Author: Carl Robert Keyes

April 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

“BOHEA, GREEN, and HYSON TEA.”

Not all colonizers dispensed with advertising, selling, and drinking tea as an immediate response to the Boston Tea Party, especially if the tea in question had not been subject to import duties.  In April 1774, Pott Shaw advertised “BOHEA, GREEN, and HYSON TEA, warranted of the finest Quality,” in the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal.  Shaw did not reveal when the tea arrived in the colony, by what means, or its origins, leaving those details to prospective customers to ask about, if they chose to do so, when they made their purchases.  Buying and selling this particular commodity occurred in the context of conversations about the politics of tea.

The April 19 edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal carried some of the same updates about possible reactions to the Boston Tea Party that appeared in the Connecticut Courant a week earlier.  Throughout the colonies, printers reprinted news from one newspaper to another.  In this instance, both newspapers carried an “Extract of a letter from London, January 24,” that originally ran in newspapers in Philadelphia.  It briefly stated, “Three men of war are ordered to be in readiness to sail for Boston, and exact payment for the TEA,” without providing additional information, including who had written the letter.  Readers had to decide for themselves whether the report was accurate or merely rumor.  Another news item, this one having arrived via New York, reported that the “intentions of the British administration, relative to the American duty on tea, are not yet fixed.”  Readers in Charleston and Hartford read both these dispatches from London.  They also encountered advertisements for tea in the same issues that carried that news.

Readers of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal also read about commemorations of events that contributed to the imperial crisis.  From Boston, they learned that “the horrid tragedy of the 5th of March,” the Boston Massacre, “was observed with the usual solemnity” on its fourth anniversary.  That article described “a portrait of that inhuman and cruel massacre” put on display and the ringing of bells throughout the city for an entire hour.  An update from New York followed, describing dinners that celebrated the “anniversary of the repeal of the STAMP-ACT.”  Abuses perpetrated by both British soldiers and Parliament received attention alongside news about tea.

For the moment, however, that did not result in merchants, shopkeepers, and others refraining from advertising and selling tea in South Carolina or Connecticut or other colonies.  The beverage was exceptionally popular, making it difficult to curtail consumption.  Eventually, colonizers did enact boycotts, but some people still devised ways to evade them, at least according to Peter Oliver’s account.  Although some entrepreneurs opted not to sell (or at least not to advertise) tea following the Boston Tea Party, it did not immediately disappear from shelves or newspaper advertisements.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 19, 1774

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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Essex Gazette (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (April 19, 1774).

April 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (April 18, 1774).

“He will carry Papers and deliver them to such Gentlemen as are pleased to encourage him.”

When Moses Cleveland set about establishing “a Post to ride weekly between Norwich and Boston” in 1774, he initially advertised in the Norwich Packet.  He pledged that he “will carry this Paper, and deliver it to such Gentlemen as are pleased to encourage it, with the utmost Regularity.”  Soon after, he ran a nearly identical advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy, the newspaper that Isaiah Thomas printed in Boston.  Cleveland realized that the success of the venture depended on attracting as many customers as possible at both ends of his route and places on the way.

His notice in the Massachusetts Spy featured a small, but important, variation.  It stated that he “will carry this and other papers,” acknowledging that five newspapers were published in Boston at the time, “and the Royal American MAGAZINE.”  When I first examined that advertisement, I conjectured that Cleveland had not written that last bit of copy but instead Thomas seized an opportunity to market the new magazine he launched a couple of months earlier.  Cleveland’s advertisement gave the magazine more visibility, while the post rider’s service made the magazine accessible to prospective subscribers in Norwich, “WINDHAM, POMFRET, MENDON,” and other towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Cleveland did not advertise in all the Boston newspapers.  Perhaps that would have been prohibitively expensive as he sought to raise funds for his venture.  Yet he did not confine his advertising to the Massachusetts Spy.  Instead, he placed a notice in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, again nearly identical.  In that one, he declared that he “will carry Papers and deliver them to such Gentlemen as are pleased to encourage him,” making no mention of the Royal American Magazine.  This strongly suggests that Thomas did indeed make an editorial intervention in Cleveland’s advertisement, grafting his own marketing efforts onto the newspaper notice purchased by the post rider.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 18, 1774

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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Boston Evening-Post (April 18, 1774).

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Boston Evening-Post (April 18, 1774).

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Boston Evening-Post (April 18, 1774).

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Boston-Gazette (April 18, 1774).

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Boston-Gazette (April 18, 1774).

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Boston-Gazette (April 18, 1774).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (April 18, 1774).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (April 18, 1774).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (April 18, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 18, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 18, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 18, 1774).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 18, 1774).

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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 18, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 18, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 18, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 18, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 18, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 18, 1774).

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South-Carolina Gazette (April 18, 1774).

April 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 17, 1774).

“Advertisements, blanks, and many other kinds of printing work, she ardently hopes, may be discharged at the general courts.”

