Month: October 2023

October 20

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

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (October 20, 1773).

“Sprogell is, and will be, constantly supplied with every article upon the very best terms.”

In the fall of 1773, Lodowick Sprogell took to the pages of the Pennsylvania Gazette to advertise a “GENERAL and neat assortment of GOODS, suitable to the present and ensuing season” available at his store on Second Street in Philadelphia.  To give prospective customers a sense of the selection, he listed some of his merchandise, including “mens, womens, boys, girls, and childrens stockings, of various colors,” “black silk mitts,” “worsted caps,” and “scarlet, light and dark blue, copper, London brown, copper and dark mixtures, and pearl coloured superfine, fine and coarse broadcloths.” He stocked many other kinds of textiles as well as accessors, like “buttons, buckles, [and] ribbons,” as well as “a variety of other articles.”  Like many other advertisers, Sprogell presented some of his wares and encouraged readers to use their imaginations to conjure what else they might discover when they visited his store.

The merchant also made appeals to price, noting that he acquired his inventory “upon the very best terms” and would pass along the bargains to his customers.  Before listing any of the goods, Sprogell suggested that readers could indeed afford them by stating the he was “determined to sell … at the most reasonable rates.  In a nota bene at the end of his advertisement, he reiterated this appeal, declaring that he had been “supplied with every article upon the very best terms” and, as a result, “he flatters himself that it is in his power to sell as low as can possibly be purchased elsewhere in the city.”  Among the many merchants and shopkeepers who hawked their wares in the largest city in the colonies, Sprogell vowed to set prices that matched or beat his competitors.

He also attempted to entice prospective customers with promises of future shipments, asserting that he “will be, constantly supplied” with new merchandise.  Most merchants and shopkeepers focused exclusively on goods already in their stores when they advertised, but some occasionally strove to create a sense of anticipation among prospective customers.  This also signaled that shoppers would not encounter leftovers in the coming months because Sprogrell already had a plan in place to regularly update his inventory.  In his advertisement, he looked to the future, not just the present, as an additional means of convincing consumers to take advantage of the large selection and low prices at his store.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 20, 1773

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Gazette (October 20, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 20, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 20, 1773).

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Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal (October 20, 1773).

October 19

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

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

Essex Gazette (October 19, 1773).

“The REPRESENTATIONS of Governor Hutchinson, and others, Contained in certain LETTERS transmitted to England.”

Among the various advertisements in the October 19, 1773, edition of the Essex Gazette, Samuel Hall and Ebenezer Hall, the printers of the newspaper, offered a pamphlet “Just published in Boston” and available at their printing office.  Many readers likely already knew about the contents of the pamphlet, “The REPRESENTATIONS of Governor Hutchinson, and others, Contained in certain LETTERS transmitted to England, and afterwards returned from thence, and laid before the GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the MASSACHUSETTS-BAY, Together with the RESOLVES of the two Houses thereon.”  Acquiring the pamphlet and reading the correspondence for themselves, however, gave colonizers an opportunity to see for themselves exactly what Thomas Hutchinson and others had reported to ministers and members of Parliament in letters that had not been intended for public consumption.  Purchasing and perusing the pamphlet also presented another means of participating in politics.

As Jordan E. Taylor explains in Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth ion Revolutionary America, this was not the first instance of printers publishing private letters from colonial officials to associates in London.[1]  In the wake of the arrival of British soldiers in Boston in 1768, Benjamin Edes and John Gill, printers of the Boston-Gazette, published Letters to the Ministry from Governor Bernard, General Gage, and Commodore Hood.  The Halls reprinted the pamphlet and sold it in Salem.  Taylor describes the letters as “quite benign – dull even,” yet a “few passages, nevertheless, aroused indignation,” including “Bernard’s suggestion that the Massachusetts charter be altered to weaken the council and strengthen the office of the governor.”  In addition, letters from customs commissioners recommended “two or three Regiments” to “restore and support Government” in Boston.  From the perspective of the printers and many colonizers, these letters were “hard evidence that a group of officials was conspiring to intentionally exaggerate the disorder in Massachusetts and bring troops into Boston.”

In 1773, the Representations of Governor Hutchison and Others further misrepresented the situation in Massachusetts, at least according to colonizers who advocated for the patriot cause and who recognized a pattern in how the misunderstandings between the colonies and Parliament occurred.  This pamphlet included letters from Thomas Hutchinson, Andrew Oliver, the lieutenant governor, and Charles Paxton, a customs officer.  One passage written by Hutchinson addressed “the abridgment of the colonists’ liberties,” though the governor “claimed that he was predicting, rather than prescribing, that those liberties might eventually be limited.”  Paxton requested “two or three regiments” or else “Boston will be in open rebellion.”  Taylor notes that printers “widely shared the letters in their newspapers,” making them widely accessible and perhaps even generating demand for a volume that collected them together.  The letters gained sufficient interest for the pamphlet to go through ten editions as colonizers examined what Hutchinson and others had written for themselves and constructed their own narrative that the Representations and representations of colonial officials amounted to misrepresentations that caused and exacerbated the imperial crisis.

