April 8

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

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

Boston-Gazette (April 8, 1776).

“TO-MORROW will be published … A NEW Edition of COMMON SENSE.”

The April 8, 1776, edition of the Boston-Gazette featured an update about the local edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense announced in the New-England Chronicle four days earlier.  On a Thursday, readers learned that “Next week will be PUBLISHED, and to be SOLD … in BOSTON, A New Edition of COMMON SENSE.”  The following Monday, an advertisement with a headline that proclaimed “COMMON SENSE” informed the public that “TO-MORROW will be published and sold … A NEW Edition of COMMON SENSE.”  In less than a week, the Boston edition went from in the press to in stock and for sale.

The new advertisement included a clarification about where readers could acquire copies: from “J. Gill, and T. and J. Fleet, in Boston, and B. Edes in Watertown.”  The previous version listed only Boston locations, though Benjamin Edes had relocated to Watertown to print the Boston-Gazette there throughout the siege of Boston.  Although the British departed on March 17, Edes and the Boston-Gazette remained in Watertown until the end of October.  Customers could purchase Common Sense from Edes in Watertown or from John Gill, his former partner in publishing the newspaper, in Boston.  In addition, Thomas Fleet and John Fleet, who had printed the Boston Evening-Post before it folded soon after the battles at Lexington and Concord, also sold Common Sense in Boston.

As the number of local editions of Common Sense proliferated in 1776, so did the number of advertisements promoting the popular political pamphlet and the number of newspapers disseminating advertisements about it.  The number of retailers who sold Common Sense also increased.  Although the printers in Boston and Watertown did not do so, others listed the price for a single copy and offered discounts for buying a dozen or more, encouraging booksellers, shopkeepers, and others to purchase copies to sell far and wide.  Counting the number of local editions of Common Sense demonstrates the popularity of the pamphlet compared to other political tracts published during the era of the American Revolution, yet that does not reveal the timing of their publication and sale to readers.  Advertisements for Common Sense, on the other hand, demonstrate when local editions became available to readers.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 8, 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.

Boston-Gazette (April 8, 1776).

**********

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (April 8, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 8, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 8, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 8, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 8, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 8, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 8, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published April 8, 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.

Boston-Gazette (April 8, 1776).

**********

Newport Mercury (April 8, 1776).

April 7

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

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (April 6, 1776).

“A few Copies of the Military Guide, FOR YOUNG OFFICERS.”

James Humphreys, Jr., the printer of the Pennsylvania Ledger, was so eager to sell surplus copies of Thomas Simes’s “Military Guide FOR YOUNG OFFICERS” that he inserted two advertisements in the April 6, 1776, edition of his newspaper.  A shorter notice appeared on the third page and a longer one on the fourth page.

Humphreys previously collaborated with Robert Aitken and Robert Bell in circulating subscription proposals for a local edition of the military manual originally published in London.  In an advertisement in the December 2, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger, the printers declared that they took on the project “By Desire of some [of] the Members of the Honourable the American Continental CONGRESS, and some of the Military Officers of the Association.”  A few months later, they repeated that assertion in the longer advertisement that listed all three of their names and locations. That notice also featured other details from the subscription proposals, noting that the work was “a large and valuable Compilation from the most celebrated Military Writers” that included “an excellent Military, Historical and Explanatory DICTIONARY.”  The proposals had not, however, mentioned illustrations, but the advertisement that announced the two-volume set was “Printed and Published” informed readers that the “whole is illustrated with Eleven Copperplates.”  It concluded with a nota bene that instructed subscribers who had reserved copies in advance “to call or send for their Books.”  Aitken, Bell, and Humphreys had been running that advertisement in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the Pennsylvania Ledger since late February.

Once the subscribers collected their books, Humphreys apparently had extra copies that he hoped to sell.  As long as they remained at his printing office they cut into any profits he earned on the venture.  In a streamlined advertisement, he announced that “A few Copies of the Military Guide, FOR YOUNG OFFICERS, By THOMAS SIMES, Esquire, In Two Volumes, large Octavo, embellished with a Number of Copperplates, (Price Three Dollars) May be had of the PRINTER hereof.”  Between the advertisement on the following page and the notices that already circulated widely, Humphreys assumed that prospective customers were already familiar with the local edition of Simes’s military manual.  It was one of many such works among “a flood of printings” in Philadelphia “to meet the demand for military texts,” according to the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, yet that demand did not necessarily mean that copies sold themselves.  Aitken, Bell, and Humphreys carefully crafted a marketing campaign to enlist subscribers and then Humphreys still had “A few Copies” he hoped to sell.  He may have hoped that news that British troops evacuated Boston on March 17 would incite new demand for Simes’s manual.

