 15, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (September 15, 1773).

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Postscript to the South-Carolina Gazette (September 15, 1773).

September 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

“The Delaware Lottery, For raising … 15,000 Dollars for the Use of the COLLEGE OF NEW-JERSEY.”

Advertisements for lotteries to fund a variety of projects, including roads, bridges, and buildings, regularly appeared in colonial newspapers.  Usually they promoted local projects, but that was not the case in an advertisement for the Delaware Lottery that ran in the September 14, 1773, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal. Sponsored by the “Presbyterian Congregation at Prince-Town, AND THE United Presbyterian Congregations OF NEWCASTLE and CHRISTIANA-BRIDGE,” this lottery benefited the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).

This was not the first time that a college in colony to the north looked to benefactors from the south.  Three years earlier, Hezekiah Smith visited Georgia and South Carolina to raise funds on behalf of Rhode Island College (now Brown University).  Rather than a lottery, he advertised a subscription list.  In recognition of their donations, benefactors would have their names listed alongside others who supported that worthy enterprise.  Smith also left instructions for stragglers to submit donations (and receive recognition for their benevolence) after his departure from the towns he visited.

The sponsors of the Delaware Lottery asserted that the “growing Importance of the College of NEW-JERSEY … is now generally known through every Province in America,” making it a worthwhile endeavor for colonizers near and far to support.  Located “[i]n the Centre of North-America” (by which the sponsors meant midway along the string of settlements along the Atlantic coast), the College of New Jersey “is well fitted for the most extensive Usefulness” to all of the colonies.  The school provided “a complete and finished Education, to all who are sent to it.”  The sponsors also declared that the college “has hitherto subsisted, and been raised to its present Situation, entirely by the Favour of the Public.”  In other words, no prominent benefactor or institution funded the college; instead, it depended on the generosity of individuals who chose to make donations … or purchase lottery tickets.

According to the “SCHEME” of the lottery, the sponsors sought to sell twenty-thousand tickets for five dollars each.  They planned to pay out most of what they collected, reserving “15,000 Dollars” or “Fifteen per Cent” of each prize for the college.  The sponsors reported that “a Number of Tickets are already engaged, and many Gentlemen of extensive Acquaintance have interested themselves in this Measure,” so anyone interested in participating needed to purchase their tickets soon to get them while they lasted.  Local agents in several towns in Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia sold tickets.  A note at the end of the lengthy advertisement advised colonizers in South Carolina to submit letters to Charles Crouch, the printer of the newspaper that carried the notice, to forward to William Bradford and Thomas Bradford in Philadelphia.  Such letters “will be safely forwarded and answered by the first Opportunity that offers after the Receipt of them.”

With the drawing fast approaching in the first week of October, readers had little time remaining to indicate their desire to enter the lottery, win prizes, and support the College of New Jersey.  That support, the “Favour of the Public,” may have provided a lot less motivation than the prospects of significant payouts for many of those who purchased tickets, but none of them had to admit that was the case.  By holding a lottery rather than circulating a subscription list, the sponsors encouraged benefactors with the prospects of reaping benefits for themselves as an incentive for their philanthropy.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 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.

Connecticut Courant (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (September 14, 1773).