Month: October 2025

October 31

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (October 31, 1775).

“Large allowance to those who buy Quantities to Sell again.”

When John Dunlap published “FATHER ABRAHAM’S ALMANACK, For the Year of our LORD 1776,” in the fall of 1775, he set about advertising the handy reference manual.  He gave the advertisement a privileged place in the September 11, 1775, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, the newspaper he printed in Philadelphia.  It ran immediately below the lists of ships arriving and departing from the customs house, increasing the chances that readers interested more in news than advertisements would see it.  Unlike other printers who hawked almanacs, Dunlap did not provide an extensive description of the contents to entice prospective customers, though he did indicate that “the ingenious DAVID RITTENHOUSE … of this city” prepared the “Astronomical Calculations.”  The printer believed that the astronomer’s reputation would help sell copies of the almanac.

He also ran advertisements in Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette, the newspaper he printed in Baltimore.  One of those notices appeared in the October 31 edition, again highlighting Rittenhouse’s role in making the “Astronomical Calculations.”  This advertisement did not include additional information about the contents, but it did include an appeal to retails that did not appear in the first iteration of the advertisement in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet on September 11 nor in the most recent insertion on October 30.  Dunlap promised a “Large allowance to those who buy Quantities to Sell again.”  In other words, he offered discounts for purchasing in volume to make the almanac attractive to booksellers, shopkeepers, and peddlers.  Did Dunlap offer the same deal at his printing office in Philadelphia yet not advertise it in the public prints?  Other printers advertised discounts for buying almanacs by the dozen or by the hundred frequently enough to suggest that it was a common practice.  Given that Philadelphia had far more printers than Baltimore, many of them publishing one or more almanacs of their own, Dunlap may have carefully managed the discounts, offering one rate in one city and another rate in the other.  That did not necessarily matter to retailers who saw his advertisement in Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette.  His printing office in Baltimore, opened less than a year earlier, gave them easier access to almanacs than in the past.  The “Large allowance” was a bonus to convince them to take advantage of the convenience rather than order almanacs from other printers in Philadelphia or Annapolis.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 31, 1775

Massimo Sgambati Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Massimo Sgambati

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Massimo Sgambati served as guest curator for this entry. He completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (October 31, 1775)

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 31, 1775)

October 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (October 30, 1775).

“He pays cash for all kinds of homespun cloths.”

Enoch Brown, a shopkeeper, had a history of promoting domestic manufactures (or goods made in the colonies) as alternative to items imported from Britain.  In the spring of 1768, for instance, he ran an advertisement alerting “those Persons who are desirous of Promoting our Own Manufactures … That he takes in all Sorts of Country-made Cloths at his Store on Boston Neck.”  In the wake of learning about duties levied on certain imported goods in the Townshend Revenue Act, many colonizers set about organizing nonimportation agreements.  They simultaneously embraced goods produced locally as a means of supporting the colonial economy and correcting a trade imbalance with Britain.  Several years later, Brown ran another advertisement with similar themes in January 1775.  Bearing the headline “American Manufacture,” that notice emphasized that the variety of textiles Brown stocked “were manufactured in this Province, and are equal in quality to any, and superior to most imported from England, and much cheaper than can be produced from any part of Europe.”

Although Brown had been at the same location for years, he departed Boston for Watertown following the battles at Lexington and Concord.  That presented challenges for both Brown and his customers, so “for greater Conveniency” he once again moved, this time to “Little-Cambridge” in the fall of 1775.  When he opened his shop, he advertised a “Variety of Winter Goods” for the coming season as well as “sagathees, duroys, camblets,” and other textiles “of American manufacture, which he sells extreme cheap.”  Customers could acquire any of those for low prices, despite the disruptions taking place as the siege of Boston continued.  Committed to giving consumers choices that matched their political principles, Brown sought new merchandise made locally.  In a nota bene at the end of his advertisement, he declared that he “pays cash for all kinds of homespun cloths.”  In so doing, he filled the role of intermediary between producers and consumers, giving both the opportunity to support the American cause.  After all, the Continental Association devised by the First Continental Congress did not merely instruct consumers to cease purchasing imported goods but also called on colonizers to “encourage Frugality, Economy, and Industry; and promote Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country.”  As a shopkeeper who bought and sold homespun cloth, Brown did his part.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 30, 1775

