Slavery Advertisements Published November 25, 1774

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 Journal (November 25, 1774).

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New-Hampshire Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (November 25, 1774).

November 24

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

Massachusetts Spy (November 24, 1774).

“They hope that Gentlemen … that have been appointed into Office … will give the Editors immediate Notice.”

Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks, the printers of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, used crowdsourcing as one means of gathering information for their publications.  To one extent or another, all colonial printers who published newspapers did so, seeking news from ship captains and travelers and reprinting items from one newspaper to another.  They also regularly asked the public to submit news.  In the colophon for the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, Mills and Hicks noted that “Letters of Intelligence for this Paper are taken in” at their printing office.  It was a familiar invitation.  Isaiah Thomas declared that “Articles of Intelligence, &c. are thankfully received” at the printing office where he published the Massachusetts Spy.

Yet Mills and Hicks did not limit crowdsourcing to their newspaper.  They also incorporated it into gathering information for almanacs and registers.  In early October 1774, they placed an advertisement requesting that “if any new Houses of Entertainment have been opened, or if any were omitted” in that year’s edition of Bickerstaff’s Boston Almanack that “such Tavern Keepers … send their Names immediately” so they could be included in the almanac for 1775.  An advertisement for that almanac in the November 24, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Spy featured a list of contents, including “the best Houses for Travellers to put up at.”  The printers presumably added any taverns that came to their attention because of their previous notice.

Immediately above that advertisement, they issued another call for the public to assist in compiling Mills and Hicks’s British and American Register for 1775.  The commenced with expressing “their Thanks to such Gentlemen as furnished them with Lists for their REGISTER last Fall, and obligingly offered to assist in correcting the same for the ensuing Year (if published).”  The 1774 edition had met with sufficient success, a “generous Reception,” that the printers did indeed feel “encouraged” to “put to the Press” a new Register for the coming year.  To make it as accurate and comprehensive as possible, they declared that “they hope that Gentlemen (both in this and the neighbouring Governments) that have been appointed into Office, either Civil, Military or Ecclesiastical, will give the Editors immediate Notice, that their Names may be inserted in the same.”  Mills and Hicks relied on the public, especially newspaper readers, to supply them with current information for their compendium of officials in New England.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 24, 1774

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 (November 24, 1774).

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Maryland Gazette (November 24, 1774).

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Maryland Gazette (November 24, 1774).

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Maryland Gazette (November 24, 1774).

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Maryland Gazette (November 24, 1774).

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Maryland Gazette (November 24, 1774).

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Maryland Gazette (November 24, 1774).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (November 24, 1774).

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Massachusetts Spy (November 24, 1774).

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Supplement to the New-York Journal (November 24, 1774).

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Supplement to the New-York Journal (November 24, 1774).

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Supplement to the New-York Journal (November 24, 1774).

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Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Pinkney] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (November 24, 1774).

November 23

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

Pennsylvania Journal (November 23, 1774).

“JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONGRESS, Held at PHILADELPHIA.”

Just three weeks after they first advertised a pamphlet containing “EXTRACTS FROM THE VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CONGRESS,” William Bradford and Thomas Bradford announced that they “Just PUBLISHED” a more extensive “JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONGRESS, Held at PHILADELPHIA, September 5, 1774.”  Although printers in towns throughout the colonies produced, marketed, and sold local editions of the Extracts to keep the public informed about what occurred at the First Continental Congress, the Bradfords were nearly alone in printing the Journal.  Hugh Gaine, the printer of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, joined them in that endeavor.

The Bradfords gave their advertisement for the Journal a privileged place in the November 23, 1774, edition of their newspaper, the Pennsylvania Journal.  It appeared on the third page, immediately following the list of prices current in Philadelphia.  While that may not seem like a spot of any significance in modern newspapers, consider the production of newspapers in eighteenth-century America.  Printers created each four-page issue by first printing the first and fourth pages on one side of a broadsheet, letting the ink dry, and then printing the second and third pages on the other side.  That meant that the most current news often appeared on the interior pages of an issue since printers set type and printed those pages last.  In most newspapers, the shipping news from the customs house or the prices current were the last news items before the advertisements, a familiar visual cue for readers that one type of content came to an end and another began.  For readers examining the news more carefully than the advertisements, an advertisement’s placement immediately following the shipping news and prices current likely increased its visibility.

That their advertisement for the Journal occupied that privileged place was not unique to the Bradfords marketing it in their own newspaper.  On the same day, they placed a notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette.  It ran on the third page, immediately following the shipping news and the prices current.  Among more than fifty paid notices in that issue, the printers of that newspaper apparently believed that the Journal deserved special treatment.  Marketing and selling both the Extracts and the Journal became an extension of keeping the public informed via coverage of the First Continental Congress that appeared in newspapers.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 23, 1774

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 (November 23, 1774).

November 22

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

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774).

“They will sell off very low … their valuable STOCK of GOODS.”

It was a going out of business sale.  That was not the language that Hawkins, Petrie, and Company used in their advertisement in the November 22, 1774, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, yet that was what they described to readers.  They first noted that their “co-partnership” would “expire” at the end of the year and, “by mutual consent,” they did not plan to renew it.  Indeed, neither of them intended to continue in business, so they called on customers and associates to settle accounts.

