Charles Read

October 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 1, 1776).

“A Negro man named MOSES … has been endeavouring to … join the ministerial army.”

Moses, an enslaved man, made his own declaration of independence in 1776 when he liberated himself by running away from his enslaver.  Charles Read of Evesham, “in the county of Burlington,” New Jersey, provided a brief account in an advertisement on the front page of the October 1, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet.  According to Read, Moses, “about five feet four inches high, a thick well set fellow,” made his escape on September 9.  When he went away, he was wearing “a short light coloured coat, with binding of the same colour a pair of strong new shoes, with large plated buckles, a pair of homespun linen trowsers, and a black stock with a steel buckle.”  That should have made Moses easy to recognize, but there was also a chance that he would change clothes since he “stole and took with him, a blue great-coat with white metal buttons” and “the other part of his cloaths [were] not known” to Read.

While those details were specific to Moses, his enslaver followed a formula for advertisements that described enslaved people who liberated themselves by running away.  The next part of Read’s account, however, revealed that current events played a part in Moses’s decision about when to seek his freedom.  Read lamented that Moses “has been endeavouring to prevail upon the Negroes in this neighbourhood” in New Jersey “to go with him to join the ministerial army.”  In other words, Moses planned to join the British and encouraged other enslaved people to join him.  He did not merely hope to elude his enslaver by getting away from Evesham and keeping a low profile elsewhere; instead, he aimed to secure his freedom by “join[ing] the ministerial army.”  Moses almost certainly knew that nearly a year earlier John Murray, Lord Dunmore, the king’s governor in Virginia, offered freedom to enslaved people “appertaining to Rebels” (or enslaved by Patriots) in exchange for “joining his Majesty’s troops, as soon as may be.”  Many enslaved men and women responded to the call, alarming and enraging both their enslavers and other residents of Virginia.  The final grievance in the Declaration of Independence referred to Dunmore’s Proclamation, stating that the king “has excited domestic insurrections amongst us” by encouraging enslaved people to fight against those who enslaved them.  Moses left Evesham just as the British occupation of New York began.  He likely saw his best opportunity yet to secure his freedom.  That gave additional urgency to Read’s efforts to capture him.  Readers of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, he declared, should assist not only for the “TEN DOLLARS REWARD” but also out of a sense of patriotism.  Read called on “every lover of his country [to] endeavour to apprehend so daring a villain” who had the audacity to seek his freedom by siding with those who promised him liberty rather than a life of enslavement.  Moses was not the first or only such “villain” featured in newspaper advertisements during the Revolutionary War, yet stories of joining the British were not a common element of what have become known as “runaway advertisements.”  Though rare, advertisements that reported enslaved people sought to join the British appeared on occasion, supplementing similar stories that circulated in conversation and in print.  Read meant to condemn Moses, but the additional details he provided about the circumstances of his escape contributed to a complicated and nuanced narrative of the American Revolution.

January 31

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

jan-31-1311767-providence-gazette
Providence Gazette (January 31, 1767).

“Good sober Workmen are wanted.”

Charles Read cast his net widely in search of “Good sober Workmen” to employ at the “New Forge or Bloomery” located midway between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey. In an advertisement in the Providence Gazette, he sought various sorts of laborers, including Good Master Colliers,” “Wood-Cutters,” and a manager “who will have a more general Oversight,” in addition to “Good sober Workmen.” Prospective workers could apply at the “Tanton and Atsion Forges, which are near to each other.”

These forges were part of an expanding domestic industry that included the furnace operated by William Hawxhurst in Sterling, New York, and advertised the same week that Read placed his notice. In his History of Manufactures in the United States, Victor Selden Clark notes that a “line of furnace and forges extended from New Hampshire to South Carolina.” Indeed, Clark states, “At the outbreak of hostilities [in the 1770s] the colonies already produced enough iron for civil and military engagements.” In fact, the proprietors of the forges collectively contributed to an export industry. Many of the forges had been established to meet the needs of British markets that demanded iron “pigs and bars” as raw materials. Clark describes a decline in production during the years of the military conflict, caused by disruptions to commerce, ironmasters with British sympathies departing the colonies, and, perhaps most significantly, lack of laborers since so many workmen were “drawn off to the army.”[1]

Forge operators like Read and Hawxhurst did not face those particular challenges in the 1760s, but that did not mean that it required little effort to keep their forges fully staffed. In his attempts to recruit qualified workmen, Read inserted advertisements in the Providence Gazette, more than two-hundred miles from the Tanton forge he was preparing to open in New Jersey. Compared to the contents of the rest of the newspaper (“the freshest Advices, both Foreign and Domestic,” according to the Providence Gazette’s masthead), most advertisements tended to concern relatively local matters in the 1760s. Occasionally, however, local readers encountered advertisements placed from a distance, sometimes encouraging them to purchase certain goods (such as William Goddard’s proposal for printing the Pennsylvania Chronicle), other times presenting them new opportunities.

**********

[1] Victor S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916), 221.