Massimo Sgambati Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Massimo Sgambati

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Massimo Sgambati served as guest curator for this entry. He completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 30, 1775)

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 30, 1775)

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 30, 1775)

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 30, 1775)

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (October 30, 1775)

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Norwich Packet (October 30, 1775)

October 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (October 26, 1775).

“A CONSTITUTIONAL POST-OFFICE is established in this city.”

Yet another advertisement for a “CONSTITUTIONAL POST-OFFICE,” an alternative to the British postal system, appeared in the public prints at the end of October 1775.  It ran in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, despite the reputation of that newspaper and its printer, James Rivington, for expressing Loyalist sentiments.  William Goddard originally envisioned the Constitutional Post and set about establishing local offices before the battles at Lexington and Concord, but after hostilities commenced the Second Continental Congress assumed responsibility for maintaining and expanding its services.  That included appointing Benjamin Franklin as the postmaster general, much to the chagrin of Goddard.  Ebenezer Hazard, a bookseller, became the postmaster in New York, though John Holt, the printer of the New-York Journal, lobbied for the position.  According to the nota bene in the advertisement, “The Office is kept at Noel and Hazard’s, near the Coffee-House,” the same location where the new postmaster and his partner, Garrat Noel, stocked the “JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS” of the First Continental Congress.

The notice in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, signed by Hazard as the “Post-master,” informed the public that a “CONSTITUTIONAL POST-OFFICE” is established in this city, by the post master general of all the united colonies on the continent of North-America.”  Hazard offered the most complete schedule of any that yet appeared in newspaper advertisements, stating that the “Posts are regularly dispatched” to Philadelphia on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, to Albany on Thursdays, to Hartford on Thursdays, and to New London, Newport, and Providence on Mondays.  The routes to both Hartford and New London extended “as far to the Eastward” as Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Unlike some other postmasters, Hazard did not mention that service continued as far south as Georgia.  He focused primarily on the network that connected New York to New England and Pennsylvania.  As new advertisements for the Constitutional Post appeared in newspapers in multiple towns and cities, the public became more aware of an enterprise that competed with the imperial postal system to carry “Letters and Packets,” delivering news and information without interference from British authorities.

October 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 28, 1775).

“SKETCHLEY’s New Invented CONVERSATION CARDS.”

Like other newspaper printers, John Dixon and William Hunter provided a variety of goods and services to supplement the revenues from subscriptions and advertisements.  The masthead of the Virginia Gazette solicited customers for “Printing Work done at this Office in the neatest Manner, with Care and Expedition.”  In addition to job printing, they also published books, pamphlets, and almanacs and, according to their advertisement in the October 28, 1775, edition, they even sold patent medicines.  Many colonial printers kept a stock of similar “MAREDANT’S ANTISCORBUTIC DROPS” and “Dr. KEYSER’S celebrated PILLS” on hand, promoting them in their own newspapers.

Hawking yet another product accounted for nearly half of Dixon and Hunter’s advertisement in that issue of the Virginia Gazette: “SKETCHLEY’s New invented CONVERSATION CARDS, Ornamented with forty eight Copperplate Cuts.”  Today, conversation cards serve a variety of purposes.  They can be used for icebreakers at social gatherings, teambuilding exercises for businesses and organizations, or discussion starters among people seeking to explore topics of common interest and forge stronger personal connections.  While consumers may have used Sketchley’s conversation cards in a variety of ways, the advertisement stated that they were “calculated to amuse and improve the Mind, to learn those that play with them to speak with propriety, and tell a Story well.”  In that regard, these cards differed from playing cards for popular games of “Amusement and Diversion” and the “bad Effects of the common Cards” that “daily show us their pernicious Consequences.”  Card games did not have to devolve to the vices of too much luxury and leisure, too much gossip and idle chatter, and too much drinking and gambling.  Sketchley’s conversation cards, “on the contrary, … the more they are played with the more they improve and instruct; they will exercise the Imagination, enlarge the Understanding, and every One that plays with them are sure to be the Gainers.”  In the company of friends, those who used the cards would become more articulate in their speech, more refined in their comportment, and more enlightened in their understanding of the world.

