Year: 2026

August 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (August 17, 1776).

“PHILADELPHIA MANUFACTURE.”

In the summer of 1776, Samuel Wetherill took to the pages of the Pennsylvania Ledger to hawk a variety of textiles produced at his “Manufactory in South-street” in Philadelphia.  He offered “Woolens, Linnens, and Cottons, particularly Corded Dimity’s,” to consumers, giving them an alternative to fabrics imported from England.  He emphasized that he sold “domestic manufactures” with a headline that proclaimed, “PHILADELPHIA MANUFACTURE.”  Wetherill elaborated on that point by noting the “great expence” he had undertaken in his “improve manufactures among us” and, in turn, expected “the public encouragement” for his endeavor.

Wetherill was one of many advertisers who made some sort of “Buy American” appeal during the era of the American Revolution.  As T.H. Breen explains in The Marketplace of Revolution, calls to produce and purchase goods made in America began even before the imperial crisis.  As colonizers participated in the transatlantic consumer revolution, some noticed the imbalance of trade that emerged within a commercial empire organized around Britain producing goods and the colonies consuming those goods.  Once Parliament imposed new regulations on trade, especially duties on imported goods, and the colonies responded with boycotts of those goods, establishing and supporting the production of goods in the colonies became even more important.  When the Second Continental Congress devised the Continental Association, a nonimportation and nonconsumption agreement adopted throughout the colonies, the eighth article stated, “That we will, in our several Stations, encourage Frugality, Economy, and Industry; and promote Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country, especially that of Wool.”  Producing (and consuming) goods produced in America became even more important after the Continental Congress declared independence.

Wetherill did his part and he used an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Ledger to let prospective customers in Philadelphia and the region know that he did.  Along with his “attempt to improve manufactures among us” came a reciprocal obligation for consumers to give their “public encouragement” by purchasing the textiles that Wetherill and his employees produced “at his Manufactory.”  He presented an opportunity to acquire “PHILADELPHIA MANUFACTURE,” goods produced in their own city or state as a means of strengthening the local economy.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 17, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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.

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

Freeman’s Journal (August 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Ledger (August 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Ledger (August 17, 1776).

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Providence Gazette (August 17, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (August 17, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (August 17, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (August 17, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (August 17, 1776).

August 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Connecticut Gazette (August 16, 1776).

“A DIALOGUE ON THE Slavery of the Africans.”

Newspapers published during the era of the American Revolution contributed to the perpetuation of slavery. Throughout the colonies and the new nation, newspapers regularly carried advertisements that presented enslaved people for sale or offered rewards for the capture and return of enslaved people who liberated themselves by running away from their enslavers.  News items and editorials also stoked fear of enslaved people to justify keeping them in bondage.

On occasion, however, the public prints carried advertisements, news, or editorials that advocated for the liberty of certain enslaved people or emancipating all enslaved people.  In April 1776, for instance, an advertisement announced that “DICK (a Negro) … [was] now made free from Slavery by the Charity of the People” of Middletown, Connecticut, “and by virtue of his Freedom, has Liberty to procure the necessaries of Life by his own Industry, as other free born Subjects have.”  In June 1775, William Henshaw published an advertisement on behalf of the Committees of Correspondence in Worcester County, Massachusetts.  Upon receiving a petition from “the NEGROES in the counties of Bristol and Worcester,” the Committees of Correspondence passed a resolution stating that “we abhor the enslaving of any of the human race, and particularly of the NEGROES in this county.”  They pledged to “use our influence” to aid in efforts for “emancipating the NEGROES.”  They applied the rhetoric of the American Revolution to the literal enslavement of Africans and African Americans instead of considering only the figurative enslavement of colonizers.