April 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

“The celebrated high bred Horse YOUNG FEARNOUGHT, WILL … cover Mares …”

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 6, 1776).

With the arrival of spring in 1776, the final page of the April 6 edition of John Dixon and William Hunter’s Virginia Gazette looked as though it could have doubled as a catalog of stud horses.

  • “KING HEROD STANDS here [at Rosegill], and will cover Mares …”
  • “The noted swift Horse TRISTRAM SHANDY … will cover Mares …”
  • “FEARNOUGHT STANDS at Hick’s Ford … to cover …”
  • “The celebrated high bred Horse YOUNG FEARNOUGHT, WILL … cover Mares …”
  • “The beautiful high blooded bay Horse LAUREL … will cover Mares …”
  • “OSCAR, A BEAUTIFUL Sorrel … stands this Year to cover Mares …”
  • “The beautiful high bred chestnut Horse DAMON … will cover Mares …”
  • “CYPHAX … covers Mares …”
  • “GODOLPHIN, A BEAUTIFUL bright Bay … to cover Mares …”
  • “ROCKINGHAM, A FINE bay Horse … to cover Mares …”
  • “The noted Horse OLD PARTNER … WILL cover Mares this Season …”

Some advertisers claimed that their horses already had such reputations that they needed to say little to promote them, though that did not stop them from making a pitch.  Thomas Field, for instance, stated that the “number of Mares put to Godolphin, since he has been allowed to cover, has gained him such Reputation, as well for the Certainty of his getting Colts, as for their Size and Beauty, that a further Description of him is needless.”  William Gay proclaimed that Young Fearnought’s “Figure, together with the Size and Form of his Colts, are such to render him, in the Esteem of the best Judges, deservedly one of the best covering Horses in America,” while also asserting that the “Pedigree of this Horse is so well known as to make a Description needless.”  In contrast, others went into detail about pedigrees.  According to Neill Buchanan, Jr., Oscar was “got by YOUNG SNIP, his Dam by Lord Morton’s ARABIAN, his Grandam by OLD CRAB, his Great Grandam by the BALD GALLOWAY, his Great Great Grandam by Darley’s ARABIAN, out of BAY BOLTON’s Dam.”

Advertisements placed for other purposes also appeared in the Virginia Gazette, yet notices for stud horses dominated that issue.  They testified to the popularity of horse breeding among the colony’s gentry and the popularity of horse racing as a pastime in Virginia during the era of the American revolution.

**********

Advertisements in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury that same week showed a similar enthusiasm for breeding horses.  That newspaper also incorporated images.

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 8, 1776).

Slavery Advertisements Published April 6, 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.

Providence Gazette (April 6, 1776).

**********

Providence Gazette (April 6, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 6, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 6, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 6, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 6, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 6, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 6, 1776).

April 5

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , , , , , ,

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

Connecticut Gazette (April 5, 1776).

“DICK (a Negro) … is now made free from Slavery by the Charity of the People.”

It was an unusual advertisement about an enslaved person that ran in the April 5, 1776, edition of the Connecticut Gazette.  In the decade prior to the colonies declaring independence from Great Britain, more than thirty thousand advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children ran in American newspapers.  Almost all of them belonged to one of two categories: buying and selling enslaved people or capturing and returning enslaved people who liberated themselves by running away from their enslavers.  In the first category, most notices offered enslaved people for sale, though some offered to hire them out by the month or year and others sought to purchase enslaved people.  In the second category, most advertisements described enslaved people who liberated themselves and offered rewards for their capture and return with a smaller number giving descriptions of Black people confined to jails and workhouses on suspicion of running away and asking their enslavers to claim them and pay expenses.  The April 5 edition of the Connecticut Gazette carried an advertisement about “a Melatto Fellow named SY” who liberated himself from Joshua Powers and another that offered to sell “A Negro Man Servant, at a very reasonable Price.”

It also featured a notice “to inform the Public, That … DICK (a Negro) was of late a Servant to Mr. Stephen Bacon, of Middletown, but is now made free from Slavery by the Charity of the People, and by virtue of his Freedom, has Liberty to procure the necessaries of Life by his own Industry, as other free born Subjects have.”  The advertisement did not go into detail about the circumstance of Dick receiving his freedom, though it suggested that residents of Middletown took up a collection to purchase him from Bacon.  During the era of the American Revolution, some colonizers in New England recognized the enslavement of African, African American, and Indigenous people as inconsistent with the rhetoric of freedom that they embraced concerning their own experiences within the British Empire.  In the spring of 1775, for instance, Black people in the counties of Bristol and Worcester “petitioned the Committees of Correspondence for the county of Worcester … to assist them in obtaining their freedom.”  According to a notice in the June 21 edition of the Massachusetts Spy, the colonizers who gathered for a county convention passed a resolution stated that “we abhor the enslaving of any of the human race, and particularly of the NEGROES in this country.”  Accordingly, “whenever there shall be a door opened, or opportunity present for anything to be done toward the emancipating the NEGROES; we will use our influence and endeavour that such a thing may be effected.”

