Boston-Gazette

October 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (October 30, 1775).

“He pays cash for all kinds of homespun cloths.”

Enoch Brown, a shopkeeper, had a history of promoting domestic manufactures (or goods made in the colonies) as alternative to items imported from Britain.  In the spring of 1768, for instance, he ran an advertisement alerting “those Persons who are desirous of Promoting our Own Manufactures … That he takes in all Sorts of Country-made Cloths at his Store on Boston Neck.”  In the wake of learning about duties levied on certain imported goods in the Townshend Revenue Act, many colonizers set about organizing nonimportation agreements.  They simultaneously embraced goods produced locally as a means of supporting the colonial economy and correcting a trade imbalance with Britain.  Several years later, Brown ran another advertisement with similar themes in January 1775.  Bearing the headline “American Manufacture,” that notice emphasized that the variety of textiles Brown stocked “were manufactured in this Province, and are equal in quality to any, and superior to most imported from England, and much cheaper than can be produced from any part of Europe.”

Although Brown had been at the same location for years, he departed Boston for Watertown following the battles at Lexington and Concord.  That presented challenges for both Brown and his customers, so “for greater Conveniency” he once again moved, this time to “Little-Cambridge” in the fall of 1775.  When he opened his shop, he advertised a “Variety of Winter Goods” for the coming season as well as “sagathees, duroys, camblets,” and other textiles “of American manufacture, which he sells extreme cheap.”  Customers could acquire any of those for low prices, despite the disruptions taking place as the siege of Boston continued.  Committed to giving consumers choices that matched their political principles, Brown sought new merchandise made locally.  In a nota bene at the end of his advertisement, he declared that he “pays cash for all kinds of homespun cloths.”  In so doing, he filled the role of intermediary between producers and consumers, giving both the opportunity to support the American cause.  After all, the Continental Association devised by the First Continental Congress did not merely instruct consumers to cease purchasing imported goods but also called on colonizers to “encourage Frugality, Economy, and Industry; and promote Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country.”  As a shopkeeper who bought and sold homespun cloth, Brown did his part.

September 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (September 18, 1775).

“AN Assortment of Homespun Manufacture.”

It was a short advertisement, just four lines in the September 18, 1775, edition of the Boston-Gazette, but it spoke volumes about the times in which the advertiser placed it and colonizers read it.  “AN Assortment of Homespun Manufacture, suitable for the season,” the notice announced, “to be sold Cheap.  Inquire of OLIVER MONROE, Taylor, near the Bridge in Watertown.”  Even before the battles at Lexington and Concord marked a new chapter in the imperial crisis, homespun cloth became a symbol of resistance to British abuses, especially duties on imported goods imposed by Parliament.  Over the past decade, colonizers had participated in a series of boycotts, first to protest the Stamp Act in 1765, then in response to the Townshend Acts in the late 1760s, and again when they learned of the Coercive Acts in 1774.  Each time, consumers opted for homespun cloth produced in the colonies as an alternative to textiles imported from England.

At the time that Monroe ran his advertisement, the Continental Association remained in place.  It had gone nine months earlier.  In addition to prohibiting merchants and shopkeepers from selling goods received after December 1, 1774, it called on colonizers to “promote Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country.”  That included purchasing homespun rather than the “Fine assortment” of imported textiles, ranging from corduroys to striped hollands to cambrics, listed in a longer advertisement that appeared in the same column as Monroe’s short notice.  Monroe did not need to invest much effort in marketing his “Homespun Manufacture” because the times spoke for themselves.  Prospective customers already recognized the political significance of the choices they made in the marketplace.  That they read his advertisement in the Boston-Gazette, now published in Watertown as the siege of Boston continued, only underscored the importance of practicing politics when they went shopping.

August 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (August 28, 1775).

“Impress’d with a sense of the prejudice and injury I have done my country, humbly ask their forgiveness.”

It was yet another apology for signing an address to Thomas Hutchison when General Thomas Gage replaced him as governor of Massachusetts and he departed for England.  This time Ziphion Thayer lamented his error in an advertisement in the August 28, 1775, edition of the Boston-Gazette, published in Watertown as the siege of Boston continued.  Thayer acknowledged that he signed the address and “thereby have been justly exposed to the censure due to such as have been prejudicial to their country, by endeavouring to support the British administration in the subversion of our Rights and Privileges.”  As others indicated in their own apology-advertisements, signing the address came with consequences.  The “censure” that Thayer experienced likely included other colonizers refusing to engage with him socially or in business.

