What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“THO. PALMER Gun Smith.”
Jack Healy, a student in my Revolutionary America class, selected Thomas Palmer’s advertisement for “a Quantity of well made RIFLES” and “all Sorts of SHOT GUNS” to feature on the Adverts 250 Project, hoping to learn more about firearms in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution and the Early Republic. The woodcut depicting a gun, which the gunsmith previously used in other advertisements, helped attract Jack’s attention, prompting him to seek more information.
Among other secondary sources, I recommended that Jack peruse Saul Cornell’s A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. In the opening chapter, “English Tyranny versus American Liberty,” Cornell describes militia laws “that required each householder to provide himself with a musket to meet his obligation to participate in the militia” for the purposes of keeping order and defending their communities. “It would be impossible,” Cornell asserts, “to overstate the militia’s centrality to the lives of American colonists.” In addition to providing defense, the militia “served an important social role” as “one of the central means for organizing citizens” prior to the emergence of modern political parties. Communities gathered at musters, drilling, celebrating, and forging bonds.[1]
Palmer did not mention any of that in his advertisement. He did not need to do so since prospective customers were so familiar with the part that militias played in colonial culture. Instead, he emphasized the quality of the firearms he produced, declaring that he constructed them “in the best and neatest Manner.” Furthermore, his work “hath gained the Approbation of some of the best Judges within the three Provinces” of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, though he did not identify who gave such endorsements. For those not in the market to purchase a new firearm, Palmer offered to repair “old Work, in the most careful Manner.” To fulfill their civic obligations and to participate in communal gatherings, many colonizers may have turned to Palmer to obtain and maintain the firearms they carried as members of their local militia.
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[1] Saul Cornell, A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 12-13.