Stephen Bacon of Middletown, Connecticut, did not seem to share those sentiments.  Perhaps members of his community did not either, but at the very least they apparently formed some sort of bond with Dick that prompted them to seek his freedom.  The announcement that ran in the Connecticut Gazette came with a caveat.  The men who placed it, Zaccheus Higbe and Joseph Graves, cautioned that “all or any Person or Persons that do or shall Trade, Bargain, or make Contract with [Dick], will be liable themselves to bear all the loss that he or they do sustain by so doing.”  Higbe and Graves did not specify what role, if any, they played in Dick becoming free, nor did they indicate their primary motivation for placing the advertisement.  Was it to aid Dick in asserting his new status?  Or to caution anyone who might do business with him that Bacon was no longer ultimately responsible for Dick’s “own Industry”?  Whatever their intention, the advertisement in Connecticut Gazette supplemented other documents testifying to his freedom that Dick almost certainly safeguarded in society where enslavement continued.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 5, 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 (April 5, 1776).

**********

Connecticut Gazette (April 5, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 5, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 5, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 5, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 5, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 5, 1776).

April 4

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

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

New-England Chronicle (April 4, 1776).

“Will be PUBLISHED … in BOSTON, A New Edition of COMMON SENSE.”

It did not take long after the siege of Boston ended with the evacuation of British troops on March 17, 1776, for printers in that town to set about publishing a local edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.  An advertisement in the April 4 edition of the New-England Chronicle, published in Cambridge, announced that “Next week will be PUBLISHED, and to be SOLD, by T. and J. FLEET, and EDES and GILL, in BOSTON, A New Edition of COMMON SENSE.”  This edition would include “several additions in the body of the work: To which is added an Appendix, and an address to the representatives of the people called Quakers.”  That the printers described it as a “New Edition” suggested that they followed the second edition that Paine collaborated with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford in publishing rather than unauthorized editions that Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition, marketed after having a falling out with the author.  The Bradfords described their edition as the “NEW EDITION” in their advertisements.  They also inserted a nota bene that declared, “This Edition contains upwards of one-third more than any former one.”  The Fleets and Edes and Gill replicated that nota bene in their own advertisement.

It likely came as no surprise to local readers that Benjamin Edes and John Gill got involved in publishing an edition of Common Sense.  For many years, they printed the Boston-Gazette, a newspaper known for its strident advocacy for the American cause.  After publishing the April 17, 1775, edition of the Boston-Gazette, they suspended the newspapers and dissolved their partnership following the battles at Lexington and Concord on April 19.  Edes removed to Watertown, where the Massachusetts Provincial Congress met, and resumed publication in early June 1775.  The Boston-Gazette remained there until the end of October 1776 and then returned to port city.  Thomas Fleet and John Fleet, the former printers of the Boston Evening-Post, had previously collaborated with Edes and Gill and other local printers on other projects, especially almanacs.  They published the final issue of the Boston Evening-Post on April 24, 1775, announcing that they “shall desist publishing their Papers … till Matters are in a more settled State.”  They never resumed publishing their newspaper, but they joined with Edes and Gill in publishing a Boston edition of Common Sense shortly after the British left the city.  Samuel Hall, the printer of the New-England Chronicle, may have attempted to give the enterprise a boost.  The news updates in the column to the left of the advertisement for the popular political pamphlet reported that a “favourite toast, in the best companies, is, ‘May the INDEPENDENT principles of COMMON SENSE be confirmed throughout the United Colonies.’”  The publication and dissemination of a Boston edition of Common Sense helped in spreading those “INDEPENDENT principles in New England.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 4, 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 (April 4, 1776).

**********

Maryland Gazette (April 4, 1776).

**********

New-England Chronicle (April 4, 1776).

**********

New-England Chronicle (April 4, 1776).

**********

New-York Journal (April 4, 1776).

**********

New-York Journal (April 4, 1776).

**********

New-York Journal (April 4, 1776).

**********

New York Packet (April 4, 1776).

**********

New York Packet (April 4, 1776).

**********

New York Packet (April 4, 1776).