Month: May 2024

May 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (May 25, 1774).

“His Liquor shall ever be pure and unmixed.”

Thomas Batt believed in the power of advertising to yield success for his business.  In 1774, he took to the pages of the Pennsylvania Gazette to announce that he had “opened his WINE and SPIRIT STORE” on Water Street in Philadelphia, pledging “to render the retailing of Liquors as compleat and convenient to the Public, as it is in the Power of Expence and strict Attention to do.”  Not long after that advertisement concluded its run, Batt placed another advertisement, this one dated May 14, to alert the public to his new location at “the large Bank House and Store … between Chestnut and WalnutStreet.”

He took the opportunity to review his inventory with prospective customers, asserting that he stocked “a most valuable Collection of Old WINES, of all Kinds” as well as “Rum, Spirits, and Porter, in any Quantities.”  Batt made a similar appeal about customers purchasing whatever quantity they desired in his previous advertisement, declaring that he was “determined to sell any Quantity, from a Pipe [a large barrel] to a Gallon.”  Perhaps he sought to distinguish himself from local vendors known for selling only large quantities or only small quantities.  Batt emphasized convenience in his initial advertisement; allowing consumers to select the quantity that suited their needs helped him to deliver on that promise.

He also highlighted quality and satisfaction.  He concluded his advertisement with an assurance that “his Liquor shall ever be pure and unmixed.”  Batt did not water down his wine or dilute higher quality spirits with lesser quality ones to increase his profit margins by fooling customers.  The retailer was well on his way to securing a favorable reputation, especially considering the “repeated Orders” he received from “approved Judges” of wines and spirits.  Batt hoped that existing clientele would follow him to his new location as well as new customers seeking him there.  His advertisements suggested a variety of reasons for choosing him over other retailers.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 25, 1774

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR:  Brendan Shaughnessy

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 Journal (May 25, 1774).

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Pennsylvania Journal (May 25, 1774).

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Pennsylvania Journal (May 25, 1774).

May 24

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Connecticut Courant (May 24, 1774).

“RUN away … a negro man about 27 years of age.”

An advertisement in the May 24, 1774, edition of the Connecticut Courant offered a reward for the capture and return of an unnamed “negro man about 27 years of age” who liberated himself by running away from Thomas Moses, his enslaver.  Moses provided a description, declaring that the “negro man … lisps in his speech” and wore “a brown coat and red waistcoat, a white holland shirt, a new castor hat, a new pair of leather breeches, [and] a pair of blue stockings.”  He also took other clothing with him, items that he could use to vary his appearance or sell in his efforts to make good on his escape.  Moses stated that he would present ten dollars to “Whoever shall take up said negro and return him to me” or five dollars to whoever would “secure him in any of his majesty’s goals [jails] and send me word so that I may have him again.”  In a nota bene, he warned, “All persons are hereby forbid to harbour said negro on penalty of law.”

The first half of that advertisement appeared at the bottom of a column that featured an editorial with a headline that proclaimed, “JOIN OR DIE!!!”  A more extensive version first ran in the May 16 edition of the Newport Mercury as a combination of news and opinion.  An abbreviated version, the first paragraph, then circulated in other newspapers as printers followed the common practice of reprinting items from one publication to another.  The shorter version featured an additional exclamation mark for emphasis.  The editorial commented on the Boston Port Act and Parliament’s intention “to reduce its spirited inhabitants to the most servile and mean compliance ever attempted to be imposed on a free people.”  This new legislation was “infinitely more alarming and dangerous to our common liberties, than even that hydra the Stamp Act.”  While directed at Boston in retaliation for the destruction of tea the previous December, the Boston Port Act, according to the anonymous author, was also “a direct hostile invasion of every province on the continent.”  The people of Boston “nobly stood as a barrier against slavery.”  Now residents of other towns needed to do the same “to stand … for the relief, support, and animation of our brethren in the insulted, besieged capital of Massachusetts-Bay” because “nothing but unity, resolution, and perseverance, can save ourselves and posterity from what is worse than death — SLAVERY.”

Connecticut Courant (May 24, 1774).

Twice in a single paragraph, the author of the editorial invoked slavery as the consequence of Parliament’s treatment of the colonies.  Ebenezer Watson, the printer of the Connecticut Courant, selected that piece to feature in his newspaper and placed it in proximity to an advertisement that offered a reward for capturing an enslaved man who liberated himself.  A single advertisement, a probate notice, separated the editorial from the “RUN away” advertisement.  Perhaps even as he generated revenue from publishing the latter, Watson recognized the juxtaposition of very different concepts of slavery and could not position one item right after the other.  Just as likely, however, that juxtaposition did not register.  After all, Moses’s advertisement was one of at least eighty-five advertisements about enslaved people that ran in nineteen newspapers, including nine published in New England, that week.  Even as many printers advocated for liberty for colonizers who faced the prospect of figurative enslavement by Parliament, the early American press participated in perpetuating the literal enslavement of Africans, African Americans, and Indigenous Americans with advertisements for buying and selling enslaved people and notices calling on colonizers to capture enslaved people who liberated themselves by running away from their enslavers.  The proximity of such advertisements to content similar to the “JOIN OR DIE!!!” editorial was a common feature of newspapers published during the era of the American Revolution.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 24, 1774

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR:  Brendan Shaughnessy

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.

