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

“WANTED, A HUSBAND.”

Was it an advertisement or an editorial?  The December 17, 1773, edition of the Connecticut Gazette included an item that purported to be a “WANTED” advertisement.  The anonymous woman who placed it sought a husband who “can be warranted to possess the following agreeable Qualifications” and listed a “good Education,” “good Morals,” a mind “richly furnish’d with all useful Knowledge,” and “genteel, easy, and graceful” behavior.  That husband should be “free from Pride and Arrogance.”  Overall, he needed to demonstrate “the most distinguish’d Character.”  A nota bene indicated the circumstances that likely prompted this particular “Advertisement.”  The anonymous advertiser insisted that her prospective husband “should treat the Ladies with the Respect that their Merits require, considering that their Sex alone intitles them to his Esteem.”  To behave otherwise would not be “consistent with the Character of a Gentleman.”  Patriarchal structures defined and confined women’s status in colonial America, but the system was also supposed to bestow certain privileges and protections upon them, especially middling and elite white women.

This item included a salutation, unlike most paid notices that appeared in the Connecticut Gazette and other colonial newspapers.  “Mr. GREEN,” it addressed the printer, “Please to give the following Advertisement a Place in your Paper, and oblige one of your constant Readers.”  The anonymous advertiser likely did not intend to pay for this “Advertisement,” but rather used the word according to another common meaning in both England and America in the eighteenth century.  The Oxford English Dictionary provides this “now chiefly historical” definition: “a (written) statement calling attention to anything; a notification; esp. a notice to readers in a book (typically, a preface).”  Printers and authors also used “advertisement” in that manner in newspapers.  In this instance, the “Advertisement” appeared in a curious place in the Connecticut Gazette, on the final page immediately below the “POET’S CORNER,” a weekly feature, and above advertisements that were indeed paid notices.  The printer chose to place the “Advertisement” with paid notices rather than among the news and editorials on other pages, perhaps suggesting that even though he did not collect payment he still considered the piece artful, like that week’s poem, rather than a serious editorial.  The anonymous advertiser could demand “the Respect that [Ladies’] Merits require,” but that did not mean that the printer was obliged to respond in that manner.  Just as John Adams would mock Abigail’s admonitions to “Remember the Ladies” in their correspondence in the spring of 1776, the printer of the Connecticut Gazette gave this “Advertisement” a place in his newspaper that suggested he did not take it as seriously as the anonymous advertiser intended.