Month: November 2023

November 8

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

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

Boston Evening-Post (November 8, 1773).

“Ann-Street Advertisements.”

Jonathan Williams, Jr., placed an advertisement for a “Number of the most Fashionable BROAD CLOTHS” and “ENGLISH GOODS in general” in the November 1, 1773, edition of the Boston Evening-Post.  On that day, he ran the same advertisement in the Boston-Gazette.  It appeared again in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and the Massachusetts Spy on November 4.  Jeremiah Allen also advertised widely, promoting a “new Supply of Goods in the Hard-Ware Branch” in the same newspapers.  Archibald Cunningham did the same, inserting advertisements for wine, tea, and groceries in all of those newspapers.

That these entrepreneurs advertised in several newspapers simultaneously did not distinguish them from others in Boston and other urban ports with multiple newspapers, but an innovative aspect of their marketing efforts did deviate from standard practices.  Williams, Allen, and Cunningham apparently collaborated in creating a business district where they encouraged consumers to shop.  Their advertisements appeared together under the heading “Ann-Street Advertisements” in the Boston Evening-Post.  Decorative type marked the beginning and end of this set of advertisements.  The same header ran in the Massachusetts Spy, though the notices lacked the decorative type.  Still, a double line followed the last of the three advertisements, in contrast to the single line that separated most advertisements, indicating to observant readers where the section of “Ann-Street Advertisements” concluded.  Those three advertisements received the same treatment in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter as in the Boston Evening-Post.  Even though Cunningham’s advertisement did not consistently run in the Boston-Gazette, a header for “Ann-Street Advertisements” introduced the notices placed by Allen and Williams.  As in the Massachusetts Spy, the dividing lines indicated that those advertisements constituted a distinct section.  Unfortunately, America’s Historical Newspapers, the most extensive database of early American newspapers, does not include some editions of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy.  The issue for November 15 features all three advertisements by Allen, Cunningham, and Williams, one after the other under a header for “Ann-street Advertisements.”  Those three entrepreneurs introduced their business district in all five newspapers published in Boston at the time.

The campaign did not continue in all of those newspapers, but it did run in some of them for several weeks.  For instance, the series of “Ann-Street Advertisements,” treated as a section within the paid notices, appeared in the Massachusetts Spy through December 2, running for five consecutive weeks. The advertisements appeared together with their header for three consecutive weeks in both the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  Allen, Cunningham, and Williams apparently determined that the whole was worth more than the sum of the parts, that they would benefit more from advertising as a collective than marketing their wares separately. Their strategy focused on enticing consumers to visit a commercial district to fulfill various needs while their competitors all focused on a single shop or store.  They likely hoped that cooperating among themselves and coordinating with the local printing offices would multiply the returns on their investments in advertising.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 8, 1773

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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

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

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

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

Boston Evening-Post (November 8, 1773).

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Boston Evening-Post (November 8, 1773).

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Boston Evening-Post (November 8, 1773).

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Boston-Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 8, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 8, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 8, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 8, 1773).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 8, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 8, 1773).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (November 8, 1773).

November 7

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (November 6, 1773).

“Those indebted for advertising, or in any other Manner, are likewise requested to pay.”

Like many other colonial printers, John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, published advertisements in his own newspaper.  Many of those notices concerned additional revenue streams.  For instance, in the November 6, 1773, edition, Carter ran an advertisement that promoted “THE NEW-ENGLAND ALMANACK, OR LADY’S and GENTLEMAN’S DIARY, For the Year of our LORD, 1774,” offering to sell the popular pamphlet “in large or small Quantities.”  For many years, Benjamin West, a mathematician and astronomer, collaborated with Carter in publishing and marketing an almanac.  Another advertisement drew attention to a different project undertaken by Carter, a local edition of Daniel Fenning’s Universal Spelling-Book.  The printer proclaimed that he sold this reprint “Cheaper by the Dozen than any imported.”  A third advertisement hawked “BLANKS [or printed forms] of various Kinds,” another common source of revenue for printers.

