August 8

August 8, 2024August 2, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Boston Evening-Post, John Allen, Patriotic Whisper, Political Pamphlet, Politics, Subscription Proposal

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

“THE PATRIOTIC WHISPER in the EARS of the KING.”

The imperial crisis intensified in the summer of 1774. In response to the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, and the other Coercive Acts that Parliament enacted following the Boston Tea Party, printers, booksellers, and others marketed an array of books and pamphlets that advocated for the rights and liberties of the American colonies. On August 8, Benjamin Edes and John Gill continued advertising Considerations on the Measures Carrying on with Respect to the British Colonies in North-America in the Boston-Gazette. That same day, a subscription proposal for “A Small TRACT: Entitled THE PATRIOTIC WHISPER in the EARS of the KING” appeared in the Boston Evening-Post.

The lengthy secondary title of the proposed tract deployed similar rhetoric: “the grand Request of the People of AMERICA made manifest. Intended as a CHARIOT of LIBERTY for the Sons of AMERICA, and a standing Memorial of the Rights of the American Colonies. Being a political LIBERTY ORATION upon the Branches of the American Charters, proving them to be as sacred as the British Constitution.” The subscription proposal delivered an impassioned plea to readers whether or not they happened to purchase copies to examine in more detail.

This “PATRIOTIC WHISPER” originated as a sermon that John Allen gave “on the last Annual Thanksgiving.” Many colonizers in Boston were familiar with his sermons and tracts. Allen had previously published The American Alarm, or the Bostonian Plea, for the Rights and Liberties, of the People and An Oration, Upon the Beauties of Liberty, or the Essential Rights of the Americans, though he had adopted the pen name “A British Bostonian” for both. The extended title of the Oration, Upon the Beauties of Liberty identified it as a sermon “Delivered at the Second Baptist-Church in Boston. Upon the Last Annual Thanksgiving.” That made it possible for readers to deduce the identity of “A British Bostonian.” The subscription notice described Allen as a “humble Lover of Liberty, Dedicated to the Inhabitants of America,” and further explained that the tract was “calculated to support and strengthen the Common Cause of the Rights of the Colonies against the Power of Tyranny.” Again, the advertising copy made a powerful political statement.

That, however, does not seem to have been enough to garner the necessary number of subscribers to take the tract to press. Yet Allen’s views on the politics of the moment found their way into print in other pamphlets in 1774. In Salem, Ezekiel Russell printed The Watchman’s Alarm to Lord N—h; or, The British Parliamentary Boston Port-Bill Unwrap[p]ed. The title page attributed the work to “the British Bostonian.” In Hartford, Ebenezer Watson reprinted a “carefully corrected” fifth edition of Allen’s Oration on the Beauties of Liberty. The widespread dissemination of tracts by Allen promoted John M. Bumsted and Charles E. Clark to describe him as “New England’s Tom Paine” in the twentieth century.[1] Even though Allen’s “PATRIOTIC WHISPER” did not go to press in a crowded market, the subscription proposal that ran in the Boston Evening-Post contributed to the discourse condemning ongoing abuses by Parliament.

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[1] John M. Bumsted and Charles E. Clark, “New England’s Tom Paine: John Allen and the Spirit of Liberty,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 21, no. 4 (October 1964): 561-570.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 8, 1774

August 8, 2024July 9, 2024 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.

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*Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet* (August 8, 1774).

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*Supplement to the Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet* (August 8, 1774).

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*Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy* (August 8, 1774).

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*New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury* (August 8, 1774).

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August 7

August 7, 2024August 1, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Advertising Revenue, Connecticut Gazette, Overdue Payment for Advertising, Printers and Business Practices, Timothy Green

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

“All Persons indebted to T. GREEN, either for News-Papers, Advertisements, or otherwise are requested to make immediate Payment.”

Among the many advertisements that appeared on the final page of the August 5, 1774, edition of the Connecticut Gazette, Timothy Green, the printer, inserted a brief notice calling on readers to settle accounts in his printing office in New London. “All Persons indebted to T. GREEN, either for News-Papers, Advertisements, or otherwise,” it read, “are requested to make immediate Payment.” The “otherwise” included books and pamphlets. Green simultaneously advertised several including “POEMS on various SUBJECTS, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL, By PHILLIS WHEATLEY,” “A PLEA, In Vindication of the Connecticut Title to the contested Lands, lying West of the Province of New-York … By BENJAMIN TRUMBULL,” and “The JUDGMENT of whole Kingdoms and Nations … By Lord Somers.” Green likely stocked stationery and writing supplies as well. Many printers even peddled patent medicines for supplementary revenue.

