Daily Advert Update

March 24

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

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

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 22, 1776).

“He ought to stand in the same respectable point of view with all friends of America.”

As the imperial crisis intensified and became a war, some colonizers published newspaper advertisements intended to rehabilitate their reputations.  Many of the signers of an address to Thomas Hutchinson took to the pages of the newspapers published in New England to apologize and to explain the circumstances that led to their error.  In response to other incidents that called their support for American liberties into question, Asa Dunbar published “RECANTATIONS” in the New-England Chronicle, Lemuel Bower and Joseph Lyon both expressed regret for not showing support for nonimportation agreement in advertisements in the New-York Journal, and John Bergum promised to “conduct myself as a true friend to America” in the Pennsylvania Evening Post.

Samuel Kinkead got into similar trouble in Virginia in January 1776.  An advertisement in the March 22 edition of Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette reported that Kinkead “stood suspected of being unfriendly to the American cause, on account of some expressions he dropped in company with some gentlemen” in West Augusta.  William Christian and George Gibson, and “several other officers, examined the witnesses who had heard his expressions.”  At the conclusion of their interviews, “the whole of us were satisfied that [Kinkead] meant that he ought to stand in the same respectable point of view with all friends of America as he formerly did.”  This advertisement delivered important news, at least from Kinkead’s perspective, so he may have been grateful that it ran first among the paid notices in that issue of the Virginia Gazette.  It thus served as a transition between news and editorials that kept readers informed about politics and the war and the advertisements placed for a variety of purposes.  This notice, like so many others, delivered local news to readers, bypassing the printer who made editorial decisions about what to include elsewhere in the newspaper.  Kinkead did not address readers himself as others had done, but he may have considered it more effective for Christian and Gibson to vouch for him.

March 23

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

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

Providence Gazette (March 23, 1776).

“No advantage is meant to be taken.”

As spring approached in 1776, James Green took to the pages of the Providence Gazette to advertise “GARDEN-SEEDS” that he sold “At his little Shop.”  He had done so in recent years, though the Continental Association, a nonimportation agreement devised by the Second Continental Congress that went into effect on December 1, 1774, and the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, seemingly had an impact on his business.  He previously promoted a “Fresh Assortment of Garden Seed, just imported in the last Ships from London,” in the spring of 1773 and a “Fresh Assortment of Garden Seeds, imported from London …, warranted to be all of the last Year’s Produce,” in the spring of 1774.  In 1776, on the other hand, he stocked some seeds that he described as “English, the Growth of the Season before last,” meaning that they arrived before the Continental Association went into effect.  This time around he also had seeds for a variety of “American Produce,” adapting his business to the changing times.

As was often the case, Green took the opportunity to hawk other merchandise, including “a few articles of English goods,” presumably imported more than a year earlier, “a small assortment of glass, stone and earthen ware,” and “loaf and brown sugar, coffee, chocolate, indico, rice, [and] flour.”  Tea was conspicuously missing from the list of groceries that Green stocked.  The shopkeeper did not merely list his wares.  He also assured prospective customers his merchandise “will be sold at as cheap a rate as the times will afford.”  In other words, he set reasonable prices, yet he acknowledged that the nonimportation agreement and the war resulted in higher prices.  Still, he sought to avoid suspicion that he engaged in price gouging: “No advantage is meant to be taken.”  In making that statement, he echoed the ninth article of the Continental Association.  It dictated that “such as are Venders of Goods or Merchandise will not take Advantage of the Scarcity of Goods that may be occasioned” by this agreement.  Green wanted the entire community to know that he dealt fairly with his customers.

March 21

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

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

New-York Journal (March 21, 1776).

“This balsam is sold in bottles … seal’d with my own seal.”

Richard Speaight hawked a variety of patent medicines in an advertisement in the March 21, 1776, edition of the New-York Journal.  He listed Turlington’s Balsam, Anderson’s Pills, Lockyer’s Pills, Hooper’s Pills, James’s Powders, Story’s Worm Cakes, and Stoughton’s Bitters.  All these remedies were so familiar to consumers that Speaight did not consider it necessary to indicate which of them relieved which maladies.  Prospective customers knew them as well as modern consumers know the over-the-counter medications available at local pharmacies.  He sold all of them, along with “an assortment of [other] Drugs and Medicines,” for reasonable prices.