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[1] For a more complete account of Letters to the Ministry and Representations of Governor Hutchinson, see Jordan E. Taylor, Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022), 52-54.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 19, 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 (October 19, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (October 19, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (October 19, 1773).

October 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

“Every particular in repairing at HALF the price charg’d by others.”

John Simnet regularly advertised his services as a watchmaker in newspapers published in New York in the early 1770s.  Several of his competitors also ran advertisements, but Simnet placed notices so frequently that he achieved a much greater level of visibility in the public prints than other watchmakers in the city.  In the early 1770s, only Thomas Hilldrup’s notices in several newspapers published in Connecticut rivaled the dissemination of Simnet’s notices, a development that may have prompted Simnet to advertise in the Connecticut Courant.  Simnet’s advertisements were often so lively (or so cantankerous) that the Adverts 250 Project has traced his marketing efforts, especially his feuds with other watchmakers, for nearly five years, beginning with his first advertisements in the New-Hampshire Gazette in 1769 and continuing with his notices in New York after he relocated in 1770.  Considering how much money he invested in marketing, the watchmaker apparently believed that his advertisements yielded results.

Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

For instance, Simnet ran two advertisements in the October 18, 1773, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, one in the standard issue and one in the advertising supplement.  The one in the supplement had been running for quite some time, but the one in the standard issue was new.  The watchmaker deployed some of the same appeals in both advertisements, especially underscoring that he undertook “every particular in repairing [watches] at HALF the price charg’d by others, and will keep them in proper order in future, gratis.”  Simnet believed that the combination of bargain prices and additional services at no charge cultivated and secured relationships with customers.  Perhaps he even discovered during his conversations with clients that was indeed the case, a rudimentary form of research into the effectiveness of his marketing strategies.  Simnet also listed his prices for cleaning watches to make comparison shopping easier for prospective clients.  In the new advertisement, he once again incorporated a claim that he frequently made about his status as the “only regular London watch-maker” in New York.  He received his training in London and had decades of experience as a watchmaker there.  Simnet often implied that made his skills superior to competitors who only had experience working in the colonies; on occasion, he explicitly stated that was the case.  Compared to some of his notices, the two advertisements in the October 18 edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury were rather placid.  For the moment, Simnet did not seek to benefit from creating controversy.  Instead, he used multiple advertisements to keep his name and his services in front of the eyes of prospective customers as they perused the newspaper.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 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.

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (October 18, 1773).

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Newport Mercury (October 18, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 18, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Packet (October 18, 1773).

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Pennsylvania Packet (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (October 18, 1773).

October 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-York Journal (October 14, 1773).

“He continues to teach … whatever is requisite to fit the young Students for Admission into any College or University.”

In the fall of 1773, J. Peter Tetard sought students for the boarding school he operated “near King’s Bridge,” about fifteen miles outside of New York.  In an advertisement in the October 14 edition of the New-York Journal, he expressed his appreciation for “the encouragement” he received since opening the school over the summer, suggesting both that the enterprise earned the approval of prominent colonizers and that some parents already enrolled their children in the school.  Yet he still had space for more students.

To entice parents to send their sons to his boarding school, Tetard made an appeal that continues to resonate today.  His curriculum encompassed “whatever is requisite to fit the young Students for Admission into any College or University.”  Tetard depicted matriculating at his academy as preparation that would lead to subsequent academic success.  To that end, he taught “the French Language in the most expeditious Manner, together with some of the most useful Sciences.”  Those included geography, ancient and modern history, logic, and “the learned Languages.”  His pupils acquired the ability to engage in “the skilful reading of the Classics.”  All of this set Tetard’s students on the path for further study at one of the colleges in the colonies or perhaps even a university in Europe, depending on their status and wealth.

Beyond the curriculum, Tetard emphasized his own role as instructor.  He described himself as “Late Minister of the Reformed French Church” in New York.  Most colonizers in New York remained deeply suspicious of both the French and Catholicism at the time, making it imperative that Tetard establish his commitment to Protestantism.  For parents unfamiliar with his reputation, he stated that his “Character and Capacity are well-known” as a result of residing “with Credit in the City of New-York for upwards of fifteen Years.”  Parents of prospective pupils who had concerns about Tetard’s faith or acumen as an instructor could make inquiries of friends and acquaintances who had lived in the city at the same time as the minister-turned-schoolmaster.  Tetard pledged that “Gentlemen who will entrust him with the Education of their Children, may depend on their Expectations being properly answered,” in terms of academic instruction, moral formation, and spiritual guidance.

