Extant Copies

January 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Packet (December 30, 1771).

“JOHN CARNAN … AT THE GOLDEN LION.”

In its exploration of advertising and daily life in colonial America, the Adverts 250 Project features an advertisement originally published in an American newspaper 250 years ago that day … on most days.  It is not always possible, however, to select an advertisement from the exact date.  Two factors play significant roles.  First, no printers produced newspapers on Sundays, which means that once a week the Adverts 250 Project instead features an advertisement published sometime during the previous week 250 years ago.

Second, most newspapers were weekly publications.  Even though printers staggered the dates they distributed new issues (with clusters on Mondays and Thursdays), at least one newspaper appeared somewhere in the colonies every day of the week (Sundays excepted) throughout most of the late 1760s and early 1770s, the period covered by the Adverts 250 Project.  (I say most of the late 1760s and early 1770s because several newspapers ceased publication while the Stamp Act was in effect in late 1765 and early 1766.  As a result, fewer newspapers appeared on fewer days of the week for several months.)  Even though printers published and disseminated newspapers every day except Sundays, copies of those newspapers have not necessarily survived in research libraries, historical societies, and other collections.  Those still extant have not all been digitized, making them difficult to access for inclusion in the Adverts 250 Project.

January 1, 1772, is one of those days without any digitized newspapers to consider.  The first day of 1772 fell on a Wednesday, a day that printers did indeed publish newspapers.  Yet no newspapers for January 1, 1772, are available in any of the several databases that I consult in producing the Adverts 250 Project.  James Johnston printed the Georgia Gazette on Wednesdays, but that newspaper has not been part of the Adverts 250 Project since May 23, 2020, because the May 23, 1770, edition was the last one digitized.  According to Edward Connery Lathem’s Chronological Tables of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, no copies of the Georgia Gazette are extant from 1771 and very few have survived from 1772 and 1773.  Complete or extensive coverage exists for 1774 and 1775, but no copies published after 1770 have been digitized.

Johnston likely published a new edition of the Georgia Gazette on January 1, 1772.  It likely included at least a page of advertisements, including multiple notices about enslaved people for sale and others offering rewards for the capture and return of those who liberated themselves from their enslavers.  Yet no copy is available for examination and inclusion in the Adverts 250 Project, a reminder of one of the many factors that makes the curation of this project incomplete despite efforts to be as extensive as possible.  In addition, the Slavery Adverts 250 Project does not include every advertisement about enslaved people originally published in American newspapers 250 years ago, only those in newspapers that have been digitized.  Such advertisements were even more ubiquitous than the Slavery Adverts 250 Project demonstrates.

All of this means that the Adverts 250 Project does not begin 2022 with an advertisement from 1772.  Instead, I have selected an advertisement that ran in the Pennsylvania Packet on December 30, 1771.  Regular visitors to the Adverts 250 Project will recognize John Carnan’s notice with its distinctive woodcut depicting a golden lion, an image that has appeared on the project’s homepage since its inception.  I previously examined another advertisement placed by Carnan, that one in the Pennsylvania Gazette on August 1, 1771, the first time he included the image in one of his notices.  Tomorrow the Adverts 250 Project will feature its first advertisement from 1772, one selected by a student in my Revolutionary America class in Fall 2021.  We’ll get 1772 and 2022 started with an advertisement seeking a “Journeyman COMPOSITER” that Isaiah Thomas inserted in his own newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy.

July 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , ,

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

Providence Gazette (July 6, 1771).

“From the CAPE-FEAR MERCURY.”

Rather than examine an advertisement published in an American newspaper 250 years ago, I am devoting this entry to consideration of the many advertisements that will never appear in the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project because copies of the newspapers in which they appear have not been preserved.

Such is the case for the Cape-Fear Mercury, printed by Adam Boyd in Wilmington, North Carolina, from 1769 through 1775.  John Carter, printer of the Providence Gazette, reprinted news from the June 5, 1771, edition of the Cape-Fear Mercury on July 6.  No copies of that issue or any others published in 1771 or 1772 survive, according to Edward Connery Lathem’s Chronological Table of American Newspapers, 1690-1820.  Sporadic issues from the rest of the newspaper’s run combined with letters in the Colonial Records of North Carolina allowed Clarence Brigham to piece together a publication history for his monumental History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820.  Similarly, Lathem reports “no copies extant” for the Georgia Gazette for 1771 and “few numbers known (usually less than 25% of those issued)” for 1772 and 1773.  James Johnston printed the Georgia Gazette in Savannah from 1763 through 1776.  America’s Historical Newspapers includes digitized copies from the first issue published on April 7, 1763, through May 23, 1770, but no later issues.

That so few issues of the Cape-Fear Mercury and the Georgia Gazette survive today shapes the Adverts 250 Projectand, especially, the Slavery Adverts 250 Project.  In selecting advertisements promoting consumer goods and services, as well as those placed for a variety of other purposes, I attempt to draw from newspapers published throughout the colonies.  In his work on the consumer revolution in eighteenth-century America, T.H. Breen has argued that consumers experienced a standardization of both tastes and choices throughout the colonies.  Participation in consumer culture in Boston, for instance, closely resembled participation in consumer culture in Charleston.  The contents of newspaper advertisements, Breen asserts, did not much vary from place to place.  The Adverts 250 Project draws from two dozen newspapers published in 1771 and subsequently digitized for greater access by scholars and other readers.  The advertisements in those newspapers attest to Breen’s characterizations of the marketplace.  Still, it would be nice to include advertisements from Georgia and North Carolina alongside those from the newspapers published in South Carolina.