On the other hand, Speaight did devote a significant portion of his advertisement to describing a “CHYMICAL Balsam approved of by some of the best Physicians in London.”  Those practitioners, he reported, considered the balsam “an excellent medicine for coughs, asthmas, those in a consumptive decay, pains in the breast and all rheumatic disorders.”  It supposedly worked to “great effect,” a welcome promise to readers who had tried other treatments without success.

In addition to customers who purchased the balsam for their own use, Speaight also hoped to attract the attention of retails who would stock it in their own shops.  He set the price at one dollar per bottle and four shillings for a half bottle while also making “allowances to those who buy to sell again.”  In other words, he offered discounts for buying in volume.  To avoid counterfeits, he informed the public that bottles of the balsam were “seal’d with my own seal.”  Furthermore, he provided “directions signed with my own name.”  Retailers and consumers alike could refer to those instructions when selling or using the balsam.  For a medicine not nearly as familiar as Anderson’s Pills and Stoughton’s Bitters, a seal and printed directions likely enhanced confidence in the efficacy of the product.

March 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Journal (March 20, 1776).

“A TREATISE of MILITARY DISCIPLINE; CALCULATED FOR THE USE OF THE AMERICANS.”

Eleven months after the Revolutionary War began at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Lewis Nicola distributed subscription proposals for a “TREATISE of MILITARY DISCIPLINE … illustrated by TEN COPPER-PLATES.”  He indicated that the work was “nearly completed, and will be put in the press as soon as a sufficient number of subscribers are obtained.”  Authors and printers often used subscription proposals as a rudimentary form of market research, assessing whether interest merited publishing a book and determining how many copies to print while simultaneously increasing visibility for the project and augmenting demand.  Nicola envisioned a “neat duodecimo volume,” a portable size, but did not affix a price except to say that it “will be fixed as low as possible.”  He expected that other aspects of the manual would convince prospective subscribers to reserve their copies.

For instance, he proclaimed that his manual was “CALCULATED FOR THE USE OF THE AMERICANS.”  Over the past couple of years, especially since the war started, American printers published local editions of a variety of British military manuals, but Nicola’s book, as Douglas R. Cubbison explains, “was one of only two such treatises specifically prepared for the Continental Army at the time.”  Nicola emphasized that he focused on practical matters, including “every thing essential on service” while omitted “those Manoeuvres only for parade and shew.”  Militia training had often been an occasion for socializing and entertainment before the war, but officers and soldiers and the communities they served needed more than fancy formations now that they engaged an enemy rather than gathering on the town common.  Cubbison also notes that Nicola outlined “a unified system of military maneuvers” and stressed that “officers must display forbearance, understanding, and respect for their soldiers.”  In so doing, his manual “anticipated many of the core components of the Baron de Steuben’s more famous and considerably more influential Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States.”

Nicola accepted subscriptions in Philadelphia, as did William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal.  In addition, “Thomas Mifflin, Esq; Quarter-Master General at Cambridge,” also collected subscriptions.  When the subscription proposal appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal on March 20, residents of Philadelphia did not yet know that the British evacuated Boston three days earlier, ending the siege of the city.  The most recent news, printed in both the Pennsylvania Evening Post on March 19 and the Pennsylvania Gazette on March 20, came Watertown on March 11, a description of the “bombardment of Boston” following the arrival of cannon that Henry Knox transported from Fort Ticonderoga in New York.  “‘Tis reported the Regulars are embarking,” the missive from Watertown stated, but the printers had not yet received word that the British had indeed left Boston.  Whatever came next, the war was not coming to an end.  Nicola likely hoped that news from Watertown would entice readers to subscribe for a military manual “CALCULATED FOR THE USE OF THE AMERICANS.”

March 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (March 19, 1776).

“Hare’s American best bottled PORTER.”

Robert Appleby apparently specialized in beers brewed locally.  Those were the only products that he promoted in an advertisement that ran in the March 19, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  He opened with “SPRUCE BEER” that he brewed himself “in Chesnut-street, between Second and Third streets, two doors from the White-horse tavern” in Philadelphia.  Even if prospective customers were not already familiar with his beer, they could certainly find him once they were in the vicinity of the tavern.  Flavored with spruce needles or buds, this popular beverage helped in preventing scurvy.  Appleby sold his spruce beer in bottles, charging three shillings a dozen, or kegs as small as five gallons.  For the convenience of his customers, he offered delivery “to any part of the city.”