In addition to notices about other goods and services available in their printing offices, printers also placed advertisements that tended to the business of publishing their newspapers.  In the same issue that carried advertisements for the almanac, the spelling book, and blanks, Carter inserted a notice to inform readers that “THIS DAY’s GAZETTE closes the Year with ALL the old Subscribers.”  That being the case, “the Printer therefore earnestly intreats of every one in Arrear to make immediate Payment.”  He did not, however, address only subscribers.  “Those indebted for advertising, or in any other Manner,” Carter continued, “are likewise requested to pay.”  That notice reveals an important aspect of how Carter ran his business.  Many historians of the early American press have asserted that printers extended to credit to subscribers, sometimes allowing them to fall behind in payments over several years, but insisted that advertisers had to pay for their notices in advance.  The advertising revenue supposedly amounted to more than the overdue subscriptions.  Yet some colonial printers published notices indicating that they did indeed allow credit for advertisements as well as subscriptions.  The Adverts 250 Project compiles such advertisements to demonstrate that practices in printing offices throughout the colonies varied when it came to paying upfront for advertisements.  Even if most printers did insist on payment in advance, a significant minority adopted other policies.

November 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Maryland Journal (November 6, 1773).

“PROPOSALS FOR ESTABLISHING A CIRCULATING LIBRARY IN BALTIMORE-TOWN.”

When he opened a circulating library in Annapolis in 1773, bookseller and stationer William Aikman faced competition in his efforts to recruit subscribers in Baltimore.  Joseph Rathell announced his own intention for “ESTABLISHING A CIRCULATING LIBRARY IN BALTIMORE-TOWN” in the October 23 edition of the Maryland Journal.  A week later, he published a longer advertisement, one that offered the same amenities, lower fees, and greater convenience for patrons than Aikman outlined in his notices.

In his updated address to prospective subscribers, Rathell emphasized the fees for “this much wish’d for Institution,” just “one Dollar a Quarter … (tho’ the Subscription to the Annapolis Library is One Guinea per Annum, besides the Expence of a Dollar a Year for Carriage of Books from thence to this Place by Water).”  He expected readers to recognize the bargain for the quarterly fee, while simultaneously mocking Aikman’s most recent advertisement.  Aikman apparently learned of Rathell’s “PROPOSALS” and, wary of the threat to his own efforts to expand his clientele beyond Annapolis, devised a plan to address the concerns that prospective subscribers had expressed about the “trouble and risk they run of procuring and returning the books.”  In an advertisement in the October 30 edition of the Maryland Journal, the first issue after Rathell’s original advertisement, Aikman presented what he considered a reasonable solution, “any orders for books left with Mr. Christopher Johnston, merchant, in Baltimore, will be regularly forwarded by a packet that goes weekly between Baltimore and Annapolis.”  Subscribers could request and return books for just a dollar a year, an additional fee that Rathell derided.  Somehow, the bookseller in Baltimore became aware of Aikman’s proposal before it appeared in print in the Maryland Journal.  In the same issue that Aikman first introduced delivery service Rathell published a rejoinder on another page.  The advertisements ran next to each other in the November 6 edition, drawing even more attention to the bargain that Rathell offered.  How did he know about Aikman’s newest proposal before reading the advertisement in the newspaper?  The annual subscription fee previously appeared in notices in the Maryland Gazette, advertisements that Rathell could have seen, but the delivery service was a new aspect of Aikman’s library.  Did someone in the printing office pass along that information?

Rathell sought to cater to “the Convenience of Gentlemen and Ladies of Literary Taste and Discernment” in Baltimore and surrounding towns, but he was not quite ready to launch his own circulating library.  His advertisement undercutting Aikman also served as an invitation to prospective subscribers to submit their names within three weeks of his advertisement’s first appearance in the Maryland Journal.  At that time, “if an adequate Number of Subscribers appear, the Library will be completed and opened without Delay.”  Rathell encouraged subscribers “to be speedy in entering their Names … that he may be the sooner enable to provide a COLLECTION OF BOOKS … very considerable in Number.”  He likely also intended that such haste would prompt prospective subscribers to choose between his library and Aikman’s library in Annapolis, boosting the prospects for his own by drawing subscribers away from a rival.  This ploy did not work, in part because prospective subscribers considered Aikman’s proposal the more viable option.  Rathell did not open a circulating library in Baltimore, despite the savvy appeals he made.  Other factors defeated his plan.  As Joseph Towne Wheeler explains, “the growing commercial town was still dependent upon the older community.”[1]  After all, the Maryland Journal, Baltimore’s first newspaper, commenced publication just a couple of months earlier.  “After the Revolution the situation was reversed,” Wheeler continues, noting that “when Parson Weems visited Annapolis in 1800, he could write, ‘There is not a book store in the whole town.’”[2]  Baltimore was not quite ready for the circulating library that Rathell envisioned.

