Anna Johnson

April 22

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

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

Massachusetts Spy (April 22, 1774).

“GARDEN SEEDS.”

“GARDEN SEEDS.”

“GARDEN SEEDS.”

“GARDEN SEEDS.”

“GARDEN SEEDS.”

Susanna Renken advertised “GARDEN SEEDS” in several newspapers published in Boston throughout the spring of 1774, just as she had been doing for many years.  Many of her competitors, including Lydia Dyar, Elizabeth Greenleaf, and Anna Johnson, did the same.  Each of them deployed the same headline, “GARDEN SEEDS,” and listed the many options they stocked in their shops.  Dyar’s advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy included a final notation, “4 m,” intended for those who worked in the printing office, not for readers.  It indicated that her advertisement should run for four months before the compositor removed it.  All the advertisements placed by Boston’s female seed sellers became familiar sights in the public prints, an annual ritual that marked the changing of the seasons.

Their notices often appeared together.  In the April 22 edition of the Massachusetts Spy, for instance, four of their advertisements filled most of a column, running one after another with Greenleaf’s first, followed by Dyar’s and Renken’s, and finally Johnson’s.  That merits notice because printers did not tend to arrange advertisements by purpose or genre in eighteenth-century newspapers.  Paid notices were not classified advertisements because they were not clustered together according to classification or category.  Instead, they appeared in whatever order the compositor made them fit on the page.  The eight advertisements immediately to the right of those placed by the female seed sellers included one for a pamphlet for sale, two for imported textiles and “all sorts of Groceries … except TEA,” one for imported silks and “Hard-Ware and Cutlery GOODS,” one for a lottery to benefit Harvard College, one for “CHOICE MADDER,” a plant used in dyeing, one for “ENGLISH, India, and Scotch Goods, suitable for the season, one for a school for girls, and one for millinery goods “of the newest fashion,” in that order.  No guiding principle seemed to dictate which one followed which.  Yet the compositor made a choice to place the advertisements for “GARDEN SEEDS” together, even opting to put Sarah Dawson’s notice first.  The “Widow of the late Joseph Dawson, Gardner,” marketed a “collection of grafted and inoculated English FRUIT TREES,” but also happened to mention an “assortment of GARDEN SEEDS.”  That apparently convinced the compositor to position her advertisement with those from Dyar, Greenleaf, Johnson, and Renken.

This practice made the notices placed by female seed sellers in Boston during the era of the American Revolution precursors to classified advertisements that would eventually run in American newspapers in later periods.  For the most part, however, advertising in early American newspapers did not have that level of organization when it came to the order in which they appeared.

March 14

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

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

Mar 14 - 3:14:1768 Boston-Gazette
Boston-Gazette (March 14, 1768).

“A Fresh Assortment of Garden Seeds.”

Colonists in Boston glimpsed a sign that spring was on its way when Susanna Renken inserted an advertisement for seeds in the Massachusetts Gazette in late February 1768. It was the first of many similar advertisements that residents of Boston would have recognized as part of an annual ritual. As the first day of spring approached, other seed sellers, most of them women, joined Renken in advising the public of the many sorts of seeds they stocked, from vegetables to herbs to flowers.

Such advertisements appeared in newspapers published in other cities, but they were especially prevalent in Boston. A greater number of women who participated in the seed trade turned to the public prints to attract customers. Many of them advertised in multiple newspapers. Renken, for example, launched her advertising campaign for 1768 in the Massachusetts Gazette but very quickly followed up with notices in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, and the Boston Post-Boy. For instance, her advertisement was the first item in the first column on the final page of the March 14, 1768, edition of the Boston-Gazette.

By then her competitors had joined her in hawking their wares in the city’s newspapers. Advertisements placed by women who sold seeds filled almost the entire column (with the exception of a two-line advertisement for “Scotch COALS” and the colophon). Rebeckah Walker, Elizabeth Greenleaf, Bethiah Oliver, Elizabeth Clark, and Lydia Dyar each promoted their seeds, renewing their efforts from the spring of 1768. Elsewhere in the same issue Anna Johnson’s advertisement even featured a headline for “Garden Seeds, Peas, Beans, &c.” that distinguished her notice from the others. On the same day, Sarah Winsor advertised seeds in the Boston Post-Boy.

Advertisements by Renken, Greenleaf, Dyar, and other women who sold seeds cropped up in Boston’s newspapers each spring, but even though several of them indicated that they also sold “all sorts of Groceries” or “English Goods” or other merchandise at their shops they disappeared from the advertising pages throughout the rest of the year. Why did these women consider it imperative to advertise only seeds and only as spring approached? In general, female shopkeepers were disproportionately underrepresented compared to their male counterparts when it came to placing newspaper advertisements. Considered separately, a survey of advertisements for seeds suggests that selling them was a feminized occupation in the late 1760s. Did women who otherwise avoided drawing attention to their participation in the marketplace as retailers who competed with men (rather than solely as consumers) feel more latitude to place advertisements when they knew that they competed predominantly with other women?