What did consumers acquire when they purchased their own deck of Sketchley’s conversation cards?  Dominic Winter Auctioneers offer this description: “copper engraved playing cards,” measuring 3.75 inches by 2.5 inches, “each with a word [in the] upper margin and [the] associated illustration below.”  The partial set that the auctioneers offered for bids included seventeen cards, such as “Hope,” “Honour,” “Heart,” and “Ruin.”  According to the online auction catalog, those are the only cards from this set known to survive.  “The only other similar, but not identical, set we have been able to trace,” the catalog states, “is that held by the Osborne Collection …, which comprises 52 cards.”  It also features images of sixteen of the cards.  In addition, the catalog notes the advertisement in the Virginia Gazette.  Like most shop signs and many book catalogs, early American newspaper advertisements reveal details that otherwise have been lost because the artifacts do not survive.

By the time that James Sketchley first marketed his “New invented CONVERSATION CARDS” in 1770, he had been producing playing cards for about two decades.  With these cards, he offered an alternative to games of leisure that passed the time with little else to show for it, just as John Ryland had done with a set of “Geographical Cards” that Nichols Brooks advertised in the Pennsylvania Journal in March 1773.  Dixon and Hunter prompted genteel readers and those who aspired to gentility to consider these conversation cards a valuable resource to purchase when their bought they almanac for the coming year or a military manual that included “the Rules and Articles to be observed for the Government of the AMERICAN Army.”

“CHURCH,” “GENTLEMAN,” “HALL,” and “OLD WOMAN,” from Sketchley’s New Invented Conversation Cards (1770).  Courtesy Dominic Winter Auctioneers.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 28, 1775

Massimo Sgambati Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Massimo Sgambati

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Massimo Sgambati served as guest curator for this entry. He completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Providence Gazette (October 28, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 28, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 28, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (October 28, 1775)

October 27

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Connecticut Gazette (October 27, 1775).

“AN AMERICAN EDITION.”

Calls to “Buy American” during the imperial crisis and the Revolutionary War extended to advertisements for books.  In the October 27, 1775, edition of the Connecticut Gazette, Timothy Green, the printer, promoted three works published in the colonies and available at his printing office in New London.  He addressed the advertisement to “all the Friends of American Manufactures, who distinguish themselves by that noble Patriotism of promoting and encouraging Literature on this extensive Continent.”

Those books included the “MEMOIRS of the LIFE of the Rev. GEORGE WHITEFIELD,” one of the most famous ministers of the era.  When he died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on September 30, 1770, news spread throughout the colonies as widely and as quickly as news about the Boston Massacre earlier that year.  John Gillies compiled the memoir from Whitefield’s “Original Papers, Journals, and Letters” and added “a particular Account of his Death and Funeral; and Extracts from the Sermons which were preached on that Occasion.”  They originally appeared in a London edition published in 1772, but Green most likely sold an American edition printed by Robert Hodge and Frederick Shober in New York in 1774.

For another of the books, The Works of Flavius Josephus in four volumes, Green triumphantly proclaimed that it was an “AMERICAN EDITION.”  Earlier in the eighteenth century, American printers sometimes put a London imprint on the title page of books they printed in the colonies, believing that customers preferred imported works.  Mitch Fraas, curator at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, notes the prevalence of “books printed in America … bearing the false imprint of European cities.”  That seems to have been the case with two 1773 editions of The Works of Flavius Josephus with a New York imprint yet “Probably printed in Glasgow,” according to the entries in the American Antiquarian Society’s catalog.  Yet colonizers had access to an authentic American edition … and Hodge and Shober had been involved in the production, just as they had printed an edition of The Christian Oeconomy, the final book in Green’s advertisement, in 1773.

