What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“To be sold … agreeable to the tenth Article of the Association … Apothecaries Drugs.”
On January 12, 1775, the Committee of Inspection for Norwich, Connecticut, placed an advertisement for an upcoming sale of “three Chests and six Casks of Apothecary’s Drugs” that would be held on January 20 in the Norwich Packet. They ran the notice again a week later, this time stating that the sale would take place on January 24. That allowed four more days for word of the sale to circulate and attract prospective customers. It also made possible advertising in the January 20 edition of the Connecticut Gazette, published in New London.
The advertisement specified that the local Committee of Inspection would oversee that sale “at the Town-House in Norwich … agreeable to the tenth Article of the Association of the American Continental Congress.” That nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation agreement had been disseminated far wide in the months since the meetings of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia concluded at the end of October 1774. The tenth article made provisions for imported goods that arrived in the colonies between December 1, 1774, and February 1, 1775. The importers had three options. They could either return the goods, surrender them to the local Committee of Inspection to store until the boycott ended, or entrust them to the committee to sell. After the sale, the committee reimbursed the importer what they paid for the goods, but applied any profits to relief of Boston where the harbor had been closed to commerce since the Boston Port Act went into effect on June 1, 1774.
The tenth article of the Continental Association also called for “a particular Account [to be] inserted in the publick Papers.” When the Committee of Inspection for Norwich advertised the sale of “Apothecaries Drugs, Imported in the ship Lady Gage, from London, via New-York, since the first of December last” in both the Norwich Packet and the Connecticut Gazette, they did more than address prospective customers. They also kept the public throughout the region that the two newspapers circulated updated on compliance with the Continental Association, encouraging others to abide by it as well.