What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
Massachusetts Spy (May 28, 1774).
“Medicine Boxes … are put up in the neatest Manner.”
The woodcut that adorned John Joy’s advertisement in the April 28, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Spy alerted readers to the type of merchandise that the apothecary sold before they even read the copy. It depicted a lion wearing a crown and working a mortar and pestle atop a column. The woodcut ran the entire length of the advertisement, as if Joy or the compositor or perhaps the two working together intentionally designed the image and copy to fit together that way. A sign with a similar image may or may not have marked Joy’s location at “the North-Corner of William’s Court, BOSTON,” but he did not make specific mention of a sign. Other advertisers who commissioned woodcuts for their newspaper notices often did so when the image matched the device customers saw at their shop. Whatever the case, the image made Joy’s advertisement much more visible to prospective customers than M.B. Goldthwait’s notice about a “fresh supply of DRUGS and MEDICINES” and “SURGEONS INSTRUMENTS, Of all Kinds.”
Massachusetts Spy (April 28, 1774).
The copy declared that Joy “Has just received from LONDON, A large and compleat Assortment of Drugs and Medicines, Of the best Quality.” The lion with the crown asserted both those imperial connections and the quality of the remedies that Joy sold. In addition, he stocked “Surgeons Instruments, of every Kind, finished in the neatest Manner” as well as “a full Assortment of Groceries and Dye Stuffs.” Not unlike modern retail pharmacies, Joy diversified his enterprise to cultivate multiple revenue streams, including medicines, medical equipment, home health care supplies, and groceries. To that end, he also prepared “Medicine Boxes of various Prices, for Ships or private Families,” pledging that they “are put up in the neatest Manner.” Goldthwait also prepared “Doctor’s Boxes … for Masters of Vessels and private Families” and included “every necessary direction” for using the contents. These first aid kits included both medicine and supplies. Selling them allowed apothecaries to enhance their revenues since buyers acquired a variety of items that they did not yet need and might never use but purchased against the chance of injury or illness. After all, it was better to have them on hand than not at all. Joy also operated a precursor to the mail order pharmacy, alerting “Prac[ti]tioners and others” that they may be supplied with large or small Quantities, by Letter or otherwise [such as sending a servant enslaved messenger], as well as though they were present.” Joy and other apothecaries frequently promoted such convenience as part of their marketing efforts. Like the image of the crowned lion working a mortar and pestle, that appeal distinguished Joy’s advertisement from the notice placed by his competitor.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Providence Gazette (April 30, 1774).
“They desire their old Customers and others to call at their Shop.”
In the spring of 1774, Thurber and Cahoon advertised a “Variety of English and India GOODS” available at their shop “at the Sign of the Bunch of Grapes,” a familiar sight in Providence’s North End. They stocked items “Just imported from London, in the Charlotte, Capt. Rogers.” Merchants and shopkeepers often provided such information about the origins of their merchandise, allowing consumers to determine for themselves when they received their wares and whether items had been lingering on the shelves or in storerooms. Thurber and Cahoon, veteran advertisers, first placed this notice in the April 30, 1774, edition of the Providence Gazette. One of their competitors, Thomas Green, also received a shipment via the Charlotte. His advertisement for a “large and general Assortment of English and India GOODS” opened with similar copy: “Just imported in the Charlotte, Capt. Rogers, from London.”
Thurber and Cahoon asserted that their new selection was “Suitable to the Season” and “consist[ed] of too many Articles to be enumerated in an Advertisement.” Merchants and shopkeepers often made such claims, encouraging prospective customers to view the merchandise for themselves. They promised an array of choices without going into details (and costing a lot more money for purchasing space in the newspaper). In contrast, “HILL’s ready Money Variety Store” continued running an advertisement that filled an entire column because it “enumerated” so many of the items for sale there, yet the proprietor could not claim that his wares just arrived. Thurber and Cahoon did spare a couple of lines for textiles, noting that they carried a “compleat Assortment of Calicoes, Chintz, Patches, Hollands, Dowlas, Bengals, Damascus, Gingham, &c.” The common abbreviation for et cetera suggested even more textiles that Thurber and Cahoon considered “too many” for their advertisement. They also mentioned several grocery items, including “Melasses, Sugar, Coffee, Tea, [and] Chocolate,” but did not specify when they received those items. In particular, they did not give specifics about when and how they received their tea, leaving it to prospective customers to determine if they wished to purchase that item even after reading about the politics of tea elsewhere on the same page of that issue of the Providence Gazette.
