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

“THE Copartnership of HAMILTON and LEIPER, Tobacconists, is dissolved.”

The “Copartnership of HAMILTON and LEIPER, Tobacconists,” provided their products to consumers for more than half a decade in the early 1770s.  In May 1772, they placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette to advise the public that they “established a MANUFACTORY in Market-street, Baltimore,” and they continued “to manufacture and sell as usual at Frederick-Town,” Maryland.  (At the time, Baltimore did not yet have its own newspapers, so the partners resorted to the Pennsylvania Gazette as a regional newspaper for their advertisement.)  Less than a year and a half later, they opened a new location in Philadelphia. In an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Journal in September 1772, they promoted “KITE-FOOT TOBACCO … manufactured and sold … In Second-street,” Philadelphia.  To entice prospective customers who might not believe that their tobacco was “Of an excellent quality, equal to any imported from Europe,” Hamilton and Leiper made samples available “at the Bar of the London Coffee-House.”

As summer arrived in 1776, however, Hamilton and Leiper ran a new advertisement in the Pennsylvania Ledger, this time announcing that they dissolved their partnership and calling on associates who “have any demand against that concern … to bring in their accounts as soon as possible.”  They could present any such accounts to Leiper “in the house lately occupied by the Company, at the corner of Spruce and Water-streets,” or to Hamilton and Son “in Second-street.”  That notice implied that Hamilton and Son commenced their own partnership.  An advertisement that conveniently appeared immediately below that notice made clear that “HAMILTON and SON, Tobacconists[,] … continue to carry on their Scotch snuff and to bacco Manufactory in all the several branches as usual.”  To that end, they “have laid in a large stock of the very best Virginia leaf tobacco.”  The news partners declared that they “are confident of giving the utmost satisfaction to their former customers and the publick” and pledged that orders “will be punctually answer’d with all possible dispatch.”  In running one advertisement after the other, they aimed to maintain the clientele that Hamilton and Leiper had cultivated over several years in business together.