Rather than looking to London to provide them with books, some printers and booksellers embraced American editions and encouraged prospective customers to do the same.  Green framed doing so as the patriotic duty of “Friends of American Manufactures” who supported the American cause and participated in the Continental Association, a nonimportation agreement enacted throughout the colonies in response to the Coercive Acts.  Readers could do their part to defend American liberties through the choices they made in the marketplace, including purchasing an “AMERICAN EDITION” when they went to the bookstore.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 27, 1775

Massimo Sgambati Slavery Adverts 250 Project

GUEST CURATOR: Massimo Sgambati

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.

From compiling an archive of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers to identifying advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children in those newspapers to preparing images of each advertisement to posting this daily digest, Massimo Sgambati served as guest curator for this entry. He completed this work as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Essex Journal (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (October 27, 1775)

October 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , , ,

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

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (October 26, 1775).

“We think proper to notify the public, that the charge against us is wholly and totally false.”

Rumors and misrepresentations spread in conversation and in print when the imperial crisis intensified and hostilities between the colonies and Britain commenced.  Upon finding themselves the subjects of gossip that damaged their reputations, Abraham Hatfield and William Lounsbery published a newspaper advertisement to set the record straight.  It started with an entry in the October 5, 1775, edition of the New-York Journal.  Among the news received from correspondents in the city,  John Holt, the printer, inserted this report: “We understand from North Castle, that on last Saturday night, Abraham Hatfield, Esq; of the White Plains, and Lieutenant William Lownsburry, of Mamaroneck, were discovered in the very act of endeavouring to cut down a Liberty Pole, which was so well fortified with iron that it occasioned their being found out, and for that time disappointed in their loyal attempt.”

Whether or not they held Tory sentiments, Hatfield and Lounsbery vigorously denied that they had acted on them by attempting to cut down the liberty pole.  In the next issue of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, published on October 12, they inserted an advertisement that identified the allegations and dismissed them as fabrications.  “WE the subscribers” (or undersigned) “having understood that Mr. Holt has inserted in his last week’s paper, a piece charging us with being concerned, and of even being detected in the fact of attempting to cut down a Liberty-pole – we think proper to notify the public, that the charge against us is wholly and totally false.”  It ran twice more, on October 19 and 26.  Hatfield and Lounsbery disseminated their denial that they had anything to do with the incident multiple times in their effort to combat an accusation made in the public prints just once.

Why didn’t they submit a correction to Holt or place a similar advertisement in the New-York Journal since that newspaper carried the piece that spread what they claimed was misinformation?  Perhaps they did, but Holt, a Patriot printer, felt confident enough in the source of the report that he declined to publish anything submitted by Hatfield and Lounsbery.  Alternately, they may have been so upset with Holt that they did not wish to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the allegations in his newspapers (or contributing to his advertising revenue) that they instead opted for another newspaper, one with a circulation that rivaled or exceeded the New-York Journal.  Whatever the case, they did not allow the accusation that they were Loyalists who had attempted to cut down a liberty pole go unanswered.

The same issue of the New-York Journal that featured the report that identified Hatfield and Lounsbery as the culprits involved in the liberty tree incident in New Castle also carried letters addressed to Holt concerning rumors that colonizers had scalped a British soldier and cut off his ears after the battles at Lexington and Concord.  The correspondents believed that Holt could “serve the cause of truth and liberty” by publishing their accounts of the actual events, stating that they “buried the dead bodies of the king’s troops that were killed at the north bridge in Concord, on the 19th day of April, 1775,” and none of them “were scalped, not their ears cut off, as has been represented” by those who sought to “dishonour the Massachusetts people, and to make them appear to be savage and barbarous.”  In articles, letters, and advertisements, accusations and rebuttals about the misbehavior and even depravity of Patriots and Loyalists circulated in the public prints during the Revolutionary War.