Printers also did job printing, such as blanks (printed forms), broadsides, and handbills. When Green called on those indebted to him for advertisements to submit payment, he may have meant customers who ordered broadsides, handbills, and other advertising ephemera. That was sometimes what printers meant when they solicited advertisements. Such was the case when Joseph Crukshank announced that he opened a printing office in Philadelphia in 1769. “Particular care will be taken,” he pledged, “to do Advertisements, Blanks, &c. on very short notice.” Isaiah Thomas was more specific in the colophon that regularly ran at the bottom of the final page of the Massachusetts Spy in the early 1770s: “Small HAND-BILLS at an Hour’s Notice.” That may have been the kind of work that Green meant, but he may have also intended to include paid notices that appeared in the Connecticut Gazette. If so, extending credit to newspaper advertisers did not align with the business practice traditionally identified by historians of the early American press: printers supposedly allowed credit for subscriptions yet demanded payment in advance for newspaper advertisements. The revenue from advertising underwrote whatever subscribers neglected to pay. Yet printers sometimes inserted notices that indicated they had published newspaper advertisements on credit. Ebenezer Watson, printer of the Connecticut Courant, reconsidered that policy when he announced that “No Advertisements will for the future be published in this paper, without the money is first paid.” Green may have allowed credit for advertisements in the Connecticut Gazette. The wording in his notice does not definitively eliminate that possibility.

August 6

August 6, 2024August 1, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Advertisement as News Item, Elkanah Shearman, Forgery, Israel Mathewson Jr., Providence Gazette, Runaway Wife

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

“The Forgery being so gross, that the Author had not even the Precaution to spell my Name right.”

As readers flipped through the August 6, 1774, edition of the Providence Gazette, they encountered news and editorials on the first three pages, followed by advertisements in the final column on the third page and filling the entire final page. The news and editorials included an “Address to the Citizens of New-York on the present critical Situation of Affairs … here inserted by Request” signed by “ANGLUS AMERICANUS,” a letter from London’s Morning Post addressed to Lord North, the prime minister, by “A SOLDIER,” and updates from Paris, London, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The short section for news with the header “PROVIDENCE, August 6” relayed six items, including a note that “the Honourable JAMES BOWDOIN, Esq; of Boston, one of the Delegates appointed for the General Congress,” now known as the First Continental Congress, “passed through this Town” two days earlier “on a Journey Southward.” Most of those items did not relate to local news at all; instead, they drew from reports received in Providence. For instance, the final item mentioned “a provincial Meeting of Deputies, from the several Counties of Pennsylvania, … held at Philadelphia” with a promise to print the “Resolves and Proceedings” in the next issue.

That did not mean that the Providence Gazette did not carry local news. Indeed, the advertisements, including legal notices, kept readers updated about some of what was occurring in Providence and nearby towns. In Johnston, Israel Mathewson, Jr., contended with a case of fraud and sought to warn the public against becoming victims of an unscrupulous forger. He described a “negotiable promissory Note, for the Sum of Twenty-eight Pounds Thirteen Shillings, from me to one Joseph Aldrich.” That instrument, Mathewson exclaimed, “is false and counterfeited, the Forgery being so gross, that the Author had not even the Precaution to spell my Name right.” He cautioned others not to “unwarily” accept the note because “I am determined to prosecute for the Forgery, instead of paying the Contents.” Reading that news among the advertisements in the Providence Gazette had the potential to prevent trouble and inconvenience. In another notice, Elkanah Shearman of Glocester revealed discord within his household, asserting that his wife, Martha, then “living in Coventry, hath behaved herself in a Manner inconsistent with my Peace, injurious to my Interest, and against her Duty to me.” He feared that she “will run me in Debt” as well as “diminish my Estate.” Accordingly, he issued instructions that he would pay “any Debts of her contracting,” expecting merchants, shopkeepers, and other purveyors of goods and services to take note. Furthermore, he threatened to prosecute for any “Spoil or Waste” on his land or even “Entry without my Leave.” Martha did not possess any authority to grant access on behalf of her husband. Her husband expected others to take note of this news.

Several other advertisements delivered local news to readers of the Providence Gazette. Although John Carter, the printer, limited the amount of local news he selected to publish under the header “PROVIDENCE, August 6,” that did not mean that the newspaper did not contain news from nearby towns. Advertisers placed notices for a variety of purposes, many of them delivering news in an alternate format.