In a nota bene, Thurber and Cahoon made a final appeal, one intended especially for their existing clientele. “As they have taken great Pains to get their Assortment suitable to the Season” by acquiring goods consumers wanted or needed for late spring and the summer, the merchants declared, “they desire their old Customers and others to call at their Shop.” They pledged good customer service, stating that visitors to Sign of the Bunch of Grapes “may depend on being served with Fidelity.” They could also depend on finding bargains, paying the “lowest Rate” for goods, provided they paid in cash rather than credit. Thurber and Cahoon incorporated a variety of marketing appeals into an advertisement that occupied a single “square” of space in the Providence Gazette.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
New-Hampshire Gazette (April 29, 1774).
“WATCHES sent … by Post Riders, will be mended, cleaned and sent back with great Care.”
In the spring of 1774, Nathaniel Sheaff Griffith once again advertised that he “Cleaned and Repaired” clocks and watches “in the cheapest and best Manner,” making appeals to both price and skill. He regularly ran notices in the New-Hampshire Gazette, but this one included an update about an employee who worked in his shop in Portsmouth. Griffith advised prospective customers that he “has a Workman from London, which Work shall be done with Fidelity and Dispatch.” In other words, Griffith vouched for his employee. Other artisans in New England sometimes promoted the work undertaken by their employees. For instance, Charles Stevens, a goldsmith and silversmith in Providence, informed the public that he “employs an excellent Workman from London” who did “all Kinds of Jewellers Work.” Similarly, Enos Doolittle advised readers of the Connecticut Courant that he “employed a journeyman who has serv’d a regular Apprenticeship to the Watchmaking business in London.” Griffith, Stevens, and Doolittle all signaled that they could effectively serve an even more extensive clientele thanks to the workmen from London who labored in their shops.
That may have been a factor in another marketing strategy that Griffith deployed for the first time. He concluded his advertisement with a note that “WATCHES sent from East, West, North or South by Post Riders, will be mended, cleaned and sent back with great Care.” While he may have done business that way in the past, he had not previously mentioned this option in his newspaper advertisements. Perhaps now that he had an assistant Griffith felt more secure in advertising this service widely. Once again, other artisans in New England also marketed similar arrangements. Thomas Hilldrup, a watchmaker from London who settled in New London, declared that clients could “forward their Watches to me … by applying to Mr. JOSEPH KNIGHT, Post-Rider.” He promised the same sort of “Dispatch” or quick service that Griffith did, stating that any watches he received would be “returned regularly the next Week.” Post riders provided an infrastructure for watchmakers like Griffith and Hilldrup to serve clients who lived at a distance, expanding their business to rural towns rather than working solely for local customers in port cities.
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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.
Connecticut Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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Connecticut Journal (April 29, 1774).
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New-Hampshire Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 29, 1774).
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Massachusetts Spy (April 28, 1774).
“He will carry this and other papers, and the Royal American MAGAZINE.”
Following the successful launch of the Royal American Magazine a few months earlier, Isaiah Thomas continued advertising the new publication in April 1774. His marketing efforts that month, however, were not as robust as in previous months. Only twelve advertisements appeared in April, with seven of them in Thomas’s own Massachusetts Spy. The Adverts 250 Project has examined his advertising campaign, starting with an announcement, published in May 1773, that he planned to distribute subscription proposals and then the subsequent advertisements, appearing in newspapers from New Hampshire to Maryland, in June, July, August, September, October, November, and December 1773 and January and February, and March 1774.
The first advertisement for the month ran in the April 4 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, the only newspaper (other than the Massachusetts Spy) that carried more than one notice about the Royal American Magazine in April. It advised that “Monday next will be published, NUMBER II. of THE ROYAL American Magazine, For MARCH, 1774.” The compositor made an error with “NUMBER II” instead of “NUMBER III.” That advertisement gave a week’s notice of publication of the March issue. Thomas had fallen behind on the intended publications dates as a result of new types for the magazine not arriving when expected. He published the January issue in early February and the February issue in early March. Accordingly, the March issue came out in April. On April 7, Thomas ran the same advertisement (correctly specifying “NUMBER III”) in the Massachusetts Spy.