Connecticut Courant (May 24, 1774).

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Essex Gazette (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 24, 1774).

May 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Newport Mercury (May 23, 1774).

“MATHER is determined to stay but a very short time.”

A new purveyor of goods arrived in Newport in the spring of 1774, but he did not have plans to remain in Rhode Island for long, at least not according to the advertisement he placed in the May 23 edition of the Newport Mercury.  James Mather “from NEW-YORK” introduced himself to the public with an announcement that he occupied “the shop belonging to Mr. GEORGE GARDNER, near the foot of the parade.”  Presumably, many readers were familiar with the location and the proprietor if not the entrepreneur who now did business in that space.

Mather offered his wares “Wholesale and Retail,” giving an extensive list of items in stock at his shop.  He carried “a large assortment of calicoes, chintses, and cottons,” “men’s and women’s silk stockings and gloves,” “a neat assortment of silks and satins for gowns, cloaks and bonnets,” and “a neat assortment of japanned and hard wares.”  Yet his newspaper advertisement could not contain the variety of merchandise he had on hand.  Mather exclaimed that he had “many other articles too tedious to mention.”  Prospective customers could depend on an array of choices when they visited the shop “near the foot of the parade.”

They could also expect bargain prices.  Mather declared that he set prices “as cheap as can be had in New-York,” suggesting that competition in the larger port yielded deals for consumers and retailers who bought to sell again.  Being “from NEW-YORK,” Mather had firsthand knowledge of the prices there.  He made them available in Newport, but for a limited time only.  He recommended that “those who are inclined to purchase any of the above articles” should “apply soon” because he “is determined to stay but a very short time.”  Shop soon or miss out, he warned.  It was not the first time that Mather deployed this strategy for moving merchandise.  The previous fall he undertook a similar enterprise in Providence, renting space near a familiar landmark and promoting prices “as cheap as can be bought in New-York.” Mather apparently found it more lucrative to pursue short-term endeavors in smaller ports than maintain a permanent location in New York.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 23, 1774

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR:  Brendan Shaughnessy

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.

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (May 23, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette (May 23, 1774).

May 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Supplement to the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 19, 1774).

“Exterminate Ignorance and Darkness, by the noble Medium of SOCIAL LIBRARIES.”

Today Henry Know is acclaimed as an American general during the Revolutionary War and the nation’s first Secretary of War, appointed when George Washington formed the first presidential cabinet.  In May 1774, however, he was a young bookseller in Boston.  Just a few months shy of his twenty-fourth birthday, he ran the “LONDON BOOK-STORE” and advertised an “ELEGANT, VALUABLE & LARGE ASSORTMENT of BOOKS” in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  He was a veteran advertiser by that time, having previously placed newspaper advertisements and distributed engraved trade cards.  He also passed out book catalogs, “which may be had gratis,” as part of his marketing efforts.  Like many other entrepreneurs, Knox did not rely on newspaper notices alone to generate interest and incite demand for his wares.

Knox stocked works by “the latest. Most learned, and most approved Authors, in all Branches f Literature,” from “ANATOMY” and “ARCHITECTURE” to “DIVINITY” and “HISTORY” to “PHILOSOPHY” and “SURGERY.”  He listed thirty genres, offering something to attract just about any reader.  He also carried “Magazines, Reviews, and other new Publications of Merit, by every Opportunity after they come out in London,” though he did not mention if he sold the Royal American Magazine, published by Isaiah Thomas in Boston.  Knox supplemented revenues from books by peddling patent medicines, a common practice among printers and booksellers at the time.

Knox sought various kinds of customers for the books that he imported.  While readers were always welcome to visit the London Book-Store to peruse and purchase the titles on hand and pick up a catalog, the bookseller also aimed to supply “Country Merchants, [and] Traders” with books and pamphlets for their retail operations, whether they were shopkeepers with fixed locations in towns beyond Boston or itinerant peddlers who hawked a variety of wares as they traveled from village to village.  Knox also hoped that members of social libraries would acquire books from him.  Public libraries did not yet exist, but clubs formed to open private libraries that gave members who paid subscriptions or other fees access to a greater number of books than they could afford to purchase on their own.  Knox lauded such initiatives, commending “Those Gentlemen in the Country who are actuated with the most genuine Principles of Benevolence in their Exertions to exterminate Ignorance and Darkness, by the noble Medium of SOCIAL LIBRARIES.”  Prospective customers purchasing on behalf of those institutions likely wished to collect from among many or even most of the genres that the bookseller highlighted in his advertisement.  Knox’s marketing strategy included diversifying the kinds of customers he served as well as stocking a wide selection of books, pamphlets, magazines, and other reading material.

May 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (May 21, 1774).

“ENGLISH LIBERTIES, Or, The free-born Subject’s Inheritance.”

