Month: September 2023

September 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (September 1, 1773).

“He expects in a general Assortment of other Goods, by the first Ships from London, Liverpool, Bristol, and Glasgow.”

Abraham Usher wanted prospective customers to know that he had new inventory at his store on Front Street in Philadelphia.  In an advertisement that ran in both the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal on September 1, 1773, the merchant informed readers that he “just imported, in the Charming Nancy, Captain Tyrie, and the Caesar, Captain Miller, from LONDON, a large and general Assortment of Woollens, suitable for the Fall Sale” as well as “an Assortment of Birmingham and Sheffield Wares.”  Merchants and shopkeepers often opened their advertisements with a narrative about which ships transported their merchandise across the Atlantic.  Stephen Collins began his own advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette with “JUST IMPORTED, in the Caesar, Captain Miller, from London.”  This technique allowed consumers to make their own assessments about how recently the sellers acquired their goods, knowing from their own observation, word of mouth, or the entries from the customs house published in the newspaper when vessels arrived in port.

Usher did not merely promote goods that he recently stocked at his store.  He also attempted to create a sense of anticipation around the imminent arrival of new inventory.  He confided that he “expects in a general Assortment of other Goods, by the first Ships from London, Liverpool, Bristol, and Glasgow.”  Customers did not need to wait to glimpse another advertisement in the public prints before visiting Usher’s store.  There was a good chance he would have even more new inventory on hand whenever shopkeepers and others contacted him about acquiring goods for the fall season.  Usher likely hoped that previewing those arrivals would give him an advantage over his competitors.  Most did not advertise merchandise that had not yet arrived, but that was not the case for all of them.  William Miller, who also placed notices about goods “suitable for the approaching season” in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal, similarly stated that he “daily expects a further supply in the first vessels from London, Liverpool and Bristol.”  Given that every newspaper published in Philadelphia at the time came out only once a week, Miller suggested that he could have new wares on the shelves before prospective customers even saw the next edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette or the Pennsylvania Journal.  As other merchants highlighted goods recently added to their inventory, Usher and Miller sought to eclipse their advertisements with promises of even larger selections that would soon be available to customers.

Slavery Advertisements Published September 1, 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 1, 1773).

**********

Pennsylvania Gazette (September 1, 1773).