Month: January 2026

January 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (January 27, 1776).

“I cannot publish such Advertisements as ought to have appeared this Week.”

John Pinkney should have printed and distributed an edition of his weekly newspaper, the Virginia Gazette, on January 27, 1776, but he did not.  Instead, he placed a notice in the newspaper printed by John Dixon and William Hunter, also named the Virginia Gazette.  “AFTER having received so many Instances of public Favour,” he explained, “I should think myself inexcusable did I not make known the Reason why I do not this Week publish a Gazette.”  It turned out that he experienced the same disruption in his supply of paper that many other printers faced during the first year of the Revolutionary War.  He did not publish a new issue “owing to a Disappointment in receiving Paper from the Northward.”  In their own notice on the next page, Dixon and Hunter confirmed that “a stock of printing-paper … at this time is very scarce” and acquiring it involved “an infinite deal of trouble and expence in transporting it from Pennsylvania.”  Pinkney claimed that “no human Prudence could have prevented” the situation.

He also informed readers that “Next Week … or in a short Time, I expect a very considerable Quantity” and when it arrived he would “endeavour to make up for all Deficiencies.”  Through “unwearied Diligence,” he would continue to collate and disseminate items of “instructive Amusement” and “every Piece of authentic Intelligence.”  He concluded with an acknowledgement for advertisers: “It gives me the greatest Uneasiness that I cannot publish such Advertisements as ought to have appeared this Week, but as far as a Restitution of Money can atone for the Disappointment, it shall be made.”  Advertising was an important revenue stream for most printers who published newspapers.  This “Restitution of Money” put Pinkney in an even more precarious position, especially since Dixon and Hunter indicated that paper “cannot be had without cash.”  Pinkney could not purchase paper on credit.  He managed to get his hands on enough paper to print a new issue on February 3, as promised in his notice, but most likely did not continue printing for long after that.  The February 3 edition is the last known.  Disruptions in Pinkney’s supply of paper likely played a significant role in his Virginia Gazette folding.

January 27

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

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 27, 1776).

“An author, without a name, hath asserted absolute falsehoods.”

The dispute over publishing the second edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense continued in an advertisement in the January 27, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition, and William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers designated by Paine to publish a new edition with additional materials, ran competing advertisements on January 25.  The Bradfords’ advertisement included a note that informed the public that the author had not authorized Bell to publish a second edition, yet the enterprising printer and bookseller moved forward with the project anyway.  That advertisement ran once again on January 27.

In response, Bell submitted a new advertisement to the printing office.  An even more prominent headline proclaimed, “The SECOND EDITION of COMMON SENSE,” followed by a list of the four sections that appeared in the first edition.  That overview had been part of most of Bell’s advertisements, as well as an epigraph from “Liberty,” a poem by James Thomson.  In response to the address “To the PUBLIC” in the Bradfords’ advertisement, Bell added his own address “To the PUBLIC.”  In it, he explained that in the previous edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, “an author, without a name, hath asserted absolute falsehoods.”  At the time, Paine remained anonymous (and, for the first time, this advertisement described his political pamphlet as “WRITTEN BY AN ENGLISHMAN”).  Bell objected to the claims that Paine made that “he gave directions and orders to the publisher of the first edition not to proceed.”  For his part, Bell declared that “[a]s soon as the printer and publisher discovered the capricious disposition of the ostensible author, he disclaimed all future connexion,” perfectly content to break ties with Paine.  Furthermore, “by the publication of a second edition which he advertised in a news paper, [Bell] immediately declared his desirable independence from the trammels of catch-penny author-craft, whose cunning was so exceeding great as to attempt to destroy the reputation of his own first edition, by advertising intended additions before his earliest and best customers had time to read what they had so very lately purchased.”  That certainly was not a flattering portrait of Paine.  The contents of Common Sense gave colonizers a lot to discuss.  The dispute in the newspaper advertisements gave them even more.

Undaunted, Bell testified that he “neither heard nor received any orders not to proceed, there [the author’s] assertions must be far from truth.”  In addition, Bell further dismissed Paine’s expectations for the publication of a second edition, stating that “if he had either heard or received any such directions or orders, he most certainly would have treated them immediately with that contempt which such unreasonable, illegal, and tyrannic usurpations over his freedom and liberty in business deserved.”  Bell launched one more tirade: “When Mr. ANONYMOUS condescendeth again to puff his pamphlet … and to reduce a price which himself had a share in making, his brother bookseller, who scorneth duplicity in business or sentiment, wisheth he may find out a more eligible mode of proving his attachment to principles than to lay the foundations of his generosity in the despicable ebullitions of dishonest malevolence.”  Bell was annoyed that Paine promoted the Bradfords’ edition as “one half of the price of the former edition,” a suggestion that Bell overcharged when, according to Bell, the author and the publisher set the price in consultation with each other.  A lower price for the Bradfords’ edition was not truly “generosity,” especially when inspired by “despicable ebullitions of dishonest malevolence” rather than a desire to make the pamphlet more accessible to the public.  Clearly, Paine’s address “To the PUBLIC” did not cause Bell to back down but instead to double down on printing and marketing his second edition of Common Sense.

Slavery Advertisements Published January 27, 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.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry 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 revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 27, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (January 27, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (January 27, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (January 27, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (January 27, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published January 27, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 27, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 27, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Ledger (January 27, 1776).

January 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy (January 26, 1775).

“Leather-Dresser and Breeches-Maker, from BOSTON.”