Like the issue of the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy published the previous day, the May 21, 1774, edition of the Providence Gazette devoted much less space to advertising than in most issues.  News items, especially those concerning the Boston Port Act, accounted for almost all the content, leaving room for six brief advertisements in the final column on the third page and two in the bottom right corner on the last page.  The “Substance of the DEBATES on the BOSTON PORT-BILL” filled the entire front page and spilled over onto the next.  Other news from London, followed by updates from Philadelphia and Boston followed.  Updates from Boston continued on the third page, eventually giving way to coverage of a “Town-Meeting held a Providence, on the 17th Day of May.”  A speech delivered in Parliament in opposition to the Boston Port Act and calling for the “immediate REPEAL OF THE TEA DUTY” comprised most of the final page.  John Carter, the printer, included a brief note about the paucity of advertising in that issue: “To make Room for the interesting Advices in this Day’s Gazette, we are obliged to omit several Advertisements.”

Carter did not choose to omit his own advertisement about publishing “ENGLISH LIBERTIES, Or, The free-born Subject’s Inheritance” by subscription.  For a year and a half, the printer had circulated subscription papers, advertised in the Providence Gazette and other newspapers published in New England, and encouraged colonizers to reserve copies of a book that became even more timely as the imperial crisis intensified.  The Boston Port Act served as an advertisement for the volume, as did the speech warning against its passage and other news that Carter included in the May 21 edition of the Providence Gazette.  Coverage of the recent town meeting in Providence included resolutions that the residents “will heartily join with the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, and the other Colonies, in such Measures as shall be generally agreed on by the Colonies, for the protecting and securing their invaluable Natural Rights and Privileges.”  Furthermore, the resolutions called on the “Committee of Correspondence of this Town … to assure the Town of Boston, that we consider ourselves greatly interested in the present alarming Conduct of the British Parliament towards them.”  They went on to recommend a “Stoppage of all Trade” until the repeal of the Boston Port Act, using commerce as political leverage.

Carter’s advertisement for English Liberties did not merely appear in proximity to all this news.  He very intentionally gave it a privileged position.  It appeared on the final page, immediately after the speech against the Boston Port Act, the news item seamlessly leading into the advertisement for a book that provided justification for colonizers demanding their rights.  Yet its placement on the page had even more significance considering the methods for producing eighteenth-century newspapers.  Like other newspapers, the Providence Gazette consisted of four pages created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and folding it in half.  That meant that printers typically set the type and printed the first and last pages before the second and third pages.  That Carter’s advertisement for English Liberties ran in the bottom right corner of the fourth page indicates that he gave it priority over all other advertisements.  Considering the other news flowing into his printing office, he did not know how much space he might have for advertisements on the second and third pages, so he made sure that his advertisement appeared on the first side of the broadsheet that went to press.  It turned out that he had room for half a column of advertising on the third page, but Carter did not wait to find out whether that would be the case.  Like many other printers, he simultaneously used current events to sell books and pamphlets about political philosophy and he published those items to influence current events.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 21, 1774

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR:  Brendan Shaughnessy

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.

Providence Gazette (May 21, 1774).

May 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Connecticut Journal (May 20, 1774).

“GOODS.”

Only six advertisements appeared in the May 20, 1774, edition of the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy, far fewer than in the previous issue.  The printers, Thomas Green and Samuel Green, made space for the entire text of the Boston Port Act, passed in response to the destruction of tea the previous December.  The act closed and blockaded the busy port until residents paid for the tea dumped into the harbor.  It filled the entire front page and overflowed onto the second, followed by news that Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts, had returned to England with the king’s permission and, in turn, George III appointed “Thomas Gage, Esq; Lieutenant general of his Majesty’s forces, to be Captain-general and Governor in Chief of the said province, and Vice Admiral of the same.”  Other news from England and the rest of Europe completed the page, followed by extensive news from Boston and brief updates from New York, Hartford, and New Haven on the third and fourth pages.  The advertisements in that issue completed the final columns on the last two pages.

Despite the significance of the news on the front page and throughout the rest of the issue, no headlines directed attention to the Boston Port Act, the appointment of Gage, or any of the other coverage.  The sorts of headlines familiar to modern readers usually were not part of eighteenth-century newspapers, no matter how momentous the news they carried. Advertisements, on the other hand, much more frequently made use of short summaries and larger fonts.  Instead of a headline that proclaimed, “BOSTON PORT ACT TO CLOSE HARBOR ON JUNE 1,” running across the page just below the masthead on the first page, the largest font in the May 20 issue appeared in an advertisement.  The introduction for that advertisement had a slightly larger font than the news in the column to the left and throughout the rest of the newspaper.  The names of the merchants, “Morgan & Shipman,” ran in a font approximately twice the size of that for the news.  The word “GOODS,” concluding a description of their “good Assortment of Spring and Summer GOODS,” extended across the column in a font approximately three times the size of any font used for news.  It even rivaled the size of the font in the masthead, drawing eyes to Morgan and Shipman’s advertisement as readers sought news to buttress what they previously heard and read.  The format made the advertisement visually engaging, especially compared to other content.  Printers did not consider the same treatment necessary for news, testifying to a different manner for producing and reading newspapers in early America compared to later periods.