For a time, many signatories who published apology-advertisements claimed that they had affixed their names in haste without reading carefully or fully considering the full implications of the address.  More recently, however, others explained that they signed because they thought at the time that Hutchinson had the power to protect them from the “Vengeance of the British Ministry” and an inclination to advocate for American liberties.  “I solemnly declare, that before, and at the time of signing said address,” Thayer claimed, “I really supposed governor Hutchinson had influence sufficient to prevent the acts obnoxious to our privileges from taking place; and that he was engaged to exert his said influence for that purpose.”

Things certainly did not work out that way, leading Thayer to declare that he had “since been fully convinced of my error” and now realized that Hutchinson’s designs “have been inimical to this country.”  Did Thayer have an authentic conversion?  Or did he merely say what others wanted to hear so he could return to his former standing in his community?  William Huntting Howell contends that the authenticity of such apology-advertisements mattered much less to Patriots than the “rote expression of allegiance” in the public prints.[1]  Thayer asserted that he became “impress’d with a sense of the prejudice and injury I have done my country” and, accordingly, he “humbly ask[ed] their forgiveness, and a restoration to their favour.”  Whether or not Thayer truly believed the former, he wanted the latter and likely believed that his apology-advertisement would help convince others to overlook what he had done.

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[1] William Huntting Howell, “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” Early American Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 215-6.

August 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (August 14, 1775).

“I feared the Vengeance of the British Ministry; and verily believed that Governor Hutchinson had Influence to avert it.”

Benjamin Clarke, “late of Boston” and now from Nantucket, joined the chorus of colonizers who recanted after signing an address to Governor Thomas Hutchinson when he departed Massachusetts.  Like others who did so, Clarke ran a newspaper advertisement to make it widely known that he did not support the governor.  His explanation, however, differed from what others had written in their notices.  Many had claimed that they signed their names without carefully reading the address first or that they only thought through the larger implications after they signed.

Clarke, on the other hand, gave a very different account of the circumstances around his signing of the “obnoxious Address to Governor Hutchinson.”  He asserted that he lived in fear of “the Vengeance of the British Ministry; and verily believed that Governor Hutchinson had Influence to avert it.”  According to scholars at the Winterthur Library, the repository that holds Clarke’s account book spanning 1769 to 1812, Clarke was a merchant who “specialized in brasses.”  He joined other merchants in signing a nonimportation agreement in 1768 and “the next year he signed the petition protesting the sending of the Regulars to Boston.”  Historian J.L. Bell notes that Clarke appeared on lists of colonizers involved in the Boston Tea Party compiled in the early nineteenth century.  Whether or not he participated, his history likely made him a suspect and, as he claimed in his advertisement, prompted him to sign the address to Hutchinson in hopes of finding favor and avoiding consequences under the governor’s protection.

In hindsight, Clarke claimed, he understood that was not the strategy he should have adopted.  Hutchinson, it turned out, supported Parliament more than Clarke realized when he signed the address, though some readers may have found that a convenient justification rather than an accurate account of the reputation the governor had earned.  “I have now the fullest Conviction of [Hutchinson’s] Enmity to this Country,” Clarke declared, “and am sensible of the Wrong and Injury which I have done my Countrymen.”  The same issue of the Boston-Gazette that carried his advertisement included a “Further Account of Tom. Hutchinson’s Assiduity in rooting up our ONCE happy Constitution, and of his Endeavours to disunite the AMERICAN COLONIES.”  With that as a backdrop, Clarke requested the “Forgiveness” of “my Countrymen” and “a Restoration to their Favour.”  Rehabilitating his own reputation may not have happened immediately, but Clarke became a justice of the peace when he returned to Boston after the Revolutionary War.

July 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (July 3, 1775).

“Thomas Russell, Taylor from Boston … has opened Shop in Watertown.”

