Cyrus Baldwin

July 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jul 23 - 7:23:1770 Boston-Gazette
Boston-Gazette (July 23, 1770).

“American Manufacture.”

Cyrus Baldwin divided his advertisement in the July 23, 1770, edition of the Boston-Gazette into two parts.  The first part, much longer than the second, looked much like other advertisements placed by shopkeepers during the period.  It listed a variety of items for sale at Baldwin’s shop.  The second part included a separate headline.  That alone made the entire advertisement distinctive compared to others that ran in the Boston-Gazette and other newspapers.

The headline announced that the second part listed goods of “American Manufacture.”  Baldwin carried “WORSTED Wilton, Middlesex Serge and plain Cloth, Shoe and Coat Bindings, Knee Garters, [and] Basket Buttons” made in the colonies.  He concluded the list with “&c.” (the eighteenth-century abbreviation for et cetera) to suggest that he stocked even more items produced locally rather than imported.  By inserting this headline and highlighting a second category of merchandise available at his shop, Baldwin both offered consumers an opportunity to practice politics when they shopped and encouraged them to do so.

The nonimportation agreement adopted to protest duties on certain imported goods imposed by the Townshend Acts was still in effect in Boston.  At the time that merchants and traders adopted the measure, residents of the city also advocated that colonists encourage “domestic manufactures” through the production and consumption of goods in the colonies.  Such goods provided an alternative to imported goods that became politically toxic, yet the repeal of the Townshend duties was not the only reason to buy American products.  Colonists also worried about a trade imbalance with Britain.  Encouraging domestic manufactures provided employment for colonists while reducing reliance on imported goods.  Yet such encouragement could not be confined to production alone.  Retailers and consumers had to play their parts as well.  Baldwin did so by stocking goods produced in the colonies and calling particular attention to them in his advertisements.  Consumers then had a duty to heed the call by choosing to purchase “American Manufacture[s].”  Baldwin made it easy for them to identify goods that fit the bill.

January 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jan 1 1770 - 1:1:1770 Boston-Gazette
Boston-Gazette (January 1, 1770).

“Imported from LONDON (before the Non-Importation Agreement took Place).”

Cyrus Baldwin hoped for prosperity in the new year, greeting 1770 with an invitation for prospective customers to visit his shop at “the Sign of the Three Nuns and Comb” on Cornhill Street in Boston. His advertisement listed a variety of items in stock, including textiles (“Shalloons, Tammies, Durants” and others), tea, coffee, and “other Articles too many to be here enumerated.” Baldwin made clear that he offered choices to consumers.

He also made clear that he abided by the nonimportation agreement adopted by Boston’s merchants and traders in protest of the duties imposed on imported paper, glass, lead, paint, and tea by the Townshend Acts. Like other eighteenth-century retailers, he noted that his goods were “Imported from LONDON,” but he carefully clarified that they had arrived in the colonies “before the Non-Importation Agreement took Place.” Usually advertisers emphasized how recently their merchandise arrived from London and other English cities, but in this case Baldwin realized that many prospective customers would find items imported more than a year ago more attractive and more politically palatable.

It made sense for Baldwin to take this approach. His advertisement appeared at the bottom of the center column on the first page of the January 1, 1770, edition of the Boston-Gazette. Edes and Gill, the noted patriot printers of that newspaper, set the tone for the entire issue with the first item in the first column: “A LIST of the Names of those who AUDACIOUSLY continue to counteract the UNITED SENTIMENTS of the BODY of Merchants thro’out NORTH-AMERICA, by importing British Goods contrary to the Agreement.” This was a regular update that ran in several newspapers printed in Boston. The article accused six merchants and shopkeepers in Boston and another in Marlborough of preferring “their own little private Advantage to the Welfare of America,” labeling them “Enemies to their Country” and promising to view those who “give them their Custom … in the same disagreeable Light.”

Baldwin wanted that neither for himself nor his customers. He needed to make a living, but he did not wish to run afoul of the committee that oversaw the nonimportation agreement or his fellow colonists. To further demonstrate his compliance, he informed prospective customers that he sold “Red Drapery Baize manufactured in this Country, superior in Quality to those imported from England” in addition to goods that arrived from London many months earlier. The imperial crisis continued as a new year and a new decade began. In addition to news items and editorials, many advertisements for consumer goods and services captured the political tensions of the period.