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

“LADIES RIDING HABITS made in the newest Fashion.”

When James Davis, a tailor, opened a shop at a new location in Yorktown in the spring of 1775, he placed an advertisement in John Dixon and William Hunter’s Virginia Gazette.  He opened by extending “his most grateful Acknowledgments to all those who have hitherto been his Customers,” incorporating an appeal in common use throughout the colonies.  Advertisers often thanked existing customers as a means of enhancing their reputations.  Yet that was not Davis’s only purpose; instead, he “takes this Opportunity to inform them, as well as the Public in general, that he has just opened Shop nearly opposite Swan Tavern.”  Any client could expect the tailor’s “close Application to his Business, and the utmost Endeavours to give Satisfaction,” prompting Davis to hope for “general Encouragement” from the residents of Yorktown.

The tailor concluded with a note that singled out one item in particular: “LADIES RIDING HABITS made in the newest Fashion.”  He may have benefited from where his advertisement appeared within the May 6 edition of the Virginia Gazette, immediately following the “POETS CORNER.”  That entry presented a new poem each week.  This time it featured “VERSES by a Lady, on gathering a SNOW-DROP in the garden of her lover.”  That was almost certainly by coincidence rather than by design.  After all, Davis’s advertisement ran at the bottom of the middle column on the fourth page of the supplement the previous week.  Still, the poem may have helped in directing more readers, especially “LADIES” interested in “the newest fashion,” to Davis’s notice.  Even if the verses did not, the decorative printing that called attention to the “POETS CORNER” also distinguished Davis’s advertisement from others on that page.  It was not the first time it had such a fortuitous place.  Two weeks earlier, it followed “AN ODE TO LIBERTY” in the “POETS CORNER.”  If the tailor perused the pages of the Virginia Gazette to confirm that it indeed carried his notice, he may have been more satisfied with where it happened to appear in some issues.  Its proximity to the “POETS CORNER” may have boosted engagement on those occasions that the one followed the other, though via happenstance rather than sophisticated and intentional marketing strategy.