Benjamin Edes, a Patriot printer, moved the Boston-Gazette to Watertown following the battles at Lexington and Concord.  He was not the only colonizer on the move during the siege of Boston at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.  General Thomas Gage, the governor, and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress negotiated an agreement that allowed Loyalists to enter the city and Patriots and others to depart.  Each could take whatever effects they could transport, except for firearms and ammunition.  Many residents of Boston left the city for other towns and cities, some of them placing advertisements to introduce themselves to their new communities and announce their occupations to prospective clients and customers.  In the late spring and summer of 1775, the description “from Boston” took on new meaning.

While some of those refugees headed to other colonies, Thomas Russell, a “Taylor from Boston,” moved only a short distance to Watertown.  Upon arriving, he placed an advertisement in the Boston-Gazette to inform “his Town and Country Customers, That he has opened Shop in Watertown, opposite Mr. Stutson’s, Hatter, near the Bridge.”  Although framed as an update for his current customers, Russell’s advertisement also signaled to all readers that he considered himself a “Steady Friend to America,” as Edes described a correspondent in the column to the left of the notice, rather than a Tory who embraced the protection of British regulars and supported the policies enacted by Parliament.  Just above that piece, Edes relayed an account from New York about a colonizer taken into custody “who it is said had been privately inlisting men to serve under General Gage, against their country.”  Russell, in contrast, had refused to remain in Boston and lend any kind of support to the general and his officers or the residents who approved of them.  Instead, he hoped that his “Town” customers who had also departed the city would seek his services in Watertown.  Similarly, he hoped that “Country Customers,” whether they previously hired him or not, would visit his shop.

June 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (June 5, 1775).

“THE Publisher of this Paper, sincerely returns Thanks to his former Customers for past Favours, and hopes for a Continuance.”

It was the first issue of the Boston-Gazette published in seven weeks.  It was also the first issue of the Boston-Gazette published in nearby Watertown rather than in Boston.  The newspaper underwent other changes following the battles at Lexington and Concord.  A notice placed by the printer (rather than by the printers) hinted at some of them.

Benjamin Edes and John Gill had been partners in publishing the Boston-Gazette since April 7, 1755.  Over the course of two decades, they developed a reputation as two of the printers who most ardently supported the Patriot cause.  In his diary entry for September 3, 1769, John Adams recorded that he joined Edes and Gill and other Sons of Liberty in spending the evening “preparing for the Next Days Newspaper – a curious Employment.  Cooking up Paragraphs, Articles, Occurences, &c. – working the political Engine!”  When the Revolutionary War began, all the newspapers in Boston either folded, relocated, or suspended publication.  Edes and Gill published their last issue on April 17, two days before the momentous events at Lexington and Concord.  They then dissolved their partnership.  Edes moved to Watertown and resumed publication with continuous numbering despite the change in location.  The Boston-Gazetteremained there more than a year with a new issue every Monday.  The last Watertown issue appeared on October 28, 1776.  On November 4, Edes once again published the Boston-Gazette in Boston.

The first issue in Watertown featured only four advertisements, two of them placed by the printer.  In one, Edes expressed his appreciation “to his former Customers for past Favours, and hope[d] for a Continuance” of their subscriptions.  He also needed “also those who are in Arrears, forthwith to discharge their respective Balances, in order to enable him to discharge his just Debts, at this very critical Season.”  In addition to cash, Edes needed other resources to continue publishing the Boston-Gazette.  Another advertisement announced, “CASH given for clean Cotton and Linnen RAGS, at the Printing Office in Watertown.”  Those rags would be made into paper.  Edes had limited access to that essential item; throughout most of the summer his newspaper consisted of only two pages (a half sheet) rather than the usual four pages (a full sheet).  The other two advertisements offered employment opportunities, one to “Journeymen Taylors” and the other to “Journeymen Saddlers.”  In addition, a notice at the top of the first column on the first page invited “THOSE Persons who are possessed of any of Governor Hutchinson’s Letters … to forward them to the Printer hereof, in order for Publication.”  Edes wished to embarrass the former governor and score political points, as he had done two years earlier.  The printer moved his press to Watertown, yet he continued the same political activism.

January 2

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

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

Boston-Gazette (January 2, 1775).

“The GRAND AMERICAN CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION … to be pasted up in every Family.”