August 5

August 5, 2024August 1, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Benjamin Rush, Book Catalog, Excerpt of Book, Full-Page Advertisement, Politics of Tea, Robert Wells, South-Carolina and American General Gazette, Tea

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

*South-Carolina and American General Gazette* (August 5, 1774).

“*Extract from Dr. RUSH’s Oration.”

Robert Wells had sufficient content to fill a four-page supplement (though printed on a smaller sheet) as well as the standard four-page issue when he took the August 5, 1774, edition of the South-Carolina and American General Gazetteto press. With so much space to fill, he devoted the entire final page of the standard issue to a book catalog, listing dozens and dozens of titles in four columns. His inventory represented an array of subjects, though he did not classify or categorize his offerings under headings like other booksellers sometimes did. Instead, he left it to readers to discover the variety as they perused the catalog. Among the many titles, he hawked “THE VISIONS of THOMAS SAY of the City of Philadelphia, which he saw in a Trance.” Wells was either unaware that Say had disavowed that publication in an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette several months earlier or he disregarded it in favor of generating revenue from selling the curious work.

The printer and bookseller also stocked “AN ORATION delivered … before the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, containing an Enquiry into the NATURAL HISTORY of MEDICINE among the INDIANS in NORTH-AMERICA … By BENJAMIN RUSH, M.D. Professor of Chemistry in the College of Philadelphia*.” The asterisk directed readers to an “*Extract from Dr. RUSH’s Oration” that filled the bottom third of the column. Despite the title, the excerpt (starting on page 67) warned against “luxury and effeminacy” among colonizers, stating that the damage was not so extensive that it could not be remedied. He offered a series of recommendations, including improved education for children and temperance for adults, while some of them reflected the imperial crisis. Politics and medicine intertwined when Rush commented on “the ravages which Tea is making upon the health and populousness of our country. Had I a double portion of all that eloquence which has been employed in describing the political evils which lately accompanied this East-India herb, it would be too little to set forth the numerous and complicated diseases which it has introduced among us.” The doctor described tea as a hydra, asserting that colonizers needed the strength of Hercules “to vanquish monsters.” Parliament, the East India Company, and colonizers’ own desire for tea were presumably among the many heads of that monstrous hydra. The excerpt concluded with an argument that “America is a theatre where human nature will probably receive her last and principal literary, civil and military honours.”

Wells almost certainly selected passages intended to pique the curiosity of readers and leave them wanting more. They could examine Rush’s entire argument and learn what his comments about education, temperance, and tea had to do with “MEDICINE among the INDIANS” by purchasing the book. Just as modern publishers provide excerpts to entice prospective customers, Wells published an “Extract” to help boost sales.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 5, 1774

August 5, 2024July 9, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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

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*New-Hampshire Gazette* (August 5, 1774).

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August 4

August 4, 2024July 30, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update American History, American State Papers, Commodification of American Revolution, Commodification of Current Events, New-York Journal

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

“A complete collection of what may be with propriety stiled, AMERICAN STATE PAPERS.”

As the imperial crisis intensified, colonizers looked to the past as they considered their present circumstances and the future. In the summer of 1774, an anonymous compiler issued a proposal for collecting and printing “AMERICAN STATE PAPERS” that documented the history of British North America. The compiler acknowledged that recent events in the colonies “attract[ed] attention” and promoted “many inquiries” among the curious with “little, or no connection with the British colonies in America” as well as others with “perhaps more interested motives.” Yet information about the history of the colonies, both the distant past and more recent events, was not readily accessible “by every person.” Even those with means to travel in search of documents that told “the story of [the] rise and progress” of the colonies would spend more time seeking them out than reading them. The compiler presented a published collection of “AMERICAN STATE PAPERS” as the solution, one that would make a “good American history” widely accessible while also “preserving from oblivion valuable materials” that otherwise might be lost, damaged, or destroyed.

The compiler envisioned a project that went back to “the grant from Henry 7th, to John Cabot, and his sons for making discoveries.” It would also include “every important public paper (such as royal grants, charters, acts of parliament, &c. &c.) relating to America.” Despite such an extensive scope, the compiler emphasized the recent past, the events that were part of the imperial crisis that colonizers currently experienced as Parliament sought to regulate trade and oversee governance much more than in the past. The compiler considered the “history of the STAMP-ACT, and other acts of the British parliament for raising a revenue among us by internal taxation;– Resolves of the American assemblies;– Votes of town meeting;– and such political pamphlets and other fugitive pieces” worthy of preservation and inclusion. A significant portion of this collection would be devoted to sources that told the story of the American Revolution; the compiler detailed a plan for constructing a narrative even before the war for independence began.

