Month: May 2024

May 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (May 14, 1774).

“[The Particulars will be inserted next Week.]”

Charles Dabney took out an advertisement in the Providence Gazette to announce that he stocked a “large Assortment of English and India GOODS” at his shop near the Great Bridge.  He offered his wares “Wholesale and Retail, at such a low Rate, as cannot fail giving Satisfaction to the Purchasers.”  In other words, customers would be happy with the bargains they got when they visited Dabney’s shop.  He intended to provide a list of his merchandise to demonstrate the choices he made available to consumers, but his initial advertisement in the May 14, 1774, edition did not include “The Particulars.”  Instead, the notice stated that those details “will be inserted next Week.”  Who made that decision?  Perhaps Dabney did not have time to draw up a list of that “large Assortment” before the May 14 edition went to press.  Perhaps John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, determined that he did not have space for all the content submitted that week.  Dabney’s advertisement may have been the item easiest to truncate.

Whatever the explanation, the complete advertisement did not appear the following week.  Politics and current events crowded out most advertisements, including even the short version of Dabney’s notice.  A note from the printer advised, “To make Room for the interesting Advices in this Day’s Gazette, we are obliged to omit several Advertisements.”  Those “interesting Advices” included the “Substance of the DEBATES on the BOSTON PORT-BILL” in the House of Commons in London.  Parliament closed the port of Boston in retribution for the destruction of the tea that occurred the previous December.  That news, which filled the entire front page and overflowed onto the second, arrived in Boston via several vessels from London.  Carter then reprinted it from Boston’s newspapers.  The second page also featured an editorial by “JUSTICE” that ran in the London’s Public Advertiser” and news from Philadelphia and Boston.  The updates from Boston continued on third page, followed by a resolution in support of “the Province of the Massachusetts Bay” adopted at a “Town-Meeting held at Providence, on the 17th Day of May.”  Advertising filled only two-thirds of the final column.  More coverage of the debate over the Boston Port Act filled almost the entire final page.  Two advertisements appeared at the bottom of the last column.

Dabney’s advertisement did finally appear in its entirety on May 28, but news about the imperial crisis, especially the repercussions of the Boston Tea Party, took priority.  That arrangement may have helped to draw more eyes to Dabney’s notice when it did run.  Colonizers looking for more news about the Boston Port Act and reactions to it in other colonies, including those who were not subscribers or regular readers, may have eagerly perused new issues of the Providence Gazette.  They certainly found more news on May 28, but they also encountered Dabney’s advertisement with its extensive list of merchandise.

May 13

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

What might have been advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Handbill (recto) perhaps distributed with the South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

“WELLS’S REGISTER: TOGETHER WITH AN ALMANACK … For the Year of our LORD, 1774.”

Most colonial newspapers consisted of four pages created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and folding it in half.  On occasion, printers issued supplements, postscripts, or extraordinaries, sometimes just two pages on a half sheet and other times another four pages.  Robert Wells, the printer of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette, took a different approach when he distributed additional content.  He printed additional pages without a masthead that designated them as part of a supplement.  Instead, they featured continuous numbering with the other pages in the issue, which continued the numbering from the previous edition, and no indication that they were not part of the standard issue for that week.  The May 13, 1774, edition of the South-Carolina and American General Gazetteincluded two extra pages, numbered 129 and 130.  When delivering the newspaper to subscribers, that additional half sheet would have been tucked inside the broadsheet portion, between pages 126 and 127.  Eighteenth-century readers understood the system for navigating such issues.

A broadsheet or handbill, likely printed on a smaller sheet, may have also accompanied that edition of the newspaper.  Accessible Archives, the database that provides the most complete coverage of newspapers from colonial South Carolina, includes an advertisement for “WELLS’S REGISTER: TOGETHER WITH AN ALMANACK … For the Year of our LORD, 1774.”  What seems certain is that the archive with the run of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette originally photographed for greater accessibility and eventually digitized by Accessible Archives has that handbill in its collection.  If the newspaper had been bound into a volume with other newspapers, by Wells or a subscriber or a collector, then the handbill was bound between the May 13 and May 20 issues.  Sometimes the binding is so tight that it distorts the image of the newspaper, especially the column nearest the binding.  While the images of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette in Accessible Archives suggest that the individual issues were part of a bound volume, they have been cropped in such a way as to hide the binding.  If the pages are indeed in a bound volume, the binding is not so tight that it resulted in distorted images when photographing the newspaper.  If the pages are not in a bound volume, then the handbill may have been tucked into the four-page broadsheet portion of the newspaper along with the additional half sheet of news.