In the summer of 1776, Judah P. Spooner published and sold A Dialogue, Concerning the Slavery of the Africans: Shewing It To Be the Duty and Interest of the American Colonies to Emancipate All Their African Slaves at his printing office in Norwich Connecticut.  The book included “an ADDRESS to the Owners of such Slaves.”  The author, Samuel Hopkins, a Congregationalist minister in Newport, dedicated the volume “to the Honorable the Continental Congress.”  Like the Committees of Correspondence in Worcester County, Hopkins recognized the contradictions inherent in revolutionary rhetoric that espoused liberty for colonizers but did not include calling for the abolition of slavery.

That an advertisement for A Dialogue, Concerning the Slavery of Africans appeared in the August 16, 1776, edition of the Connecticut Gazette did not mean, however, that Timothy Green, the printer of that newspaper, endorsed anything that Hopkins wrote about slavery.  In the previous issue, Green published an advertisement that described Sy, “a Mustee Fellow,” and offered a reward to “Whoever takes up said Negro, and secures him, or returns him to his Master.”  Similarly, Spooner, the printer of both the Norwich Packet and A Dialogue, Concerning the Slavery of Africans, published a similar advertisement about “a Negro MAN Servant, named FORTEN,” in the August 5 issue and regularly generated revenue by printing other advertisements about enslaved people.  Even as Hopkins attempted to use the power of the press to advocate for abolition, enslavers and printers continued perpetuating slavery with the advertisements they published.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 16, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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.

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

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (August 16, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (August 16, 1776).

August 15

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New York Packet (August 15, 1776).

“SAMUEL LOUDON’s CIRCULATING LIBRARY.”

Like other early American printers, Samuel Loudon cultivated multiple revenue streams.  He sold subscription to the New York Packet and collected fees for the advertisements in that newspaper.  In addition, he sold a variety of books, pamphlets, and almanacs, only some of them produced in his printing office, as well as stationery and writing supplies.  Loudon also operated a circulating library, a venture that only a few printers and booksellers incorporated into their portfolios.  Clubs or corporations formed for the purpose of operating libraries oversaw most of those institutions established before and during the era of the American Revolution.

Loudon promoted his circulating library “CONSISTING of Two Thousand Vols. [of] well chosen books” in the August 15, 1776, edition of the New York Packet.  Unlike modern public libraries that allow access to books and other materials for free, circulating libraries charged subscription fees to readers.  Loudon offered discounts for those who subscribed for longer periods.  A three-month subscription cost eight shillings while a six-month subscription cost twelve shillings.  Subscribers gained access for an entire year for twenty shillings, a significant savings over purchasing consecutive subscriptions for shorter periods.  Rather than completely exclude readers who did not purchase subscriptions, Loudon allowed “occasional readers” to borrow books upon paying a fee of “one penny for each shilling the book they read is valued at.”  Readers interested in a particular title could peruse it for a lower price without having to make a larger investment in a subscription.

Loudon established some interesting guidelines for how long subscribers could borrow books, making the determination based on the sizes of the sheets (not to be confused with the length of the book).  “The time allowed for reading a folio,” he explained, “is four weeks,” but only two weeks for a quarto and just one week for “an octavo and under.”  Subscribers (and occasional readers) who kept their books longer had “to pay one penny a day for an octavo, and in proportion for larger volumes.”  Whatever the quirks of this system, it meant that readers could not hoard titles and make them unavailable to other subscriber, at least not without paying penalties for doing so.  In addition, borrowers had to pay for books that were “lost or abused.”

“SAMUEL LOUDON’s CIRCULATING LIBRARY” gave residents of New York access to thousands of books without having to purchase them, making them more accessible to many readers.  Loudon operated the library as a public service while simultaneously generating revenue to supplement his other ventures as a printer and bookseller.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 15, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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.

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

Continental Journal (August 15, 1776).

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Continental Journal (August 15, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (August 15, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (August 15, 1776).

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New-York Journal (August 15, 1776).

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New-York Journal (August 15, 1776).

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New-York Journal (August 15, 1776).

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New-York Journal (August 15, 1776).

August 14

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

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

Massachusetts Spy (August 14, 1776).