He also distributed beer that he did not brew, “Hare’s American best bottled PORTER.”  That beverage already had quite a reputation in Philadelphia.  Over the past several months, several tavernkeepers placed advertisements to alert prospective patrons when they planned to “open a TAP of Mr. HARE’s best AMERICAN DRAUGHT PORTER,” often associating drinking a brew brewed in the colony (and gathering together to do so) with support for the American cause.  Patrick Meade, for instance, declared that he “expects the Associators of Freedom will encouragement to the American Porter it deserves,” and Joseph Price called on “all the SONS of AMERICAN LIBERTY” to drink it at his tavern at “the sign of the Bull and Dog.”

In addition to his spruce beer and the most famous beer brewed in the city at the time, Appleby also sold “Philadelphia bottled BEER and CYDER, by the grose or dozen,” pledging that “None will be sent out but what is exceeding fine.”  Elsewhere in the same issue, Robert Bell placed competing advertisements for his third edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and James Chalmers’s Plain Truth, a response that depicted the “scheme of INDEPENDANCE” as “ruinous, delusive, and impracticable.”  Whether or not they purchased those pamphlets, the readers who consumed Appleby’s spruce beer and Hare’s porter likely had animated conversations as they discussed current events.

March 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 18, 1776).

“The Deceiver unmasked … In answer to a Pamphlet, entitled, COMMON SENSE.”

As Robert Bell advertised Plain Truth, a response to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, in Philadelphia in March 1776, Samuel Loudon, a printer and bookseller in New York, prepared to publish and sell “The Deceiver unmasked, or Loyalty and Interest united; in answer to a Pamphlet, entitled COMMON SENSE.”  On Monday, March 18, he announced that two days later he would make available a new pamphlet “Wherein is proved that the Scheme of INDEPENDENCE is ruinous and delusive, and that in our Union with Great-Britain on liberal principles consists our greatest glory and happiness.”  By the time Loudon placed this advertisement, he may have seen an advertisement for Plain Truth in a newspaper printed in Philadelphia, borrowing the words “ruinous” and “delusive” for his own advertisement.

At first glance, this advertisement seems to contradict Thomas R. Adams’s assertion that only two pamphlets directly responding Common Sense appeared in the colonies in the six months between its publication in January and the Continental Congress declaring independence in July.  Bell published Plain Truth in the middle of March and James Humphreys, Jr., published The True Interest of America Impartially Stated in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense at the end of May.[1]  What about Loudon’s Deceiver Unmasked?  In a footnote, Adams explains that a “third pamphlet … was printed by Samuel Loudon in New York, but it was never sold because a Committee of Mechanics under Christopher Duyckinck destroyed almost all of the 1,500 copies.”[2]  One of the notes in the American Antiquarian Society’s catalog entry for Deceiver Unmasked provides more information: “The New-York Historical Society copy bears the [manuscript] note: General Duykinck’s Committee went to the House of Mr. Loudon’s and destroyed all these pamphlets just as they were ready to be published. — this Copy was saved.”  That delayed rather than prevented dissemination of Deceiver Unmasked.  The pamphlet eventually came off Humphreys’s press in Philadelphia as The True Interest of America.  Readers intrigued by Loudon’s advertisement for Deceiver Unmasked had to wait months for its publication, not knowing during that time whether Loudon or any other printer would even attempt it.  The first edition met with sufficient success that Humphreys issued a second edition.  While neither Plain Truth nor Deceiver Unmasked/True Interest of America had much impact, the publication and marketing of these responses to Common Sense demonstrates that printers believed a market existed for Loyalist tracts.

**********

[1] Thomas R. Adams, “The Authorship and Printing of Plain Truth by ‘Candidus,’” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 49, no. 3 (1955): 230-231.

[2] Adams, “Authorship and Printing,” 230.

March 17

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

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

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (March 15, 1776).

“Mr. Bird … has been so remarkable for keeping a good house.”

When Adam Bird commenced operating the “TAVERN at AYLETT’s” in the spring of 1776, he took to the pages of Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette to invite patrons to his establishment.  He assured prospective customers that “no pains or expense will be spared to accommodate travellers in the best manner.”  To that end, he had “laid in a large stock of the best liquors” for their enjoyment.  In addition, he “had the house repaired, and comfortable rooms, with fire-places, for lodgers, provided.”  Whether or not readers had previously visited the tavern at that location, Bird hoped that the improvements he made would entice them to visit.  “Those who will be pleased to favour him with their company,” he pledged, “may be assured of the best entertainment” as “their obedient servant” catered to them.  Bird made common appeals that tavernkeepers and innkeepers incorporated into their advertisements.

