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

“GARDEN SEEDS New and warranted of the last Year’s Growth.”

Although her advertisement appeared later than in some years, Susannah Renken was the first to advertise “GARDEN SEEDS” in Boston in 1775.  She had also been first in 1768, 1770, and 1773, commencing an annual ritual of seed sellers, most of them women, taking to the pages of Boston’s newspapers to hawk extensive selections of garden seeds.  In 1775, Renken’s first advertisements was brief, just two lines in the February 23 edition of the Massachusetts Spy: “SUSANNAH RENKEN, has received a fresh supply of Garden Seeds.  Particulars in our next.”  She may have been in such a rush to run any advertisement at all that she did not have time to prepare her usual list of seeds before Isaiah Thomas, the printer, took that issue to press, though Thomas may have opted to publish an abbreviated notice.  A note at the bottom of the column advised, “Advertisements omitted will be in our next.”  Renken may have been fortunate that even a short notice appeared.  The following week, her full advertisement, featuring dozens of varieties of seeds, ran in the Massachusetts Spy.

The copy of the March 2 edition digitized to grant greater access has been damaged, eliminating the first lines of Renken’s advertisement, but it ran again the following week.  That issue reveals that the notice began with a familiar introduction: “Imported in Capt, Shayler from LONDON, And to be Sold by SUSANNAH RENKEN.”  Merchants, shopkeepers, and other purveyors of goods often stated which vessels carried their merchandise, revealing to prospective customers when their wares had been shipped and delivered.  In this case, it meant that Renken’s seeds arrived in the colonies, but not in Boston, several months before she placed her advertisement; she may have acquired her seeds only recently.  With the city’s harbor closed to commerce because of the Boston Port Act, Shayler’s vessel arrived in Salem with “Fresh Advices from London” in late November 1774, according to the December 5 edition of the Boston-Gazette.  Shayler delivered goods as well as news, but Renken had to arrange to have her seeds transported from Salem to Boston.  Perhaps she had only just confirmed delivery when her brief notice appeared in the Massachusetts Spy.  When W.P. Bartlett advertised garden seeds in the February 21, 1775, edition of the Essex Gazette, published in Salem, he proclaimed that his wares were “JUST IMPORTED, in the Venus, from LONDON.”  In previous years, Renken and her sister seed sellers in Boston usually did not describe their seeds as “just imported.”  In 1775, the imperial crisis prevented them from even considering doing so.