What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
“We being heartily disposed to comply with the association entered into by the late continental congress …”
After it went into effect on December 1, 1774, the Continental Association had an impact on some advertisements that appeared in colonial newspapers. The tenth article of this nonimportation, nonexportation, and nonconsumption agreement enacted by the First Continental Congress allowed for the sale of goods that arrived between December 1, 1774, and February 1, 1775, but specified that local Committees of Inspection would oversee such transactions, not the importers. In turn, the importers would be reimbursed for the cost of the goods, but any profits would be earmarked for the relief of Boston while its harbor remained closed because of the Boston Port Act. The tenth article asserted that “a particular Account” of those goods would be “inserted in the publick Papers.”
That was the case for sales in Plymouth, Massachusetts, near the end of December. In early January, Thomas Ellison, Jr., Henry Remsen, and several other importers in New York published their own account of goods they ordered the previous spring and summer and the upcoming sale overseen by Joseph Haller, Nicholas Hoffman, and other members of the Committee of Inspection. Ellison, Remsen, and the others provided an inventory of the imported items. They also carefully documented when they placed the orders for each item to demonstrate that they had submitted them before the First Continental Congress commenced its meetings in Philadelphia in September and certainly before delegates issued the Continental Association near the end of October. Still, even though the ship that carried their orders left New York in July, it had returned on January 2, 1775.
The importers recognized their obligation: “we being heartily disposed to comply with the association entered into by the late continental congress, give this public notice, that the said goods will be sold at the Merchants Coffee-house.” They listed the time and date of the sale and named the members of the Committee of Inspection. They also provided a succinct inventory, such as “1 case checks, buttons, &c.” and “6 cases Manchester goods,” but did not compose the elaborate descriptions that appeared in many other advertisements before the Continental Association went into effect. In that regard, their advertisement resembled those for the sales in Plymouth. Importers who surrendered their goods to Committees of Inspection did not incorporate the marketing strategies commonly used under other circumstances.