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 11, 1774).
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Boston Evening-Post (April 11, 1774).
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Boston Evening-Post (April 11, 1774).
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Boston-Gazette (April 11, 1774).
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Boston-Gazette (April 11, 1774).
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Boston-Gazette (April 11, 1774).
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Postscript to Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (April 11, 1774).
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Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (April 11, 1774).
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Newport Mercury (April 11, 1774).
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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 11, 1774).
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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 11, 1774).
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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 11, 1774).
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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 11, 1774).
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Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 11, 1774).
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (April 7, 1774).
“ETHAN SICKELS, Leather-Dresser and Breeches-Maker.”
Even if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Cornelius Ryan, “LEATHER DRESSER and BREECHES MAKER,” probably did not feel particularly flattered when Ethan Sickels, “Leather-Dresser and Breeches-Maker,” ran an advertisement that imitated Ryan’s advertisement a little too much. Compare the copy from Ryan’s notice, which first appeared in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury on March 21, 1774, and Sickels’s notice, which first appeared in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer on March 31.
Ryan: “MAKES and sells best Buck and Doe Skin Breeches, find ground Lamb do, best Buck and Doe Skin Gloves, also the very best Kind of Caraboo Skin Breeches and Gloves.”
Sickels: “MAKES and sells the best buck and doe skin breeches, fine ground lamb best buck and doe skin gloves; Also the very best Caraboo skin breeches, and gloves.”
Ryan: “He likewise has a great Variety of Buck Skin Breeches for Traders or Country Stores … all which he will sell on as low Terms as they can be had from Philadelphia, or any Part of the Continent.”
Sickels: “he likewise has a great quantity of buckskin breeches for traders, or country stores … all which he will sell on as low terms as they can be had from Philadelphia, or any part of the continent.”
This was not an instance of using standardized or formulaic language as was often the case in eighteenth-century advertisements for consumer goods and services. Instead, Sickels quite clearly borrowed Ryan’s advertising copy … but that was not the only undeniable similarity between the two newspaper notices. Each of them included a woodcut depicting a pair of breeches and the initials of the advertiser that accounted for approximately half of the space occupied by the advertisements. Ryan’s image also included a sun, replicating his “Sign of the SUN and BREECHES,” while Sickels’s image had a border around it instead.
Sickels apparently admired Ryan’s advertisement or feared that it gave his competitor too much of an advantage or recognized a means of drawing more attention to his own business. All those factors may have been at play when he saw Ryan’s notice in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury and decided to cross the street from his workshop “Opposite Mr. RIVINGTON’S PRINTING-OFFICE” to arrange for such a similar advertisement to run in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer. This suggests that entrepreneurs did not place newspaper advertisements as mere announcements in the eighteenth century but instead some of them monitored the public prints to devise their own marketing efforts or at least keep up with their competitors.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Providence Gazette (April 9, 1774).
“… to be sold by the Printer hereof.”
Advertisements filled the final column on the third page and the entire last page of the April 9, 1774, edition of the Providence Gazette. They generated significant revenue for John Carter, the printer, yet not all the advertisements were paid notices. Like many other printers, Carter used his newspaper to disseminate his own advertisements. He inserted five of the notices that appeared in that issue.
Those advertisements related to a variety of aspects of operating Carter’s printing office “at Shakespear’s Head, in Meeting-Street, near the Court-House.” In one, he called on “ALL Persons indebted for this Gazette one Year, or more” and anyone else indebted to him for other services “to make immediate Payment.” In another, Carter sought a “trusty and well-behaved Lad, about 13 or 14 Years of Age” as “an Apprentice to the Printing Business.” Candidates needed to be able to “read well, and write tolerably.” In yet another, a headline in a larger font than anything else in that issue, even the title of the newspaper in the masthead, proclaimed, “RAGS.” Carter offered the “best Prices … for clean Linen Rags, of any Kind, and old Sail-Cloth, to supply the PAPER MANUFACTORY in Providence.” The printer intended to recycle rags into paper that he would then use to publish subsequent editions of the Providence Gazette.
Providence Gazette (April 9, 1774).
Other advertisements promoted items for sale at the printing office. Most printers also sold books. A few came from their own presses or other colonial presses, but most were imported from England. Carter listed several titles for readers with diverse interests, from “PRIESTLY’s Reply to Judge Blackstone, in Vindication of the Dissenters” to “the Fashionable Lover, a new Comedy” to “the Grave, a Poem” to “Fenning’s Spelling-Books.” An “&c.” (an abbreviation for et cetera) indicated that he stocked many more books, pamphlets, and broadsides. A shorter advertisement stated, “BLANKS of various Kinds to be sold by the Printer hereof.” Carter printed and sold forms for common legal and commercial transactions. Even the colophon doubled as an advertisement, informing readers that “all Manner of Printing-Work is performed with Care and Expedition.”