In the first issue of the Boston-Gazette published in 1775, Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the printers, opened with a notice concerning the Continental Association as the first item in the first column on the first page.  The First Continental Congress had devised that nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation pact when it met in Philadelphia in September and October 1774, intending for it to go into effect on December 1.  The Continental Association answered the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, and the other Coercive Acts that Parliament had passed in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, perhaps not expecting a unified response from the colonies.  The First Continental Congress, however, devised a plan that allowed consumers from New England to Georgia to express their political principles through the decisions they made in the marketplace., drawing inspiration from the nonimportation agreements that went into effect to protest the Stamp Act and the duties on imported goods in the Townshend Acts.

Edes and Gill helped to raise awareness of the Continental Association not only through newspaper coverage but also by disseminating copies far and wide.  “ANY Town or District within this Province,” their notice advised, “may be supplied by Edes and Gill, on the shortest Notice, with the GRAND AMERICAN CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION, printed on one Side of a Sheet of Paper.”  They offered the pact as a broadside “on purpose to be pasted up in every Family.”  The printers wished for local governments to purchase their edition of the Continental Association and distribute them to households for constant reference.  Putting the pact on display demonstrated support for the American cause against Parliament or at least signaled an intention to comply.  Posting it in homes as well as public spaces made it easy to consult, reminding everyone that they had a part to play in the protest.  The Continental Association made decisions about participating in the marketplace inherently political, making it impossible for any individual or household to take a neutral stance.  Edes and Gill recognized that was the case.  Although they stood to generate revenue from selling broadside copies of the Continental Association by the dozen or gross, the political stance they consistently advanced throughout the imperial crisis suggested that increasing awareness of the pact and encouraging compliance with it motivated them as much or even more.

December 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Boston Gazette (December 5, 1774).

“James Bruce of Boston … was never in Company with a Captain Lovett.”

James Bruce resorted to an advertisement in the December 5, 1774, edition of the Boston-Gazette in hopes of rehabilitating his reputation.  From London, the mariner sent a sworn statement that addressed a story about him relayed “by a Paragraph in the Boston Journal, dated 28 July, last.”  He referred to an update from a Captain Lovett published in the Massachusetts Spy on that day.  Lovett had recently arrived in Boston from Antigua, by way of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  He delivered news that the “merchants and planters” in Antigua “were in great consternation on learning about proposals to suspend trade with Britain and its Caribbean colonies in response to the Boston Port Act and other Coercive Acts.

Despite anticipating hardships, those merchants and planters supposedly supported the American cause, even to the point of intervening when an “old troubler of Boston, Capt. Bruce, was railing against this town in a large company at a principal tavern.”  According to Lovett’s account, Bruce “expatiated largely on the abuse he had suffered for bringing his blessed cargo of Tea” to Boston aboard the Eleanor, one of the ships involved in the Boston Tea Party, and “hoped the next freight he brought them would be soldiers.”  At that point, a “gentleman” confronted him, noting how ungrateful he sounded toward a town that had contributed to his livelihood for so many years, and “caught Bruce by the nose and led him out of the company, requiring him to keep his distance, as a dirty ingrate, unworthy of any gentleman’s company or countenance.”

That story from July came to Bruce’s attention in September, prompting him to compose the statement that appeared in the Boston-Gazette in December.  Whether or not the incident in the tavern in Antigua occurred, Bruce apparently realized that he “got his bread” from the people of Boston and attempted to undo the damage.  He asserted that he “was never in Company with a Captain Lovett … at a Tavern in Antigua” and “the Contents of the Paragraph” inserted in the Massachusetts Spy “in order to hurt him” were “groundless and void of Truth.”  He “never made use of any such Expressions.”  Furthermore, he claimed that he “did not think or know at the Time he took the East India Company’s Tea on Board the Ship Eleanor, that the same would have been either detrimental, or displeasing to the Town of Boston.”  Had he been more aware of the circumstances, “himself and [the] owners would not have suffered any of the said Tea to have been shipt on Board the said Ship Eleanor.”  Bruce not only backtracked from the story told by Lovett but from his involvement in the events that culminated in the Boston Tea Party.

Just as many colonizers who signed an address to Governor Thomas Hutchinson upon his departure from Massachusetts later ran advertisements apologizing for having done so and claiming that they had not fully considered the contents of that address before affixing their signatures, Bruce paid to have his account of recent events run as an advertisement.  Among the five newspapers published in Boston at the time, he most likely chose to submit it to the Boston-Gazette because of that publication’s reputation for supporting patriots and opposing Parliament, thus placing his message before the eyes of those most offended by the reports of his conduct.  In placing such an advertisement, Bruce contributed to shaping the news that readers encountered, though that did not guarantee that anyone believed his version of events or the sincerity of his regret.