“The freshest and most important intelligence from the Grand Continental Army at New-York.”

An advertisement in the August 14, 1776, edition of the Massachusetts Spy promoted the services of a “Post Rider to Fitchburg,” a town twenty-five miles north of Worcester.  The unnamed post rider stressed that there was no quicker way for residents of that town and others in the vicinity to receive the latest news, especially updates about the war being waged for independence.

The post rider explained that he set out from Worcester on Wednesdays, the same day that William Stearns and Daniel Bigelow published a new issue of the Massachusetts Spy, and “arrive[d] in … Fitchburg every Wednesday night,” supplying the “freshest and most important intelligence from the Grand Continental Army at New-York.”  Readers could depend on it being the latest news because Stearns and Bigelow printed the Massachusetts Spy “the next morning after the arrival of the Southern Mail” on Tuesdays, giving them just enough time to glean the most significant news to include in new issues on Wednesdays.  The letters and newspapers the printers received “contain[ed] ALL the LATEST advices from the grand seat of military operation” as well as “the latest news by the Government Post from Ticonderoga.”  Stearns and Bigelow likely collaborated with the post rider in providing this service as well as in writing an advertisement that promoted the Massachusetts Spy to readers throughout central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.  The Massachusetts Spy competed with newspapers published in Boston and Watertown in Massachusetts and Exeter and Portsmouth in New Hampshire, yet subscribers who received the Massachusetts Spy via the “Post Rider to Fitchburg” would “obtain the freshest news much Sooner and Cheaper, than from any other part of the Continent.”  An annual subscription with delivery cost “Ten Shillings per annum (Postage included)” or two shillings more than the base price, “Eight Shillings, per Annum, exclusive of Postage,” listed in the newspaper’s colophon.

The Massachusetts Spy carried all sorts of news, including updates from the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, yet the printers and the post rider believed that readers were most interested in the latest news about the progress of the war. Better than any other newspaper printed in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, the Massachusetts Spy and the “Post Rider to Fitchburg” could deliver that news to subscribers and other readers.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 14, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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.

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (August 14, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (August 14, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (August 14, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (August 14, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (August 14, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (August 14, 1776).

August 13

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (August 13, 1776).

“IN MENS CLOTHES … a Mulatto woman slave, named MARIA.”

What kind of story would Maria have told about herself if she had the opportunity to record it in print?  How would it have differed from the account that appeared in an advertisement on the first page of the August 13, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet?

That advertisement described Maria as “a Mulatto woman slave” who “RAN AWAY … from the Jerseys to Philadelphia or New York” at the end of July.  Maria likely thought of that act as freeing herself from her enslavers rather than running away from “a good master and mistress.”  The enslavers who applauded themselves for their supposed benevolence condemned Maria for “going towards New-York after a married white man, who is a soldier in the Continental army there.”  In doing so, she “left behind her three young children.”  They also noted that Maria was “hardly discernable from a white woman,” yet that was not the only form of passing as someone else that threatened the social order or their attempt to exert authority over her.  The headline for the advertisement proclaimed, “IN MENS CLOTHES,” indicating that Maria might make good on her escape by disguising both her sex and her race.  That compounded her transgressions.

Maria’s unnamed enslavers certainly cast her in a negative light, yet just because their account appeared in print did not make them reliable narrators.  That they portrayed themselves as “a good master and mistress” already demonstrated their bias.  They told a lively story, one that probably stunned or distressed many readers, but Maria certainly would have given a much different version of what occurred had she been given the opportunity.  There are too many possibilities to conjecture about the “married white man” or “her three young children” or any of Maria’s relationships except to say that they had to have been more complex than what her unnamed enslavers insinuated in a brief newspaper advertisement.  During the era of the American Revolution, Maria made choices of her that deserve much more consideration than the few lines that her unnamed enslavers published in an advertisement seeking her capture and return.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 13, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

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.

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

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (August 13, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (August 13, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (August 13, 1776).