The proposal gave some details about the publication, indicating that it “may be comprised in five volumes octavo, and … the price of each volume, well bound and lettered, will not exceed one dollar and a half,” yet did more than call on readers to reserve copies by subscribing. The compiler sought “friendly assistance” in acquiring documents that belonged in the collection. To that end, he “begs that gentlemen who are possessed of proper materials for this purpose, will be kind enough to favour him with the use of them,” trusting that “they shall be carefully returned.” The compiler then gave a list of local agents who accepted documents and “safely forwarded” them in addition to accepting subscriptions. Printers, postmasters, and booksellers in fifteen towns in ten colonies participated in this endeavor, establishing a community of common interest across vasty distances. The list of local agents underscored a common cause that extended across the colonies, a political project that looked to history to inform arguments about the rights and liberties that the colonies had enjoyed and should continue to experience. The proposed collection of “AMERICAN STATE PAPERS” commodified the past, especially the decade of the imperial crisis. It was part of the commodification of the American Revolution that occurred before the first shots at Lexington and Concord.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 4, 1774

August 4, 2024July 9, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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

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*Supplement to the New-York Journal* (August 4, 1774).

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*Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer* (August 4, 1774).

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*Virginia Gazette* [Purdie and Dixon] (August 4, 1774).

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*Virginia Gazette* [Rind] (August 4, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Rind] (August 4, 1774).

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August 3

August 3, 2024July 30, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Bigamy, Martha Morton, Martha Pennock, Pennsylvania Gazette, Runaway Wife, Samuel Pennock

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

*Pennsylvania Gazette* (August 3, 1774).

“MARTHA MORTON … is not my lawful wife.”

Notices advising merchants, shopkeepers, and others not to extend credit to wives of aggrieved husbands regularly appeared in colonial newspapers. Termed “runaway wife advertisements” by historians, such notices often followed a familiar format and deployed standardized language. For instance, consider James Paulhill’s advertisement in the August 3, 1774, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette: “WHEREAS my wife MARY hath eloped from me, I therefore warn all persons not to trust her on my account, as I will pay no debts of her contracting from the date hereof.” Many offered more detail, but each established that a wife absconded from her husband and, in turn, he would no longer cover her expenses. These advertisements revealed marital discord to the community, as well as husbands’ inability to exert masculine authority over their households.

At the same time that Paulhill published his advertisement, Samuel Pennock inserted a much more elaborate notice in which he disavowed his wife, Martha, and accused her of bigamy. According to Pennock, she was actually Martha Morton, wife of John Morton, who “did live in this city,” Philadelphia, “for several years, and in or about the year 1767 he was listed by Captain George Etherington, in the Royal American Regiment.” For her part, she “would willingly be called Martha Pennock,” but Samuel adamantly declared that “she is not my wife” because “her husband, John Morton, was alive” for several years after Samuel married her, not realizing that she already had a husband. Samuel sought to sever his relationship with Martha. That included making a public announcement that he “will not pay any debts of her contracting” so others should not “trust her on [Samuel’s] account.” Furthermore, he “forewarn[ed] all persons not to pay her any money that is due to me, or that may become due to me hereafter.” Samuel aimed to eliminate Martha’s access to any of his financial resources.

As was the case with every runaway wife advertisement, this notice relayed only the perspective of the husband. Cut off from their sources of support, most wives did not have the means to publish responses to defend themselves and tell their side of the story. Husbands almost always wielded the power of the press to their advantage. In this instance, however, Martha inserted a response in the next issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette. The Adverts 250 Project will feature it next week on the 250th anniversary of its publication.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 3, 1774

August 3, 2024July 9, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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

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	October 8 \| The Adve… on November 5
	October 7 \| The Adve… on September 30
	October 13 \| The Adv… on September 11
	October 5 \| The Adve… on June 26
	October 3 \| The Adve… on September 5

The Adverts 250 Project

An Exploration of Advertising During the Era of the American Revolution, 250 Years Ago This Week

Month: August 2024

Slavery Advertisements Published August 8, 1774

Slavery Advertisements Published August 5, 1774

Slavery Advertisements Published August 4, 1774

Slavery Advertisements Published August 3, 1774