This gap has a much more significant impact on the Slavery Adverts 250 Project and its mission to chronicle the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution.  From September 2016 through May 2020, the Slavery Adverts 250 Project incorporated advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children that ran in the Georgia Gazette.  Those advertisements often accounted for a sizable portion of all paid notices that appeared in the Georgia Gazette and funded the production and circulation of the news in that colony.  The Slavery Adverts 250 Project has never included advertisements from North Carolina newspapers since none from the period under consideration survive.  In terms of advertisements about enslaved people, the pages of the Cape-Fear Mercurypresumably resembled the pages of the South-Carolina Gazette, the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, the South-Carolina and American General Gazette, and the Georgia Gazette.  That those newspapers and advertisements are missing from the Slavery Adverts 250 Project skews the results and the intended reckoning with the role the early American press played in perpetuating slavery by considerably undercounting advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children published in the late 1760s and early 1770s.  Given how many advertisements offering rewards for the capture and return of enslaved people who liberated themselves ran in other newspapers, this also means that many stories of Black resistance in the Cape-Fear Mercury and the Georgia Gazette remain obscured.

John Carter selected highlights from the Cape-Fear Mercury to reprint in the Providence Gazette, only a small portion of the news and none of the advertising from that publication.  The eighteenth-century newspapers that have been preserved in research libraries and historical societies and then digitized for greater access collectively comprise a vast archive, but it is an incomplete archive shaped by countless decisions made by printers, archivists, librarian, collectors, and others over the course of more than two centuries.  In addition to asking what eighteenth-century newspapers tell us about the founding of the nation we also need to interrogate what might be missing as a result of those decisions.

May 23

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

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

May 23 - 5:23:1770 Georgia Gazette
Georgia Gazette (May 23, 1770).

“RUN AWAY … BEN … of the Guiney country … TOM … very sensible and artful … his wife … BELLA.  DUBLIN … of the Ebbo country, marked on the cheeks.”

This is the last advertisement from the Georgia Gazette that will be featured on the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project.  James Johnston founded the Georgia Gazette and printed it from April 7, 1763, through at least February 7, 1776, with a hiatus from late November 1765 through late May 1766 due to the Stamp Act.  The newspaper ultimately ceased publication due to the Revolutionary War.  Although Johnston published the Georgia Gazette from 1770 through 1776, for some of those years either no copies are extant (1771) or very few have survived (1772 and 1773), according to Edward Connery Lathem’s Chronological Tables of American Newspapers, 1690-1820.  Complete or extensive coverage exists for 1770, 1774, and 1775, but no copies published after May 23, 1770, have been digitized.  As a result, the Georgia Gazette will no longer be part of the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project.

This is unfortunate.  Printed in Savannah, the Georgia Gazette provides a glimpse of advertising in a smaller port city compared to the newspapers published in Boston, Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia.  Established in 1732, Georgia was the only one of the thirteen colonies that eventually declared independence founded in the eighteenth century.  The contents of the Georgia Gazette present a city and a colony that had not yet reached the same maturity as others.  As the only newspaper regularly published on Wednesdays, it was frequently featured on this project.  Its contents document life in a southern colony, including the high proportion of advertisements concerning enslaved men, women, and children.  That will be the most significant loss relating to the missing or unavailable issues of the Georgia Gazette from June 1770 through May 1776.  The intersections of advertising, commerce, and culture can be examined in newspapers published in other colonies, but the stories of enslaved people that appeared only in the Georgia Gazettewill no longer play a significant role in demonstrating the ubiquity of advertising about enslaved Africans and African Americans in the early American press.

This also means that stories of courage, resistance, survival, and enslaved people seizing their own liberty during the era of the American Revolution will be truncated as the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Projectcontinue.  Consider today’s advertisement, the last one drawn from the Georgia Gazette.  The people known as Ben, Tom, Bella, and Dublin by those who enslaved them made their escape from Alexander Wylly in 1770.  The advertisement tells only a portion of their stories.  Ben “of the Guiney country” endured the Middle Passage and spoke “indifferent English.”  Tom and Bella were a couple.  Dublin “of the Ebbo country” bore ritualized scars on his cheeks, a testament to his African origins even after he learned to speak English.  Did these four escape together, perhaps led by the “very sensible and artful” Tom?  Their story, refracted through Wylly’s rendition of it, is incomplete … but it is more of their story than we would otherwise know about Ben, Tom, Bella, and Dublin.  Stories of Black people who were bought and sold and stories of Black people who escaped from those who held them in bondage appeared among the advertisements in every issue of the Georgia Gazette.  The Slavery Adverts 250 Project seeks to uncover those stories and make them more visible to both scholars and the general public.  The coming silence due to missing and unavailable issues of the Georgia Gazette will unfortunately suggest an absence of those stories, an absence that did not actually exist.