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[1] Joseph Towne Wheeler, “Booksellers and Circulating Libraries in Colonial Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine 34, no. 2 (June 1939): 118.

[2] Wheeler, “Booksellers and Circulating Libraries,” 119.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 6, 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 (November 6, 1773).

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Maryland Journal (November 6, 1773).

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Providence Gazette (November 6, 1773).

November 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-London Gazette (November 5, 1773).

“HAVING perused all the most material parts of Mr. Gale’s manuscript copy of the complete surveyor, I beg leave to recommend it.”

Samuel Gale, the deputy surveyor general of New York, tried once again.  He had written a manual, “the COMPLEAT SURVEYOR,” that he wished to publish, but first he needed to find a sufficient number of subscribers to make it a viable venture for both the author and the printer, presumably Hugh Gaine in New York.  Gale had previously advertised in Gaine’s newspaper, the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, in June 1773.  In November, he placed an advertisement with identical copy in the New-London Gazette.  It filled nearly an entire column, starting in one and overflowing into another.

Approximately half of the lengthy advertisement consisted of five “RECOMMENDATIONS” for the proposed book. William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling, a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, stated that the manual “will be a very useful work to most of the surveyors in North-America, as well as others who are desirous of making themselves acquainted with both the theory and part of that art.”  Alexander Colden, the Surveyor General of New York, testified that he “perused such parts of Mr. Gale’s manuscript copy, as relates to practical surveying in America (which has been omitted in the former authors) and I find it well handled, and worthy of the encouragement of the public.  Similarly, David Rittenhouse, a prominent astronomer, mathematician, and surveyor in Philadelphia, reported that he read the manuscript and “recommend it as a work, in my opinion, well deserving the encouragement of the public.”  John Lukens, the Surveyor General of Pennsylvania, asserted that the work “deserves public encouragement” because “the rules therein laid down in practical surveying, … especially that part relating to surveying our rough lands in America, may be of great advantage to those concerned in surveying, as well as others.” John A. De Normandie, a prominent physician and scientist, proclaimed that Gales’s “rules are extremely good, and his demonstrations easier and better adapted to the understanding of mankind, than any I have ever met with.”  The first four of those testimonials also appeared on a handbill that Gale distributed the previous year.

New-London Gazette (November 5, 1773).

In addition to these endorsements, Gale recruited printers and other local agents to collect subscriptions in more than a dozen cities and towns from Boston to Savannah.  Those included Timothy Green, the printer of the newspaper carrying the surveyor’s subscription proposal.  Gale also indicated that “all the Booksellers and Printers in America and the West-India Islands” accepted and forwarded subscriptions.  Anyone who wished to contact Gale directly could do so “by applying to Hugh Gaine, at New York.”

Gale managed to enlist some subscribers but still needed to entice more.  His advertisement served as an update for “the PUBLIC in general, and to the SUBSCRIBERS in particular,” alerting them that he had “not yet been favoured with a sufficiency of the subscribers to enable me to carry it into immediate execution, without running too great a hazard.” He needed to entice more subscribers among the “well-wishers to mathematical learning among the public.” Apparently, Gale did not manage to do so, despite his advertisements in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury and the New-London Gazette, his handbill, the endorsements for his manual, and the network of local agents collecting subscriptions.  The surveyor deployed a variety of marketing strategies, but that did not guarantee success.

November 4

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (November 4, 1773).

“A large assortment of goods.”

In its first six months of publication, Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer developed a signature style for many of its advertisements.  They featured the same copy that appeared in other newspapers published in the city, yet surrounded by borders made of decorative type.  James Rivington and the compositors who worked in his printing office certainly were not the first to devise borders for newspaper notices.  After all, borders enclosed Jolley Allen’s advertisements in several Boston newspapers going back years and the shopkeeper continued to incorporate that design element into his advertisements in the early 1770s (in every newspaper except the Massachusetts Spy, which seemed hesitant to accommodate that request).  Borders occasionally surrounded advertisements in other newspapers as well, but in no newspaper did they appear as frequently as in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer.

In the fall of 1773, Richard Sause, a cutler “At the CROSS SWORDS,” joined the ranks of advertisers with borders around their advertisements.  Several notices in the November 4 edition had borders, including those places buy John Arthur, a shopkeeper, John Laboyteaux, a tailor, John J. Roosevelt, a merchant, and John Siemon, a furrier.  Borders also enclosed advertisements for “SHIP BREAD” sold by Crommelin and Horsfield and Rivington’s own notice for “Dr. KEYSER’s PILLS.”  The compositor selected different printing ornaments for each advertisement, making them distinctive even though they shared a common feature.