Carter took advantage of his access to the press to tend to the different parts of operating a busy printing office. While his advertisements did not generate revenue in the same manner as the paid notices placed by merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, estate executors, lottery managers, and others, they supported his business in other ways and some likely resulted in revenue from the sale of books and blanks or the settling of accounts. Collectively, they gave Carter a very visible presence in the pages of the Providence Gazette.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Connecticut Gazette (April 8, 1774).
“… that the Practice of Physick may be put under some better Regulation.”
A “Number of Physicians in the County of WINDHAM” inserted an advertisement in the Connecticut Gazette in the spring of 1774. In it, they professed that they had been contemplating “how great Importance it is that those who enter upon the Practice of Physick, should be endued with Knowledge and Skill.” That was necessary, the physicians asserted, “to enable them to prosecute the undertaking in the most useful Manner,” achieving the best results for their patients. That being the case, they called a meeting of “their Brethren of the Faculty” in Windham County to discuss “the Matter, and (if it thought expedient) prefer a Memorial” or petition “to the General Assembly … that the Practice of Physick may be put under some better Regulation.” At a glance, their notice suggested that increased professionalization in their field would yield better care for patients.
The timing of their advertisement, however, suggests that this “Number of Physicians” may have had other motivations. A call for “some better Regulation” may have been an attempt to reduce or eliminate competition from others who provided various forms of medical treatment. Consider the testimonial about the hernia trusses “made and applied by Mr. STEPHEN JOHNSON, of Ashford, in Windham-County” that first ran in the March 25 edition of the Connecticut Gazette. Then note the date, March 26, on the announcement from the “Number of Physicians.” Did a “Number of Physicians” actually consult with each other before inserting that advertisement in the next issue of the Connecticut Gazette? Or did one of them see the testimonial about the trusses that proclaimed Johnson “hath the greatest Skill in that Business of any Man we ever heard of” and determine that such competition threatened the livelihoods and, just as significantly, the status of physicians in the area? Perhaps a single physician called the meeting, hoping to rally support among others. The advertisement also served as a counterpoint to the testimonial about Johnson’s trusses, especially when both appeared in the Connecticut Gazette on April 1 and on the same page on April 8.
Professionalization of the medical field accelerated in the late eighteenth century. Doctors displaced midwives, but women who provided care were not the only targets of physicians who received formal training. These two advertisements seem to tell a story of a “Number of Physicians” (or perhaps just one with a lot of initiative) to limit the medical treatment delivered by other men who did meet the standards of the “better Regulation” they envisioned.
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?
Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (April 7, 1774).
“BOARDING-SCHOOL, FOR YOUNG LADIES.”
J. & M. Tanner’s notice in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer advertised an opportunity for young women to attend a boarding school “in Smith-Street, near the corner of Wall Street.” At this school, the “YOUNG LADIES” would improve in reading, writing, needlework, music, dancing, and other subjects considered appropriate for them. The Tanners include a comparison of their new school to what a British boarding school had to offer, stating that their curriculum “was similar to that of the most approved English BOARDING-SCHOOLS.” According to Mary Cathcart Borer in Willingly to School: A History of Women’s Education, boarding schools for young ladies popped up in England as early as 1711, with nearly the same curriculum at each.[1] However, arithmetic was a subject that the Tanners’ school in the colonies included that many British schools for girls and young women did not. While still expected to stay in the private sphere, Tanners’ boarding school allowed for young women’s opportunities in arithmetic, which was not always an option for many young women elsewhere. We cannot conclude exactly why the Tanners chose to incorporate arithmetic into their school’s curriculum. However, it indicates that while still using the British model, there were variations of the boarding school systems in the colonies.
The Tanners’ boarding school seems to have been an effort to demonstrate that the colonies could also partake in the same developments that England did, particularly in women’s education and manners. Considering that this advertisement was published in 1774, a year before the first battles of the American Revolution, tensions increasingly inspired colonists to establish self-sufficiency in government and commerce and other aspects of life, such as education, without reliance on Britain. Even as that happened, it is critical to recognize that while the colonies were looking to have their own self-sufficient systems and government, they still included British ideals. Britain was still influential in colonial culture, which was especially shared through ideas of education and what made well-educated and well-mannered young ladies.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
Rather than expand on Maria’s interpretation of today’s advertisement, I am reflecting on pedagogy and my experiences integrating the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project into the courses I teach at Assumption University. Throughout this academic year, including the time that Maria and her peers were enrolled in my Revolutionary America course last fall, faculty and staff have engaged in a series of programs about “awaken[ing] in students a sense of wonder” and how we seek to fulfill the University’s mission. I have learned some valuable lessons along the way, from my colleagues at those events and from my students in the classroom.