Tetard also commented briefly on the building that housed his boarding school, noting that it “is remarkable for its healthy Situation, commanding one of the finest Prospects” in the colony.  In his advertisement, he introduced three elements that remain important in marketing education in the twenty-first century.  Tetard emphasized the quality of the faculty, the benefits associated with the facilities, and the preparation necessary to succeed in subsequent endeavors.

October 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Maryland Journal (October 16, 1773).

“As they are but new beginners, country merchants may depend on being served with any of the above articles at the lowest rates.”

When Daniel McHenry and Son advertised their “Wholesale and Retail store, on the east side of Calvert-street” in Baltimore in the October 16, 1773, edition of the Maryland Journal, they described themselves as “new beginners.”  Though they had little experience as merchants and shopkeepers, their advertisement followed a format familiar to readers and consumers.  Advertisements for goods and services were so ubiquitous by the 1770s that “new beginners” could craft their own newspaper notices by selecting from among many standard elements that regularly appeared in advertisements throughout the colonies.

McHenry and Son, for instance, emphasized consumer choice.  They described their inventory as “a large and various assortment of merchandize.”  To demonstrate, they listed more than two dozen items from among their “DRY GOODS,” mostly textiles but also “playing cards, rose and Indian blankets, [and] women’s made up cloaks.”  They promised that they stocked “HARD-WARE,” but did not enumerate any of those items.  McHenry and Son devoted a separate list to “GROCERIES.”  Both lists concluded with “&c.” (an abbreviation for et cetera) to indicate that customers would discover so much more on the shelves when they visited the store.  Additional elements of the advertisement replicated other newspaper notices.  McHenry and Son sold goods “suitable to the season.”  They also assured prospective customers that they carried new goods rather than hawking leftovers; they acquired their merchandise via “the last vessels from London, Liverpool, Ireland,” and other ports.  McHenry and Son also promoted “the quality of their goods” and low prices or “the lowest rates” for their customers, especially “country merchants” looking to stock their own shops.

McHenry and Son sought to take advantage of common advertising strategies to entice customers.  At the same time, they attempted to leverage their status as “new beginners,” asking prospective customers to take into account their willingness to set lower prices (for goods of the same quality) compared to merchants with more experience.  To establish their reputations and secure their position in the marketplace, McHenry and Son offered the best bargains in hopes that doing so “will induce the public to give them a trial” and then continue purchasing from them in the future.  They made their status as “new beginners” a selling point, even as they crafted an advertisement that otherwise testified to their understanding of what mattered most to colonial consumers.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 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 Journal (October 16, 1773).

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Maryland Journal (October 16, 1773).

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Maryland Journal (October 16, 1773).

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Maryland Journal (October 16, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (October 16, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (October 16, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (October 16, 1773).

October 15

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-London Gazette (October 15, 1773).

“Begs the Favour of those who are acquainted with his Abilities and Veracity in Business, to recommend him to Others.”

John Champlin, a goldsmith and jeweler, ran a shop near the courthouse in New London in the early 1770s.  In the fall of 1773, he advertised his services and merchandise in an advertisement that ran for several weeks in the New-London Gazette.  To entice prospective customers, he declared that he “makes and sells all Kinds of Gold-Smith, Silver-Smith, and Jeweller’s Work as cheap as is sold in this Colony.”

Champlin shared his shop with Daniel Jennings, an artisan who pursued an adjacent trade.  Jennings advised readers that he “repairs and hath to sell, all Kinds of Utensils for repairing Clocks and Watches.”  Recognizing that he operated within a regional marketplace, he asserted that he set prices “as cheap as can be had in New-York or Boston.”  Prospective customers, he suggested, did not need to send their clocks and watches to artisans in either of those urban ports.

Jennings did not mention, perhaps intentionally, the prices for similar goods and services in Hartford, though Thomas Hilldrup, a competitor in that town, had advertised extensively in the New-London Gazette and the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy as well as in the Connecticut Courant, the newspaper published in Hartford.  Perhaps Jennings did not mention Hartford because he did not wish to call any more attention to Hilldrup, a relative newcomer whose aggressive advertising campaign targeted prospective customers well beyond the town where he settled.

To secure his share of the market, Jennings issued a plea for “those who are acquainted with his Abilities and Veracity in his Business, to recommend him to Others.”  He considered such recommendations as effective or even more effective than the lengthy advertisements that Hilldrup ran in several newspapers.  After all, even though Hilldrup was industrious with his advertising he had only begun to establish his reputation in Connecticut.  Enlisting satisfied customers could work to Jennings’s advantage if prospective customers trusted word-of-mouth endorsements over flashy newspaper notices.  Whether or not Jennings had Hilldrup in mind when he composed his advertisement, he understood that the power of testimonials from colonizers who had engaged his services in the past.