He also included an uncommon element that distinguished his advertisement from others.  As an addendum, William Aylett gave his endorsement of Bird and his management of the tavern.  “Mr. Bird has been some time in a publick way,” Aylett explained, “and has been so remarkable for keeping a good house that I was at some pains to prevail on him to take this place.”  In other words, Aylett, who may have had experience as a tavernkeeper himself or may have been merely the proprietor of the building, was familiar with Bird’s previous experience running a public house and that prompted him to invite Bird to open an establishment at the “TAVERN at AYLETT’s.”  He intended to leverage Bird’s reputation through vouching for him, aiming to convince prospective customers that they would indeed enjoy eating, drinking, and lodging at the tavern.  Aylett nearly gave a guarantee, declaring that he could “warrant for [Bird] giving satisfaction to his patrons.  Prospective patrons who did not know Bird, the new manager at the “TAVERN at AYLETT’s,” but did know Aylett, the proprietor, may have found the endorsement more enticing than Bird’s overview of the services he provided.

March 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (March 16, 1776).

“PLAIN TRUTH … containing Remarks on a late Pamphlet intituled COMMON SENSE.”

Robert Bell published the first edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense on January 9, 1776, and not long after that he published a response, “PLAIN TRUTH; addressed to the INHABITANTS of AMERICA, containing Remarks on a late Pamphlet intituled COMMON SENSE.”  As was often the case in eighteenth-century advertisements for books and pamphlets, Bell used the extensive subtitle as the copy for marketing the volume: “Wherein are shewn, that the Scheme of INDEPENDENCE is Ruinous, Delusive, and impracticable: That were the Author’s Asseverations, respecting the Power of AMERICA, as Real as Nugatory, Reconciliation, on liberal Principles with GREAT-BRITAIN would be exalted Policy: And that, circumstances as we are, permanent Liberty, and true Happiness can only be obtained by Reconciliation with that Kingdon.”

According to Thomas R. Adams, only two pamphlets answered Common Sense in the six months between its publication in January and the Continental Congress declaring independence in July.  Robert Bell first advertised Plain Truth in the Pennsylvania Gazette on March 13.  Near the end of May, James Humphreys, Jr., published The True Interest of America Impartially Stated in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense.[1]  Bell quickly placed advertisements in other newspapers printed in Philadelphia, including the Pennsylvania Evening Post on March 14 and the Pennsylvania Ledger on March 16.  In each advertisement, he set the price at three shillings for a single copy “with large allowance to those who buy per the hundred or dozen.”  In other words, Bell offered a significant discount for buying in volume, hoping to make the pamphlet more attractive to consumers who might buy a dozen to share with friends and retailers who might buy a hundred to sell in their own shops in Philadelphia and beyond.  He may not have anticipated that Plain Truth would achieve the same popularity as Common Sense, yet he was still a savvy entrepreneur who aimed to generate revenue from the debate over declaring independence.  “To this Pamphlet is subjoined,” a nota bene at the end of the advertisement informed readers, “a Defence of the Liberty of the Press.”  Adams asserts that Bell “pleaded for the right to present both sides of the question.  No doubt he hoped thereby to increase the sales of both pamphlets.”[2]  James Rivington had done the same in advertisements with headlines like “THE AMERICAN CONTEST” and “The American Controversy” that promoted pamphlets “on both sides, in the unhappy dispute with Great-Britain.”  Humphreys, who eventually published The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, also ran advertisements for “POLITICAL PAMPHLETS, ON Both Sides of the Question.”  Such pamphlets educated colonizers and helped them understand and formulate their own positions, yet they also presented opportunities for printers to generate revenue from current events.

**********

[1] Thomas R. Adams, “The Authorship and Printing of Plain Truth by ‘Candidus,’” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 49, no. 3 (1955): 230-231.

[2] Adams, “Authorship and Printing,” 235.

March 15

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

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

Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (March 15, 1776).

“Gesunde Bernunft.”