August 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (August 22, 1774).

“Bring him home (without abusing him) or give Information that he may be found.”

Newspaper advertisements carried all sorts of local news that printers did not otherwise select for inclusion in their publications, keeping readers apprised of both ordinary and extraordinary occurrences.  A variety of legal notices, for instance, provided news about the finances and deaths of colonizers, while other advertisements revealed marital discord when husbands decreed that they would not pay the debts of their wives.  Some advertisements provided coverage of thefts and burglaries.  Many described runaway apprentices and indentured servants or enslaved men and women who liberated themselves by running away from their enslavers.  In most colonial newspapers, the local news section was quite short, especially compared to the amount of space devoted to news from England, Europe, and other colonies.  Many historians have explained that news of local events of consequence spread via word of mouth before printers had the chance to take their weekly newspapers to press.  Yet that perspective overlooks the extensive local news that appeared among advertisements.

Among their other purposes, advertisements sometimes served as missing persons notifications.  Such was the case in June 1774 when Jonathan Fales of Walpole, a “Non Compos Mentis” or a man with cognitive disabilities, disappeared from “his House and Family … and has not been Home since.”  Elizabeth Fales, perhaps his mother, sister, or wife, placed an advertisement in the August 22 edition of the Boston-Gazette, stating that Jonathan had not been seen for more than two months and requesting aid in finding and returning him to his family.  She gave a short physical description and described the clothes he wore “when he went away.”  Her concern was apparent, both in calling herself a “distress’d Woman” and pleading that anyone who found Jonathan “bring him home (without abusing him).”  Elizabeth and her family cared for and protected the “large fat Man” at home, but he risked others taking advantage of him or treating him cruelly on his own.  Elizabeth promised a reward to anyone who brought Jonathan home or provided “Information that he may be found.”  Placing an advertisement allowed her to disseminate local news that was most important to her and her family.

August 1

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

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

Boston-Gazette (August 1, 1774).

“This pamphlet has had a wonderful effect in removing the prejudices and convincing the people of England.”

Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the printers of the Boston-Gazette, gave an advertisement for their American edition of Considerations on the Measures Carrying On with Respect to the British Colonies in North-America a prominent place in the August 1, 1774, edition of their newspaper.  It appeared as the first item in the first column on the first page, making it difficult for readers to miss.  The printers wished to call attention to the book, originally published in London, not only because they hoped to generate revenue from its sales but also as a means for colonizers to become even better informed about current events and the political challenges they faced as Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, following the Boston Tea Party.  As the imperial crisis intensified, patriot printers like Edes and Gill published newspapers, broadsides, pamphlets, books, and other items that documented the ongoing contest with Parliament, the king, and royal officials in the colonies.

To convince prospective customers of the necessity of purchasing and perusing this pamphlet, Edes and Gill explained that it was the “most masterly performance, written since the framing of the several Acts against BOSTON and AMERICA,” including the Boston Port Act and the Massachusetts Government Act, and “the best calculated to convince the Ministry, the people of England, and all the world, of the absurdity and wickedness of the late acts.”  Colonizers used newspapers and other publications in their efforts to shape opinion in the colonies, yet they were just as concerned with the information environment on the other side of the Atlantic.  In their publications and letters, they hoped to sway both officials and the general public in London and throughout Great Britain.  They also took note of the support they received for their plight.  In their advertisement for Considerations, Edes and Gill reported that their “last accounts” indicated “this pamphlet had had a wonderful effect in removing the prejudices and convincing the people of England” that Parliament had not been just in its treatment of the colonies.  Whether that was accurate or wishful thinking likely varied from person to person, but the printers wanted to believe that it was true.

Edes and Gill applauded how the pamphlet made a case about the “ruinous consequences, to England at least,” not just the colonies, “that would certainly attend” from the Coercive Acts “being carried into execution.”  Printers in Hartford, New York, and Philadelphia shared those sentiments, producing other American editions in each of those towns.  They hoped that the dissemination of the ideas expressed in Considerations would buttress the resolve of colonizers distressed by Parliament’s most recent legislation, especially upon learning how their allies in England made a case on their behalf.