Maria and her classmates commence their responsibilities as guest curators by compiling a mini-archive of newspapers published during a particular week in 1774. I provide each of them with a list of extant newspapers that have been digitized and train them in using several databases. Once they have created their mini-archives, each student examines the newspapers for their week to identify all of the advertisements about enslaved people for inclusion in the Slavery Adverts 250 Project and to select an advertisement about consumer goods or services to feature on the Adverts 250 Project. I provide students with hard copies of their newspapers, encouraging them to work back and forth with the digitized ones.
One morning last fall, I arrived in class intending to discuss advertisements about enslaved people and what students learned from that portion of the project. We had a robust discussion, but, to my initial frustration, students did not stick to the topic for the day! Instead of focusing solely on advertisements about enslaved people, they started discussing other kinds of advertisements and asking about other aspects of the newspapers as well. I had a lesson plan, an “agenda” of material that I “needed” to cover that day, and their “off-topic” questions did not facilitate the good order that I had envisioned.
Then I realized that I was witnessing authentic wonder in my classroom, that the conversation taking place was more important than anything I scripted in my mind in advance, and that students were learning more from the experience than by following my outline for that class. I spend so much time working with (digitized) eighteenth-century newspapers that they are as familiar to me as modern media … but having a week’s worth of newspapers published in 1774 in front of them was completely new to my students. The advertisements were new to them, but so were the conventions of eighteenth-century print culture! They immersed themselves in their newspapers, learning as much as they could on their own and then asking questions about life in early America based on what they encountered in those newspapers.
When I finally understood what was happening, I jettisoned my outline so we could have a lengthy conversation about anything my students found interesting or confusing or strange in their newspapers. However unintentional, my first instinct had been to stifle their sense of wonder by attempting to rigidly follow my outline for that class. In the end, we all – professor and students – got so much more out of that class when I learned from my students that I could better facilitate how they learned about the past by giving them opportunities to express their wonder. As the semester progressed, we circled back, repeatedly, to discussing advertisements about enslaved people as my students worked on the Slavery Adverts 250 Project. At the same time, I allowed for more opportunities to “get off track” as we examined a variety of other primary sources. My students learned more and I had a more fulfilling experience as an instructor, energized by the quality of the discussions we had in class on those occasions that my students deviated from what I planned for the day.
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[1] Mary Cathcart Borer, Willingly to School: A History of Women’s Education (Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press, 1976).
Maria Lepak is a senior at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is pursuing a double major in History and Secondary Education and plans to be a middle school teacher. She is a member of the Phi Alpha Theta National History Honors Society and a recipient of the History Department’s Moggio Award for Outstanding Essay. She also participated in “We Protect Us: Early American Histories of Mutual Aid and Community Care,” the Fall 2022 American Studies Seminar at the American Antiquarian Society. Beyond her studies, Maria participates in an a cappella group on campus, is the president of a fashion sustainability club, and is a tutor for various history courses. Maria 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.
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?
Essex Journal (April 6, 1774).
“The business will be carried on as usual by his sons.”
In the spring of 1774, Patrick Tracy of Newburyport, Massachusetts, ran an advertisement in the Essex Journal to request those he owed money to call on him to settle accounts because he had “quitted the business he has been in of late years.” Only after that did the conscientious entrepreneur also instruct “all who are indebted to him … to make speedy payment, more especially those whose debts have been long standing.” Tracy made what he owed his priority, signaling how he did business and suggesting to current and prospective customers that they could expect similar treatment from his sons who carried on the business. Tracy considered that business well enough known that he did not indicate his occupation.
His sons, however, revealed that they “have taken the business lately carried on by their honoured father” and “carry on the distillery as usual” in an advertisement that conveniently appeared immediately below Tracy’s notice in the April 6 edition of the Essex Journal. Their father deployed more subtle means in attempting to pass along his clientele to his sons, while they instead emphasized their desire for “the continuance of his good customers and the custom of all others.” The elder Tracy established a reputation during his many years in business. His sons hoped to benefit from the customer loyalty their father had cultivated, asserting a “mutual advantage” for all involved.
To that end, they also made clear that they put the interests of their customers and associates first. In addition to operating the distillery “as usual,” they also stocked “an assortment of English Goods, which they will sell by wholesale upon reasonable terms, and so as to afford a profit to the purchaser.” Though they intended to make money on those transactions, the distillers associated “profit” with their customers who purchased imported goods from them, reversing the usual relationship between sellers and buyers. Shopkeepers and others who purchased those items to sell retail would acquire them at low enough prices that Jackson, Tracy, and Tracy practically guaranteed that they could in turn offer such bargains that retail customers would purchase their wares.
In their newspaper advertisements, Tracy and his sons carefully choreographed his departure from the family business and their role in continuing its operations. They sought to maintain and even expand the existing clientele by emphasizing certain principles, including paying what they owed to associates and selling merchandise at such “reasonable terms” that everyone involved benefited from the transactions.
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.