They also sought to liquidate their inventory, announcing that they “will sell off very low … their valuable STOCK of GOODS, which consists of a large assortment.”  Prospective customers could anticipate good deals because Hawkins, Petrie, and Company acquired their wares “on the very best terms.”  They expected cash payments (or “ready money”), but also made allowances to “sell for credit to good customers” who had made timely payments in the past.  To further entice sales, the partners offered discounts to customers “purchasing to a considerable amount,” whether merchants and shopkeepers seeking to expand their own inventories or consumers stocking up on items they frequently used.  “[T]he larger the purchase,” they proclaimed, “the lower the goods will be sold.”  In other words, Hawkins, Petrie, and Company were so eager to move their merchandise that they determined discounts on a sliding scale.  The more that a customer purchased the larger they discount they would receive.

Hawkins, Petrie, and Company did not undertake the sort of flashy going out of business sale familiar in modern marketing, but they did underscore the opportunities and advantages they made available to both consumers and other businesses in the final weeks that their business remained open.  Moving their merchandise was their priority, so they started with low prices and promised to slash them even more for customers who bought in volume.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 22, 1774

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.

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (November 22, 1774)

November 21

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 21, 1774)

“A General and compleat assortment of muffs and tippets in the newest taste.”

As winter approached in 1774, Lyon Jonas, a “FURRIER, from LONDON,” took to the pages of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury to advertise the “General and compleat assortment of muffs and tippets in the newest taste” available at his shop on Little Dock Street.  He also “manufactures and sells gentlemens caps and gloves lined with furr, very useful for travelling,” “trims ladies robes and riding dresses,” and “faces and lappels gentlemens coats and vests.”  In addition to those services, Jonas “buys and sells all sorts of furrs, wholesale and retail.”

To attract attention to his advertisement, the furrier adorned it with a woodcut that depicted a muff and a tippet (or scarf) above it with both enclosed within a decorative border.  It resembled, but did not replicate, the woodcut that John Siemon included in his advertisements in the New-York Journal, the Pennsylvania Chronicle, and the Pennsylvania Journal three years earlier.  That image did not include a border, but perhaps whoever carved Jonas’s woodcut recollected it when the furrier commissioned an image to accompany his notice.

Whatever the inspiration may have been, Jonas’s woodcut represented an additional investment in his marketing efforts.  First, he paid for the creation of the image.  Then, he paid for the space it occupied each time it appeared in the newspaper.  Advertisers paid by the amount of space rather than the number of words.  The woodcut doubled the amount of space that Jonas required in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, incurring additional expense.  Jonas presumably considered it worth the cost since the woodcut distinguished his notice from others.  In the November 21 edition and its supplement, five other advertisements featured stock images of ships and Hugh Gaine, the printer, once again ran an advertisement for Keyser’s “Famous Pills” with a border composed of ornamental type.  Beyond that Jonas’s notice was the only one with an image as well as the only one with an image depicting an aspect of his business and intended for his exclusive use.  Readers could hardly have missed it when they perused the pages of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 21, 1774

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 (November 21, 1774).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (November 21, 1774).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (November 21, 1774).

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Newport Mercury (November 21, 1774).

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Newport Mercury (November 21, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 21, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 21, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 21, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 21, 1774).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 21, 1774).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (November 21, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 21, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 21, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 21, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 21, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (November 21, 1774).

November 20

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

Norwich Packet (November 17, 1774).

“NATHANIEL PATTEN, BOOK-BINDER & STATIONER.”

The decorative border that enclosed David Nevins’s advertisement for hats and hat trimmings in the Norwich Packethelped in distinguishing it from most others in that newspaper, yet it paled in comparison to the use of ornamental type in Nathaniel Patten’s advertisement.  Patten, a bookbinder and stationer, commissioned a border for his notice, but he arranged for something much more elaborate than the relatively simple borders for Nevins’s notice and another placed by clock- and watchmaker Thomas Harland.

For some readers, the border for Patten’s advertisement may have evoked a highboy chest or other large piece of furniture.  It may even have been intended as a bookcase and secretary desk that would have held the various books and stationery listed within the border.  For the lower portion, the left, right, and bottom of the border were composed of a single line of decorative type, just like the borders in the other advertisements, while in the upper portion the left and right sides had three lines of even more intricate type.  Those sides rose into an arch composed of other kinds of detailed printing ornaments.  The compositor even created five finials, one each on the left and right at the bottom of the arch and three clustered together at the top.  The year, 1774, appeared within a pendant inside the arch, much like a piece of furniture would have an engraving.  If the type remained set into the new year, Patten had the option to update the date.  The advertisement was massive, filling almost an entire column on the final page of the November 17, 1774, edition.  The first time that it appeared, it ran on the first page on November 3, that time occupying an entire column because of the amount of space required for the masthead.  The border appeared heavy, giving Patten’s advertisement more weight compared to others in the Norwich Packet.  The finished product does not reveal how closely Patten worked with the compositor in designing or approving the border.  Whatever the case, he almost certainly paid extra for it.

That newspaper had recently marked its first year of publication.  Throughout that time, it did not tend to incorporate visual images except for the packet ship that appeared in the masthead.  The printers did not make stock images of ships, houses, horses, indentured servants, or enslaved people available to advertisers, nor did advertisers commission woodcuts that represented their businesses.  However, the newspaper did regularly embellish advertisements with decorative borders, establishing a different kind of visual appeal to engage readers.