Handbill (verso) perhaps distributed with the South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

That these items ended up together in an archive, however, does not necessarily mean that they were distributed together in 1774.  The middle of May seems rather late for Wells to distribute a handbill promoting an almanac and register for that year.  More than a third of the material in the almanac would not have much utility for readers, the months of January, February, March, and April having passed.  The register, on the other hand, with its lists of officials in Great Britain, Ireland, North America, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia and other information about local governance in the southern colonies, retained its full value.  Printers sometimes continued advertising almanacs well into the year, hoping to find buyers for surplus copies.  If Wells did happen to distribute this handbill in May 1774, then the handbill itself, proclaiming that “THIS DAY IS PUBLISHED … WELLS’S REGISTER,” was likely left over from previous marketing efforts.  The printer may have been trying to get both the handbill and remaining copies of the Register out of his shop.

The inclusion of this handbill as part of the May 13, 1774, edition of the South-Carolina and American General Gazetteraises questions about its production, distribution, and preservation.  While those questions do not have ready answers, that the handbill is part of the newspaper collection, regardless of how it ended up there, testifies to Wells’s use of media beyond newspaper notices to promote the Register.  Handbills and other advertising media, like broadsides and trade cards, were much more ephemeral than newspapers and, in turn, less likely to become part of collections that historians can examine.  They sometimes survived in quirky ways, such as a handbill tucked inside a newspaper.  Those instances suggest a much more vibrant culture of advertising than the scattered examples in research libraries, historical societies, and private collections.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 13, 1774

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR:  Yaire Hernandez

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 Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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Connecticut Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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Connecticut Journal (May 13, 1774).

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Connecticut Journal (May 13, 1774).

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Connecticut Journal (May 13, 1774).

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New-Hampshire Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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New-Hampshire Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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New-Hampshire Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (May 13, 1774).

May 12

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Maryland Gazette (May 12, 1774).

“I do hereby recommend [this guide] to the several deputy commissaries within this province.”

Publishing the Deputy Commissary’s Guide took more than a year.  The first advertisement, Elie Vallette’s lengthy subscription proposal, ran in the February 25, 1773, edition of the Maryland Gazette.  It featured an excerpt and notable image depicting how each copy would be personalized for the subscriber.  The original version ran for several weeks before an abbreviated version appeared; it eliminated the excerpt but retained the image.  Such visual distinctiveness made even the shorter advertisement the focal point among other newspaper notices.  In the summer of 1773, Vallette ran a new advertisement, this one featuring an endorsement from several prominent “gentlemen of the law” who testified to the “general utility” of the volume.  At that time, Vallette stated that the work “Is now in the Press, and will be speedily published.”

Yet subscribers still had to wait for their copies.  In May 1774, Vallette ran a notice to announce that The Deputy Commissary’s Guide was “JUST PUBLISHED, And ready to be delivered to the subscribers, neatly bound, at the respective places where they were subscribed for.”  Local agents in towns throughout the colony had collected subscriptions on behalf of Vallette.  He now set about sending copies to each of them to distribute, including additional copies or “a few remaining books” for “non-subscribers” who decided that they did indeed wish to purchase this helpful guide.  To aid in selling those surplus copies, Vallette included a recommendation for The Deputy Commissary’s Guide from William Fitzhugh, the colony’s commissary general.  Fitzhugh declared that he had “perused” the work and “approving of the regulations therein made … I do hereby recommend [the book] to the several deputy commissaries within this province” to aid them in a variety of their duties.  What better endorsement could Vallette and his reference guide have received?!

Vallette had no guarantee of success when he first distributed subscription proposals for The Deputy Commissary’s Guide.  Many proposed books did not gain sufficient numbers of subscribers to make them viable ventures for authors and printers.  Even after taking the book to press, Vallette still hustled to sell leftover copies.  His latest advertisement was not as lengthy or flashy as previous ones, but he likely figured that a key testimonial provided the best incentive to acquire the book once it hit the market.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 12, 1774

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR:  Yaire Hernandez

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 (May 12, 1774).