On the same day, his newspaper also ran Moses Cleveland’s notice about establishing a “post to ride weekly between NORWICH and BOSTON,” carrying the Norwich Gazette, the Massachusetts Spy, other newspapers, and the Royal American Gazette. Cleveland’s original advertisement in the Norwich Gazette and subsequent advertisement in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy did not mention the Royal American Gazette, suggesting that Thomas adapted the post rider’s notice for his own purposes. He seized an opportunity to promote the magazine to prospective subscribers who lived in towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut along the proposed route. Cleveland’s advertisement ran in all four issues of the Massachusetts Spy published in April, accounting for one-third of the advertisements that month.
On April 15, the Connecticut Gazette carried a brief notice that “The Ist. And IId. Numbers Of the ROYAL AMERICAN MAGAZINE, are ready to be delivered to those who subscribed for them with T. GREEN,” the printer of that newspaper and local agent for the magazine. That was the only advertisement for the Royal American Magazinepublished in a newspaper beyond Boston in April. Timothy Green likely placed it of his own volition, rather than acting on instructions from Thomas, upon receiving copies of the magazine he was responsible for distributing to subscribers in and near his town.
Massachusetts Spy (April 15, 1774).
Also on April 15, Thomas announced that “NUMBER III” of the magazine “was published.” As he had done with previous issues, he listed the contents to entice readers, including essays on “Justice and Generosity” and an “Experiment on Tea,” “POETICAL ESSAYS,” a new entry for an ongoing “HISTORICAL CHRONICLE,” and “DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE.” The March issue was “Embellished” with two copperplate engravings, one of a “Bust of the Honourable John Hancock, Esq; supported by the Goddess of Liberty and an Ancient Briton” and the other depicting “The Fortune Hunter, a humorous historical piece.” Thomas ran this advertisement once more in the Massachusetts Spy on April 22. In the time between its appearances in that newspaper, he inserted it once in the Boston Evening-Post (on April 18), the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (on April 18), and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Newsletter (on April 21). Of the newspapers published in Boston at the time, only the Boston-Gazette, printed by Benjamin Edes and John Gill, did not carry this advertisement. Perhaps the printers objected to the inclusion of the first item in the list of contents, “An Oration; delivered March the fifth, 1774, at the reqest of the town of Boston. By the Honourable John Hancock, Esq.” Edes and Gill printed and marketed a pamphlet containing Hancock’s address commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre. They may not have appreciated the competition from Thomas distributing the oration via other means.
Thomas may not have considered it necessary to advertise as aggressively following the launch of the Royal American Magazine as he had in the months that he encouraged subscribers to show their support for the venture. With the assistance of local agents in many cities and towns, he may have garnered a sufficient number of subscribers that allowed him to shift his focus to producing the magazine and other responsibilities in his printing office. He continued running Moses Cleveland’s advertisement, which he first adapted in March, but did not oversee extensive announcements about the publication of the newest issue of the magazine. Maybe he learned from similar campaigns for the first and second issues that such advertisements did not attract enough new subscribers to justify the investment. The April 15 and 22 editions of the Massachusetts Spy appeared on Fridays instead of Thursdays, a day later than usual, suggesting that the printer was preoccupied with matters other than marketing the Royal American Magazine.
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“will be published … NUMBER III”
April 4 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (first appearance)
April 7 – Massachusetts Spy (first appearance)
“MOSES CLEVELAND”
April 7 – Massachusetts Spy (second appearance)
April 15 – Massachusetts Spy (third appearance)
April 22 – Massachusetts Spy (fourth appearance)
April 28 – Massachusetts Spy (fifth appearance)
“Ist. And IId. Numbers”
April 15 – Connecticut Gazette (first appearance)
“NUMBER III” with contents
April 15 – Massachusetts Spy (first appearance)
April 18 – Boston Evening-Post (first appearance)
April 18 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (first appearance)
April 21 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (first appearance)
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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Pennsylvania Gazette (April 27, 1774).
“These Baths and Waters … have been for some Years deservedly in the highest Repute.”
As spring gave way to summer in 1774, the proprietors of the “BRISTOL BATHS and CHALYBEATE WELLS” ran an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette to advise residents of Philadelphia and other towns that they provided services “in the most commodious Manner, for such Persons who may incline to make Use of them [during] the approaching Season.” For any “Strangers” who were not familiar with “these Baths and Waters,” the proprietors proclaimed that they “have been for some Years deservedly in the highest Repute” for their “Effects in a Number of Diseases, which had resisted every other Medicine.” The chalybeate (or iron-infused) waters had a restorative effect that made visiting the spa an occasion for recuperation as well as relaxation. The proprietors provided several examples of maladies that the bathing in and drinking the chalybeate waters alleviated. They asserted that the waters strengthened the stomach, “promoting a good Appetite,” and rejuvenated “relaxed debilitated Constitutions, whether arising from Sickness, residing too long in a warm Climate, or too free living.” In addition, the iron-infused waters “have infallibly removed” “Obstructions in the Liver, Spleen, and mesenterick Glands.”