Clementina Rind printed the Virginia Gazette and operated the printing office following the death of her husband in August 1773.  That included keeping the books and calling on customers to settle accounts.  She issued such a notice in the April 14, 1774, edition of her newspaper, at the same time outlining improvements to the publication that payments would help support.  She asserted that she had “lately considerably enlarged her paper,” providing more content to subscribers and other readers.  In addition, she ordered and “expect[ed] shortly an elegant set of types from London, … together with all other materials relative to the printing business.”  Rind expressed pride in “the dignity of her gazette” while simultaneously noting that those who owed money had a role to play in her goal of “keeping it at a fixed standard.”

To that end, she called on subscribers to submit annual payments.  In the eighteenth century, many newspaper subscribers notoriously went for years without settling accounts with printers.  Advertising revenue offset those delinquent payments, yet not all printers demanded that advertisers pay for their notices in advance, contrary to common assumptions about how they ran their businesses.  Rind’s notice suggests that she may have published advertisements on credit but does not definitively demonstrate that was the case.  She requested that customers pay what they owed for “advertisements, blanks, and many other kinds of printing work … at the general courts.”  She may have meant newspaper notices, but “advertisements” could have also referred to handbills, broadsides, and other job printing for the purposes of marketing goods and services or disseminating information to the public.  The masthead listed prices for subscriptions (“12 s. 6 d. a Year”) and advertisements “of a moderate length” (“3 s. the first Week, and 2 s. each Time after”), while also promoting “PRINTING WORK, of every Kind,” which would have included blanks (or forms for legal and commercial transactions), handbills, and broadsides, but that does not clarify what Rind meant by “advertisements” in her notice.  That other printers sometimes allowed credit for newspaper advertisements leaves open the possibility that Rind may have done so as well.  If that was the case, it made it even more imperative that advertisers discharge their debts to “enable her the better to carry on her paper with that spirit which is so necessary to such an undertaking.”

Virginia Gazette [Rind] (April 14, 1774).

April 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (April 16, 1774).

“New-England Rum and Melasses, Claret and Lisbon Wine.”

Joseph Russell and William Russell regularly advertised in the Providence Gazette in the 1760s and 1770s.  In the spring of 1774, the merchants inserted a notice that listed a variety of commodities, including “Jamaica and Barbados Rum, New-England Rum and Melasses, Claret and Lisbon Wine, Coffee, Sugar, Indico, Alspice, large Rock Salt, [and] choice Connecticut Beef and Pork, in Barrels and Half Barrels.”  They did not happen to include tea among their inventory, at least not among the items they enumerated in their newspaper advertisement, even though they frequently stocked it in the past.  Just over a year earlier, they led one of their advertisements with “Excellent Bohea Team, which for Smell and Flavor exceeds almost any ever imported, by the Chest, Hundred, or dozen Pounds.”  Perhaps the crisis around tea – the Boston Tea Party and the efforts of the Sons of Liberty to turn away ships carrying tea in other port cities – convinced them not to advertise that commodity.  As they often did, the Russells concluded with a promise of various “English and Hard-Ware Goods.”

Compared to many of the advertisements they ran in the 1760s, their notices became more restrained in the 1770s.  Their advertisement for the spring of 1774 filled the standard “square,” roughly equivalent in length to most other paid notices in the Providence Gazette.  In contrast, their advertisement in the March 19, 1768, edition listed dozens of items.  The Russells demonstrated that “their assortment is very large” and “customers will have the advantage of a fine choice” with an advertisement that extended more than a column.  On previous occasions, they ran full-page advertisements, including in the November 22, 1766, and November 7, 1767, editions of the Providence Gazette.  Many of their advertisements from the 1760s tended to look like the one for “HILL’s ready Money Variety Store” that appeared in the spring of 1774.  Why did the Russells opt for less elaborate advertisements when facing such competition?  Perhaps they felt secure in their reputation, deciding that shorter notices made customers sufficiently aware of their merchandise.  In 1772, the prominent merchants built “the second brick edifice and the first three-story structure in Providence,” making them and their business even more visible to residents of the growing port.  As their wealth increased and their status reached new heights, the Russells had other means of attracting attention to their enterprise beyond newspaper advertisements, yet they still considered streamlined notices valuable investments in advancing their entrepreneurial activities.

April 15

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

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

New-Hampshire Gazette (April 15, 1774).

“Taught in such a Manner as to add Grace and Beauty to the Deportment of either Sex.”

Monsieur Viart once again took to the pages of the New-Hampshire Gazette in the spring of 1774, announcing that he “opened his Accademy for dancing last Monday at the Assembly Room” in Portsmouth.  Viart had previously advertised in that newspaper in the summer of 1772 and as spring approached in 1773, but by the end of the summer he was running notices in the Pennsylvania Journal.  Perhaps he had experienced too much competition with Edward Hackett and decided that he might have better prospects in Philadelphia, the largest and most genteel city in British North America.  Whatever his motivation, Viart’s time in the Quaker City did not last long.  That city had plenty of dancing masters and French tutors, a factor that may have influenced Viart’s decision to return to a place where he had cultivated a reputation among prospective students.