The copy for Sause’s advertisement matched his notice on the front page of the November 1 edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury.  An extensive list of merchandise, divided into two columns with one or two items per line, appeared below a headline and brief introduction that promised a “large assortment of goods, which he will sell cheap for cash or short credit.”  Sause’s advertisement filled three-quarters of a column in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, making it the longest advertisement with a border in that issue.  Yet Sause did not need to experiment with a border as a means of drawing attention to his advertisement.  Like Siemon, he previously ran advertisements with a woodcut depicting some aspect of his business.  For the furrier, it was a muff.  For Sause, it was a sign that showed many of the items that he made and sold, including a table knife with “SAUSE” at the base of the blade and a sword with “SAUSE” in the same position.”  The sign depicted on the woodcut even included his name and occupation, “RD. SAUSE CUTLER,” making it one of the few woodcuts personalized in such a manner.  That image appeared in Sause’s advertisement in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer on April 29, only the second issue of that newspaper.  Six months later, however, Rivington opted for the decorative border rather than the woodcut.  The increasingly popular style apparently made an impact on the advertiser, convincing him to give it a try in his own marketing in hopes that it would have a similar effect on prospective customers.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 4, 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 (November 4, 1773).

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Maryland Gazette (November 4, 1773).

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Maryland Gazette (November 4, 1773).

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Maryland Gazette (November 4, 1773).

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Maryland Gazette (November 4, 1773).

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Maryland Gazette (November 4, 1773).

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Maryland Gazette (November 4, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (November 4, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (November 4, 1773).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (November 4, 1773).

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Massachusetts Spy (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (November 4, 1773).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (November 4, 1773).

November 3

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

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

Pennsylvania Journal (November 3, 1773).

“Dr. Keyser’s Pills … warranted genuine.”

Townsend Speakman and Christopher Carter, “CHYMISTS and DRUGGISTS,” advertised widely in October and November 1773.  They placed advertisements simultaneously in the Pennsylvania Chronicle, the Pennsylvania Gazette, the Pennsylvania Journal, and the Pennsylvania Packet.  Each of those advertisements promoted raisins, figs, and currants as well as “an Assortment of the freshest DRUGS and PATENT MEDICINES.”  They offered the “most saleable Articles in large Quantities” to shopkeepers and others who planned to retail them.  Printers, for instance, often supplemented revenues from other sources by peddling patent medicines.

On November 1, the Pennsylvania Packet ran an abbreviated version of Speakman and Carter’s advertisement.  In notices in the other three newspapers during that week, the apothecaries highlighted a “Parcel of Keyser’s famous Pills, from the Importer in London, with full Directions for their Use.”  They pledged that “the Public may be assured these Pills are the genuine Sort,” and to demonstrate that was indeed the case “they have inserted the Copy of a Certificate received with [the pills], the Original of which may be seen by any Purchaser.”  The copy of that certificate comprised the final third of the advertisement.  In it, James Cowper, “Doctor of Physic,” declared himself “the only legal Proprietor of a Medicine, called KEYSER’S PILLS, in England.”  Furthermore, he certified that Speakman and Carter, “Chymists and Druggists, in Philadelphia, are my only Correspondents to whom I send the above Pills in that Part of the World.”  Consumers did not need to worry about purchasing counterfeit pills if they acquired them from Speakman and Carter.

According to another advertisement in the Pennsylvania Journal, however, customers in Philadelphia had another option for obtaining Keyser’s Pills without worrying about getting duped by unscrupulous sellers.  That advertisement appeared immediately below Speakman and Carter’s advertisement, a rather cheeky placement considering that it listed William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, as local agents who sold the pills.  Speakman and Carter paid the Bradfords to run their advertisement, complete with the certificate, and they may have expected competition but not efforts to outright undermine their marketing strategy.  The advertisement replicated James Rivington’s “Every One their own Physician” notice from Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, along with a few additions.  In addition to listing the Bradfords as local agents, a letter from Rivington to the Bradfords followed the testimonials.