Pennsylvania Gazette (April 27, 1774).
Yet the proprietors did not ask prospective patrons simply to take their word about the effects of the baths and wells in Bristol. Instead, they declared that the “Advantages to be obtained from Chalybeate Waters are too extensive for an Advertisement, for which Reason the Public are referred” to a pamphlet “by BENJAMIN RUSH, M.D.” The prominent physician had read a paper, “Experiments and Observations on the Mineral Waters of Philadelphia, Abington, and Bristol,” to the American Philosophical Society on June 18, 1773, and then published it. The proprietors of the Bristol Baths, Rush gave a more particular Account of their Uses, and the advantageous Situation of Bristol.” Historian Vaughan Scribner explains that Rush “nurtured colonists’ expanding interest in the science and commercialization of mineral springs.” The doctor provided a “general location and description of each spring,” described experiments with “mix[ing] more than twenty-one different substances with the mineral waters,” noted several diseases the waters cured (along with only a couple of exceptions), and “contended that the springs could hardly be rivaled for their health and commercial values.”[1] In the April 27 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, printer James Humphreys, Jr., conveniently placed an advertisement on the opposite side of the page as the notice about the Bristol Baths and Chalybeate Wells. Most of it concerned an update for subscribers to “STERNE’s WORKS,” but the printer appended a note that he sold “EXPERIMENTS and OBSERVATIONS on the MINERAL WATERS … By BENJAMIN RUSH, M.D. Professors of Chymistry in the College of Philadelphia.” Perhaps that was a happy coincidence for the proprietors of the Bristol Baths and Chalybeate Waters, but maybe they had coordinated with Humphreys to have their advertisements run at the same time. Either way, they did not direct the public to an obscure pamphlet. Instead, anyone interested in learning more could easily acquire Rush’s tract.
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[1] Vaughn Scribner, “‘The happy effects of these waters’: Colonial American Miner Spas and the British Civilizing Mission,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 14, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 437, https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2016.0020.
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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
“For further particulars, enquire of JACOB VALK.”
Jacob Valk established a brokerage office in Charleston in the early 1770s. In his newspaper advertisements, he advised, “Lands, Houses, and Negroes, Bought and sold at private Sale, upon the usual Commission.” If the pages of the public prints provide any guidance, many colonizers availed themselves of his services, entrusting the broker to conduct business on their behalf. His name became a familiar sight as he placed advertisement after advertisement for his clients.
Consider the supplement that accompanied the April 26 edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal. Valk purchased an entire column on the third page, running fourteen advertisements. Some offered tracts of land for sale, while others included houses and other buildings along with land. Two of them announced sales of enslaved people, one indicating “SEVERAL NEGROES” without giving further details and the other describing “two very valuable Negro Shoe-makers.” Valk sought buyers for “A Small Sloop” and a pettiaugre (or canoe). In each instance, he invoked a familiar refrain: “For further Particulars, enquire of JACOB VALK.” He also assisted executors of estates in calling on those who had unfinished business to settle accounts, inviting them to his office “where the Particulars of that Estate now lay ready for their Perusal.” Four days earlier, Valk purchased a similar amount of space to run many of the same advertisements in the South-Carolina and American General Gazette.
The broker must have factored the cost of advertising into the “usual Commission” that he received for his services, especially considering that he was one of the best customers for the printing offices in Charleston. That he continuously placed newspaper advertisement testifies to his confidence in their general effectiveness, though not every notice may have achieved the desired results. Running so many simultaneously allowed him to distribute the risk and rewards of advertising. Even if some advertisements did not attract buyers, sellers, or associates seeking to settle accounts, others apparently did. When considered collectively, Valk came out ahead on what he invested in advertising. His individual clients, however, would not have had the same experience had they gone it alone. If they paid Valk on commission following a transaction he facilitated, then they paid only for successful advertisements without losing money on notices that did not produce the intended results.
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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.
Connecticut Courant (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina and American General Gazette (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
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Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 26, 1774).