His presence in Portsmouth suggests a market for his services even in smaller towns, not just the largest urban ports like Boston, Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia.  Viart described himself as a “Professor of the polite Arts,” signaling that his instruction aided students in maintaining or improving their status as they strove to display their gentility to others.  He provided dancing lessons to “Ladies and Gentlemen who have not perfected themselves in that agreeable Accomplishment,” promising that he taught “in such a Manner as to add Grace and Beauty to the Deportment of either Sex, in the Genteelest Characters in Life.”  In addition to dancing, Viart “teaches the French Language in the easiest Method.”  He reassured even the most anxious prospective students, those “Scholars of the least Aptitude,” that in just six months they “may be sufficiently acquainted with the Rudiments of the Language” that they would “pronounce and write it with Delicacy and Propriety.”  Viart’s advertisements in the New-Hampshire Gazette demonstrate that just as the consumer revolution reached far beyond major port cities and into smaller towns and even the countryside, so too did concerns with refinement of character and comportment.  As colonizers acquired more goods and associated meaning with them, they also recognized that dancing well and speaking French testified to their gentility and validated their choices to wear fine clothing and purchase fashionable housewares.  As a “Professor of the polite Arts,” Viart marketed skills that helped his students complete the picture of their “Genteelest Characters.”

Slavery Advertisements Published April 15, 1774

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 colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Journal (April 15, 1774).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (April 15, 1774).

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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (April 15, 1774).

April 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  Clare Teskey

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

Maryland Gazette (April 14, 1774).

“A neat post coach.”

John King’s advertisement for this “coach” first interested me because, according to Ron Vineyard at Colonial Williamsburg, coaches were bought mainly by the gentry (or upper class) in eighteenth-century America. Upon further consideration, however, I noticed that this was an advertisement for a “post coach,” which confused me, as I thought that only the postal system would have use for “post coaches.” Most people rode horses or travelled by foot at this time, but those who had the luxury of owning a coach could decide between different kinds of coaches. In “Wheeled Carriages in Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” Mary Goodwin identified “plain,” “neat ornamented,” “town,” “travelling,” and “elegant crane neck” coaches among the variety of coaches that buyers could choose from, as well as “post coaches.” Depending on the size and price of the coach, buyers had certain preferences about the coach they would purchase. While “post coaches” were typically used by the postal system for the distribution of mail in the colonies, they could also be bought by private owners, who may have enjoyed the style, price, and other features of the vehicles.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

John King sought to sell a used post coach.  In his advertisement in the April 14, 1774, edition of the Maryland Gazette, he noted that the wheels “are as good as new, and the carriage in good order, having been through a thorough repair last year,” assuring prospective customers that even though the carriage was used it was in good order.  He also had a “genteel phaeton” for sale at his stables in Annapolis, that carriage also presumably used.

In selling secondhand carriages, King competed with Pryse and Parker, “COACH and COACH HARNESSMAKERS from London,” and the new carriages they built according to the instructions they received then customers placed orders.  In the same issue that carried King’s advertisement, Pryse and Parker once again inserted their notice to inform the public that they acquired “the best materials for the coachmaking business, which they now carry on, in all its various branches.”  Colonizers in the market for a coach had the option, if they wished, to order a new one made to their specifications, one that matched the latest styles in London and port cities in the colonies.

Yet new coaches were more expensive than secondhand coaches, not unlike new and used cars today.  Consumers made decisions that took into account price, quality, fashion, and prestige.  The eighteenth-century marketplace for carriages anticipated some of the common practices of the modern automobile industry, especially when it came to used carriages.  For instance, Adino Paddock, a coachmaker in Boston, advertised that he “will take second hand Chaises in part Pay for new,” a version of trading in a new vehicle to reduce the cost of a new one.  He also offered for sale a “very good second-hand Coach, Curricule, and several Chaises, some almost new.”  Paddock operated a precursor to a used car lot, making bargains available to those who chose not to invest in new carriages.  With a “neat post coach” and a “genteel phaeton” for sale at his stables, King adopted a similar business model.

Welcome, Guest Curator Clare Teskey

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized ,

Clare Teskey is a senior at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is majoring is Elementary Education and History, with a Concentration in STEM. She looks forward to focusing on American History with her future students. Beyond her studies, she is the President of Assumption University’s Habitat for Humanity chapter, the Secretary for Assumption’s Education Club, and a member of the Women’s Club Volleyball team on campus. Clare is also a member of Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honor Society. Clare made her contributions to the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project while enrolled in HIS 401 Revolutionary America, 1763-1815, in Fall 2023.

Welcome, guest curator Clare Teskey!