Cornelius Ryan

April 10

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

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.

March 28

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

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

Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 28, 1774).

“The Sign of the SUN and BREECHES.”

Cornelius Ryan, “LEATHER DRESSER and BREECHES MAKER,” pursued his trade at “the Sign of the SUN and BREECHES, IN THE BROADWAY” in New York.  Residents and visitors to the busy port likely glimpsed his sign as they traversed the streets of the city.  Readers of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury almost certainly noticed the woodcut that adorned the advertisements he ran in that newspaper.  It included the same elements as the sign that marked his location, a sun above a pair of breeches.  The sun had a face that stared directly at readers as well as eight rays enclosed within a corona.  In addition, the initials “CR,” for Cornelius Ryan, appeared between the legs of the breeches.  The woodcut may or may not have replicated Ryan’s sign; at the very least, it strengthened the association that the leather dresser and breeches maker wanted consumers to have with his business and visual representations of it.

To achieve that, Ryan invested in commissioning a woodcut stylized for his exclusive use.  Most entrepreneurs did not go to such lengths when they advertised in colonial newspapers, though Smith Richards, who kept shop “At the Tea canister and two sugar loaves,” once again included a woodcut depicting those items in his notice in the same supplement that carried Ryan’s advertisement.  Nesbitt Deane advertised hats he “Manufactured,” but did not adorn his notice with the image of a tricorne hat and his name within a banner that he had included in other notices on several occasions over the years.  Since advertisers paid by the amount of space their notices occupied rather than the number of words, woodcuts amounted to significant additional expense beyond the costs of producing them.  For Ryan, the woodcut accounted for nearly half of his advertisement, doubling the cost of running it in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury.  He may very well have considered it worth the investment if the striking image prompted prospective customers to read the copy more closely.  The visual image served as a gateway for the appeals to skill, quality, price, consumer choice, and customer satisfaction that followed.