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Maryland Gazette (May 12, 1774).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (May 12, 1774).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (May 12, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 12, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 12, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 12, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (May 12, 1774).

May 11

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Journal (May 11, 1774).

“Booksellers, in any part of America, may be supplied with frontispieces of any kind.”

When John Norman, an “ARCHITECT and LANDSCAPE-ENGRAVER, from London,” arrived in Philadelphia in the spring of 1774, he introduced himself to the public with an advertisement in the May 11 edition of the Pennsylvania Journal.  He offered his services to “Any Gentlemen, who please to favour him their commands,” promising that they “may depend on having their work carefully and expeditiously executed on the lowest terms and in the best manner.”  The newcomer promised quality engravings at the best prices.  In addition to local customers, he also sought clients in other cities and towns.  In a nota bene, he addressed “Booksellers, in any part of America,” informing them that they “may be supplied with frontispieces of any kind.”  He produced such work “as reasonable as in England,” while also pledging to meet the schedules of his clients.  For those marketing books with frontispieces by subscription, Norman would invest “great care … to dispatch [the engravings] at the time they are wanted.”

Norman experienced success, first in Philadelphia and later in Boston.  He eventually became “one of the significant cartographic engravers and publishers of the early Republic.”  In 1775, he published an American edition of Abraham Swan’s The British Architect: or, the Builder’s Treasury of Staircases, printed by Robert Bell.  The copies in the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the Library of Congress have two subscription proposals and a list of “ENCOURAGERS” (or subscribers) bound into them.  The engraver hoped that after recruiting nearly two hundred subscribers for The British Architect that the “generous ARTISTS, who encouraged this AMERICAN EDITION, and all others who wish to see useful and ornamental ARCHITECTURE flourish in AMERICA” would reserve one or more copies of “THE GENTLEMAN AND CABINET-MAKERS’S ASSISTANT” and “A COLLECTION OF DESIGNS IN ARCHITECTURE.”  For both volumes, “SUBSCRIPTIONS are gratefully received” by Norman and Bell in Philadelphia and local agents in Annapolis, Baltimore, Charleston, and New York.

The engraver relocated to Boston during the Revolutionary War.  In the final years of the war, he produced portraits of patriot leaders, including His Excellency George Washington, Esqr., General and Commander in Chief of the Allied Armies, Supporting the Independence of America; The Honorable Samuel Adams, Esqr., First Delegate to Congress from Massachusetts; and His Excellency Nathaniel Green, Esqr., Major General of the American Army.  In 1782, Norman engraved, published, and advertised Plan of the Town of Boston, with the ATTACK on BUNKERS-HILL, in the Peninsula of CHARLESTOWN, the 17th of June, 1775.  His engravings, both portraits and maps, contributed to the commodification of patriotism during the era of the American Revolution, a different sort of project than the “ARCHITECT and LANDSCAPE-ENGRAVER” first envisioned in his advertisement in the Pennsylvania Journal.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 11, 1774

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR:  Elizabeth “Ellie” Chaclas

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 11, 1774).

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Pennsylvania Journal (May 11, 1774).

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Pennsylvania Journal (May 11, 1774).

May 10

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Connecticut Courant (May 10, 1774).

“Come see for love, and then if you please may buy of me.”

In the spring of 1774, Samuel Wescote inserted a lengthy advertisement in the Connecticut Courant.  The shopkeeper informed the public that he had “just received a new and fresh Supply of Goods which are now ready for Sale at his Store … in Hartford.”  To demonstrate the choices that he presented to consumers, he provided an extensive list that included “a very neat and fashionable assortment of dark and light Chintzes and Callicoes,” “Women’s leather worsted & silk, black & colour’d Mitts,” “Men’s worsted black colour’d & mix’d Hose,” “black Umbrelloes,” and “Cutlery and Crockery Ware.”  In addition, he stocked “many other articles too tedious to name.”  Prospective customers would have to visit his shop to discover those other wonders for themselves.