Just as Speakman and Carter reprinted Cowper’s certificate in its entirety, the Bradfords published Rivington’s entire letter.  He noted that he saw “an advertisement in the Philadelphia Papers, relating to Dr. Keyser’s Pills, importing that they were procured from Dr. Cowper, of London, and warranted genuine.”  Rivington could do one better.  “I think it very proper the Public should be assured,” he trumpeted, “that the Pills, which you have had from me, and now advertize for sale, were imported by me, immediately from Mr. Keyser himself, at Paris.”  In addition, Rivington offered to show Keyser’s “letters and correspondence for some years past … to any person, who may require a sight of them.”  Furthermore, Rivington was also vigilant about counterfeits, reporting that he “detected a counterfeit sort, exposed to sale in New-York, of which Mr. Keyser has sent me a written declaration.”  Rivington concluded by inviting the Bradfords to insert his letter in their newspaper so “the Public may be once more informed you have the Pills sent directly from Mr. Keyser” to New York and then forwarded to Philadelphia.

It was not the first time that printers who sold Keyser’s Pills became embroiled in disputes over who stocked authentic medicines.  In the summer of 1772, printers in South Carolina pursued a feud in their newspapers, sometimes alluding to notices placed by their competitors and sometimes responding to them directly.  Among the many purveyors of Keyser’s Pills, a great many claimed that they carried genuine medicines and possessed some sort of exclusive right to market them in their town.

November 2

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

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

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 2, 1773).

“A COMPLEAT and CORRECT MAP of SOUTH-CAROLINA.”

In the fall of 1773, James Cook, a surveyor, advertised a “COMPLEAT and CORRECT MAP of SOUTH-CAROLINA” to readers of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal.  He underscored that he went to “great Expence in surveying” the colony, “informing himself of the District Lines, Sea-Coast, &c. with many other Particulars of general Utility.”  Furthermore, he made arrangements for “the Engraving and Colouring [to be] executed by the best Hands in London.”  The surveyor asserted that his map was “as useful a Piece of Geography as any extant.  According to William P. Cumming in British Maps of Colonial America, as quoted in the overview presented by David Rumsey Map Collection, Cook’s map was “the most detailed and accurate printed map of South Carolina, especially for the interior, yet to appear.”  You may examine a high-resolution image of Cook’s “Map of the PROVINCE of SOUTH CAROLINA” at the David Rumsey Map Collection.

Inset from James Cook, Map of the Province of South Carolina, engraved by Thomas Brown (London: 1773).  Courtesy David Ramsey Map Collection.

In his advertisement, Cook declared that map provided “a clear Idea, not only of this Province, but of the Catabaw Nation, Part of North-Carolina, and as far back as the Blue Mountains, … together with the established Dividing Line of the two Provinces.”  A small amount of territory denoted “CATABAW NATION” appeared in the northern region, but the depiction of “Catabaw Town” consisted of six squares, presumably representing houses.  The insets provided more detail of English settlements and outposts: “A PLAN of CHARLESTOWN,” “A PLAN of GEORGETOWN,” “A PLAN of CAMDEN,” “A PLAN OF BEAUFORT ON PORT ROYAL ISLAND,” and “A DRAUGHT of PORT ROYAL HARBOUR in SOUTH CAROLINA with the Marks for going in.”  Mapping the colony from the coast into the interior was an act of taking possession of the land (including, as the title of the map stated, “Roads, Marshes, Ferrys, Bridges, Swamps, Parishes Churches, Towns, Townships; COUNTY PARISH DISTRICT and PROVINCIAL LINES) and waterways (including Rivers, Creeks, Bays, Inletts, Islands [to facilitate] INLAND NAVIGATION”).  That simultaneously dispossessed indigenous inhabitants or, in the case of the Catawba, confined them to small districts.  One more inset depicted a scene with two well-dressed English gentlemen, either merchants or planters, conversing next to the cargo of a ship with several buildings visible on the other side of a harbor or river.  An enslaved African, shirtless in contrast to the finery of the gentlemen, carries a parcel on his back.  An indigenous man observes, sitting on the other side of a tree and an alligator, removed from the English settlement and the commerce undertaken by the English gentlemen and the enslaved African.  He holds a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other, representing, from the perspective of the producers and consumers of the map, the dangers that colonizers continued to face from the indigenous population.

Cook hoped that the map “will merit the Approbation of the Public” and sell many copies “at the low Price of TWO DOLLARS and a HALF.”  Whatever the sales may have been in the 1770s, only six copies survive, five in institutions in the United States and a sixth at the British Museum.  Perhaps so few survive in part because consumers did not purchase the maps solely to decorate homes or merchants’ offices but instead used them to traverse the land and waterways of the colony.