William Dawes, Jr., a “Leather-Dresser and Breeches-Maker, from BOSTON,” placed an advertisement in the January 26, 1776, edition of Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy.  Just as Isaiah Thomas had moved his printing press from tumultuous Boston to the relative security of Worcester just as the Revolutionary War began, Dawes relocated to the inland town.  According to his advertisement, he now ran a shop “in WORCESTER,” adjoining a tavern and near the jail.  Since he was a newcomer, he could not expect that prospective customers knew his location, so he identified familiar landmarks to help them find him.  He had on hand “a quantity of choice good mill-washed leather, [and] deer and sheep skins, dressed in the best manner,” selling them either individually or “by the quantity.”  Dawes processed or “manufacture[d]” the leather himself, allowing him to “supply any customer on the most reasonable terms he can afford them.”  To that end, he sought “sheep skins, with the wool on or off,” and offered cash to his suppliers.

Under other circumstances, identifying himself as an artisan “from BOSTON” would have told prospective customers something about his origins and suggested that he possessed the skills and knowledge of changing styles that allowed him to run a business in one of the largest urban ports in the colonies.  While that was still the case in this advertisement, noting that he was “from BOSTON” likely resonated in another way.  The residents of that town had endured a lot during the imperial crisis, especially after the Boston Port Act closed the harbor to commerce on June 1, 1774, in retaliation for the destruction of tea the previous December.  The situation became even more precarious once the fighting began at the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.  A siege of Boston ensued.  The Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington as commander of the Continental Army and dispatched him to lead the American forces that surrounded Boston.  Early in the siege, the Sons of Liberty and other leaders negotiated with General Thomas Gage for an exchange, allowing Loyalists to enter Boston and Patriots and others to depart.  Dawes may have been among those refugees in search of better fortunes and greater safety in other towns in New England.  By introducing himself as a “Leather-Dresser and Breeches-Maker, from BOSTON,” he may have hoped to play on the sympathies of prospective customers, giving them one more reason to support his shop in Worcester.

Slavery Advertisements Published January 26, 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.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry 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 revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Gazette (January 26, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (January 26, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (January 26, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (January 26, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (January 26, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (January 26, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published January 26, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (January 26, 1776).

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Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (January 26, 1776).

January 25

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

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 25, 1776).

“A new edition of COMMON SENSE … with large and interesting additions by the author.”

A battle over publishing Thomas Paine’s Common Sense played out in advertisements became apparent to the public when they perused the advertisements in the January 25, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Sixteen days earlier, that newspaper had been the first to carry an advertisement for the inflammatory political pamphlet.  Robert Bell, the publisher, promoted it, while Paine remained anonymous.  It sold so quickly that Bell began advertising “A NEW EDITION of COMMON SENSE” on January 20.  Five days later, he ran an updated version of the original advertisement, using type already set.  The compositor merely replaced the first line, removing the date (“Philadelphia, January 9, 1776”) and replacing it with a headline that proclaimed, “The second edition,” in a larger font.

Yet Paine and Bell had had a falling out.  Bell’s “second edition” was an unauthorized edition, as a new advertisement on the first page of the Pennsylvania Evening Post made clear.  William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, announced that they had a “new edition” of Common Sense “IN the press, and will be published as soon as possible.”  Unlike Bell’s second edition advertised elsewhere in that issue, their new edition featured “large and interesting additions by the author, as will be expressed at the time of publication.”  As a preview, the Bradfords indicated that the bonus materials included a “seasonable and friendly admonition to the people called QUAKERS.”  To entice prospective customers to reserve copies or purchase them as soon as they were available, the Bradfords noted that “Several hundred are already bespoke,” including “one thousand for Virginia.”  Advertisements for the pamphlet already appeared in newspapers in New York.  The Bradfords made plans to distribute the pamphlet south of Philadelphia.  In addition, they reported that a “German edition is likewise in the press” for the benefit of the many German settlers in Pennsylvania and the backcountry extending down to North Carolina.

This advertisement included an address “To the PUBLIC,” perhaps composed by Paine, that outlined the dispute between the author and the original publisher.  “The encouragement and reception which this pamphlet hath already met with, and the great demand for the same,” the address declared, “hath induced the publisher of the first edition to print a new edition unknown to the author.”  Paine had “expressly directed him not to proceed therein without orders, because that large additions would be made hereto.”  He also did not appreciate that Bell had not managed to turn a profit on the first edition, though that did not receive mention in the address in the advertisement.  Readers needed to be aware that Bell’s new edition, “lately advertised by the printer of the first [edition], is without the intended additions.”  That being the case, readers who exercised a little patience for the Bradfords’ edition “now in the press” and authorized by the author could acquire both the contents of the original pamphlet and the additions in a single volume … and at a bargain price!  Even with the new material, the cost “will … be reduced to one half of the price of the former edition.”  Bell advertisements consistently listed “two shillings” for the pamphlet.  The Bradfords charged one shilling.  They also gave “allowance to those who take quantities” or a discount for purchasing in volume, either to retail or distribute to friends, family, and associates.  That would “accommodate [the pamphlet] to the abilities of every man.”  In other words, the lower price made it possible to disseminate Common Sense even more widely.  When it came to airing grievances over the publication of Common Sense in newspaper advertisements, this address “To the PUBLIC” was only the opening salvo.  The dispute continued in subsequent editions of the Pennsylvania Evening Post and other newspapers.

Slavery Advertisements Published January 25, 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.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry 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 revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Maryland Gazette (January 25, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (January 25, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (January 25, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (January 25, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (January 25, 1776).

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New-England Chronicle (January 25, 1776).

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New-York Journal (January 25, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published January 25, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 25, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 25, 1776).