To further entice them, Wescote promised good deals, stating that he set his prices “as cheap as is sold in Hartford.”  That being the case, the price was the price.  Wescote had no intention of haggling, not with new customers nor with loyal customers.  He planned to treat “all my customers alike,” according to the principle he set forth in a rhyming couplet that concluded his advertisement.  “Come see for love, and then if you please may buy of me / But for dispatch have set my Goods so low that no abatement will there be.”  In other words, the shopkeeper saved time for everyone by setting the lowest possible price from the start.  Customers did not need to wonder if they could have gotten an even better bargain if they dickered with Wescote a bit more.  Set in italics to increase its visibility, the couplet encapsulated the consumer experience that Wescote developed throughout his advertisement.  He encouraged browsing, believing that colonizers already immersed in a transatlantic consumer revolution would “see for love” the many kinds of merchandise he carried and select items to purchase that “please[d]” them.  His pricing scheme, offering “Goods so low” to give his customers the best value, streamlined final transactions.  He made shopping rather than paying the focal point of the consumer experience for his customers, the couplet distinguishing his advertisement from others.

Slavery Advertisements Published May 10, 1774

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR:  Elizabeth “Ellie” Chaclas

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 10, 1774).

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Connecticut Courant (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (May 10, 1774).

May 9

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (May 9, 1774).

“Cannot fail to give universal Satisfaction to their Customers.”

I originally selected this advertisement to further demonstrate that even though advertisers usually wrote the copy but left the format and other aspects of graphic design to compositors who worked in printing offices they sometimes gave instructions about how they wanted specific elements of how their notices to appear.  In this instance, John Barrett and Sons ran a lengthy advertisement enclosed within a border of decorative type in three newspapers simultaneously.  Their notice appeared in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy on May 9, 1774.  On closer examination, however, I discovered that this advertisement presents further evidence that printing offices in Boston sometimes shared type already set for advertisements.  A week ago, I documented this with Joseph Peirce’s advertisement.

As was the case with that notice, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy operated independently.  Among other newspapers, Barrett and Sons’ advertisement apparently originated in the Boston-Gazette before being reprinted in the Boston Evening-Post.  Notably, it ran next to Peirce’s advertisement in the May 9 edition, that type having made its way back to the printing office for the Boston-Gazette.  The visual evidence makes it difficult to dispute that some printers transferred type from one newspaper to another.  The printing ornaments that formed the border around the advertisement make that clear.  Even if the compositor for the Boston Evening-Post happened to copy the font, capitalization, italics, size, centering, left justification, right justification, and other format exactly from the Boston-Gazette, itself a highly unlikely scenario, matching the decorative type would have been practically impossible.  Note that the compositor chose one type of ornament for the upper and lower borders and a different ornament for the left and right borders, except for the last ornament before the right corner in the lower border.  In that position appears the same ornament from the left and right borders in the advertisements in both newspapers.  Furthermore, the compositor introduced one more variation midway down the left and right borders, marking where the side-by-side columns listing goods begin.  To the left of “Chints, Calicoes” and to the right of “An Assortment,” a different ornament appears, once again in both the Boston-Gazette and the Boston Evening-Post.

Barrett and Sons’ advertisement did not make it into the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, in any form, unlike the type for Peirce’s advertisement that seems to have been transferred from the Boston-Gazette and the Boston Evening-Post to that newspaper.  That might have been due to Richard Draper’s poor health and seeking a partner to assist him in running his printing office making such coordination too difficult at that moment.  Yet the type for Peirce’s advertisement made its way into that newspaper once again on May 12 after running in the Boston-Gazetteon May 9 (but not in the Boston Evening-Post for a second time on that day).  This suggests instead that Barrett and Sons, the advertisers, made decisions about which publications would carry their advertisement, likely based on their own marketing budget and sense of which newspapers had the best circulation.  This instance raises further questions about the coordination among printing offices, especially the logistics, the bookkeeping, and the fees.  These advertisements demonstrate that printers in Boston who usually competed with each other for both subscribers and advertisers cooperated on occasion when it came to inserting advertisements in their newspapers.

Left to right: Boston-Gazette (May 9, 1774); Boston Evening-Post (May 9, 1774).