Month: August 2026

August 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (August 1, 1776).

“The managers hope for public assistance in detecting the villain.”

Reports of burglaries and robberies frequently appeared among the advertisements in early American newspapers, but this notice with a headline that proclaimed, “ROBBERY,” was different than most.  Rather than a house or shop that had been targeted, this time “the Cellar of the Public Manufactory at the corner of Market and Ninth streets” in Philadelphia “was broke open” sometime during the night of July 29, 1776.  The culprits absconded with “two pieces of goods cut out of the looms,” approximately “twenty yards of Cotton, Barragon, or Fustian” and approximately “fifty yards of narrow striped Corded Dimity.”  That was quite a haul, but the managers of the Public Manufactory noted that the fabrics were “rough and unfinished,” making them easy to recognize “if offered for sale, or carried to any of the bleachyards” for processing.

The managers requested “public assistance in detecting the villain” who perpetrated this crime.  They hoped that merchants, shopkeepers, millers, consumers, or anyone else who might spot these stolen textiles would aid them in “detecting the Robber, so that he may be prosecuted to conviction.”  In return, they would receive “FIFTY DOLLARS Reward.”  The size of the reward testified not only to the value of the fabrics but also to patriotic mission of the Public Manufactory.  It had been established to produce textiles that local consumers could purchase instead of imported goods.  The managers believed that the Public Manufactory played a vital role in making “domestic manufactures” that supported the local economy and reduced reliance on imports.  This enterprise played a symbolic as well as practical role in the contest with Great Britain.  The managers lamented that “losses of this kind (by discouraging weavers and manufacturers) may prove a fatal injury to America.”  Less than a month after the Continental Congress declared independence, the managers of the Public Manufactory envisioned high stakes for this “ROBBERY.”  The “villain” did not merely deprive them of several years of unfinished fabric; instead, he demoralized weavers who contributed to the American cause and might have even out the fate of the entire nation in jeopardy.  The managers of the Public Manufactory framed this unfortunate event and the potential reverberations as more than just everyday theft.

Slavery Advertisements Published August 1, 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.

Maryland Gazette (August 1, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (August 1, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (August 1, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (August 1, 1776).