An advertisement partially in English and partially in German informed readers of the March 15, 1776, edition of Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote that the printer stocked and sold several political journals, including “The WEEKLY VOTES Of the HONOURABLE HOUSE of ASSEMBLY, of the present Sitting,” “All the VOTES of the last Year’s Session,” and “The Fourth and Fifth VOLUMES of [the] Collection of the VOTES from the Year 1744.”  Miller offered his readers opportunities to learn more about current events as well as the political history of Pennsylvania over the past three decades.  “Gleichfalls” or likewise, he sold “Gesunde Bernunft,” a German translation of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.  Among the many printers who had advertised the popular political pamphlet in the two months since Robert Bell published the first edition in Philadelphia on January 9, Miller was the first to list it as an item also available for purchase rather than making it the focal point of his advertisement.

That had not always been the case in the pages of Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote.  On January 16, Bell inserted an advertisement (in English) that announced the publication and sale of Common Sense at his shop on Third Street.  A week later, Bell’s advertisement ran once again, this time competing with an advertisement (in German) that announced that Gesunde Bernunft “Es ist jebt under der Presse” or “is in the press” and soon to be published by Melchior Steiner and Carl Cist.  Although Steiner and Cist did not collaborate with Bell on their German edition, they replicated much of his advertisement.  That included giving readers an overview of the contents by listing the headings for the four sections of pamphlet and publishing an epigraph from “Liberty,” a poem by James Thomson.  A month later, Steiner and Cist ran another advertisement (in German) announcing publication of Gesunde Bernunft.  They charged one shilling for a single copy or nine shillings for a dozen.  Like other printers, they offered a discount for those who purchased in volume for retail sales or to distribute to family and friends.

The Adverts 250 Project continues to track the proliferation of local editions of Common Sense and newspaper advertisements intended to disseminate the pamphlet widely, yet a complete accounting cannot overlook the German translation, Gesunde Bernunft, published and advertised by Steiner and Cist.  Very shortly after the pamphlet grabbed the attention of English-speaking colonizers, Steiner and Cist set about making Paine’s radical ideas accessible to German-speaking colonizers in Philadelphia and the backcountry.

March 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New-England Chronicle (March 14, 1776).

“A few copies of the valuable pamphlet, intitled, COMMON SENSE, to be sold by the Printer hereof.”

Just three days before the British evacuated Boston, ending the siege that began nearly a year earlier following the battles at Lexington and Concord, the first advertisement for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense appeared in the New-England Chronicle.  Samuel Hall published that newspaper, according to the masthead, “at his Printing-Office in Stoughton-Hall, HARVARD-COLLEGE,” in Cambridge.  Most of the newspapers published in Boston before the fighting commenced ceased or suspended publication or relocated beyond the city.  Amid such disruption, Hall moved the Essex Gazette, formerly published in Salem, to Cambridge and renamed it the New-England Chronicle.  During the first year of the Revolutionary War, it served the towns outside of Boston and the American encampment where General George Washington oversaw the siege.

That first advertisement for Paine’s influential political pamphlet in the New-England Chronicle contained little fanfare.  Unlike the advertisements that ran in most other newspapers, it did not provide an overview by listing the several sections within the pamphlet.  Instead, two brief lines advised, “A few copies of that valuable pamphlet, intitled COMMON SENSE, to be sold by the Printer hereof.”  Perhaps Hall felt that Common Sense did not need much introduction, especially if prospective customers had already heard about it and discussed the radical ideas that Paine espoused.  After all, Robert Bell published the first edition in Philadelphia two months earlier.  That was plenty of time for word to spread to Cambridge.  In addition, the pamphlet was so popular that Bell quickly took a second (unauthorized) edition to press, Paine worked with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford to publish a new edition in Philadelphia, and printers in several towns in New York and New England published, advertised, and sold local editions.  Which edition did Hall have on hand to sell at his printing office?  He may have acquired copies of the edition jointly published by Timothy Green, the printer of the Connecticut Gazette in New London, and Judah P. Spooner, a printer in Norwich, or the edition published by John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette.  Alternately, he may have received copies of other editions sent to him from as far away as New York or Philadelphia … or perhaps even a local edition published in Salem by Ezekiel Russell not previously advertised in any newspaper.  Even if readers of the New-England Chronicle already knew about the ideas that Paine presented in Common Sense, few had likely read the pamphlet for themselves.  Hall provided an opportunity for them to do so, aiding in the dissemination of the pamphlet in the months before the Continental Congress declared independence.