Jesse Leavenworth

October 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Connecticut Journal (October 28, 1774).

“When a boat shall set off from either side, a boat shall immediately put off from the other.”

Jesse Leavenworth had two years of experience of operating a ferry “to and from East Haven, on the lower road,” but they had not been easy years.  In an advertisement he placed in the October 28, 1774, edition of the Connecticut Journal, he explained that the “hounourable General Assembly … thought fit to establish under his care and direction” the ferry in October 1772.  He accepted the charge, seeking to support “himself and a numerous family.”  That site, however, possessed “many difficulties” due to the “flats and openness of the place to sea” that had previously made it “insurmountable by all those who have heretofore attempted” a similar venture.  At a “vast expence,” Leavenworth “furnished himself with a number of large & sufficient boats.”  Whether they ran ferries or stagecoaches, entrepreneurs who provided transportation frequently underscored the financial investments they made in their businesses.  Leavenworth kept at least two boats on each side and hired staff to give “suitable attendance.”

Despite the obstacles, Leavenworth met with success.  He asserted that he “gain’d the approbation and custom of the public beyond his most sanguine expectations, which he gratefully acknowledges.”  The ferry was so successful that the operator prepared to introduce another innovation to the service.  Three weeks later, he planned that “when a boat shall set off from either side” that another boat “shall immediately put off from the other, to supply its place.”  The companion boat would go whether or not it had passengers or freight.  That way the ferry would maintain two boats on each side “to oblige his customers and prevent all suggestions of nonattendance on either side.”  Patrons would face less inconvenience in waiting if they happened to arrive when the ferry was in use.  Leavenworth concluded by noting that “this will be an additional expense” so he “hopes for the countenance of the public, and a continuance of their custom.”  Again, he suggested that prospective customers should recognize his investment and choose to hire his services because of it.

Following his signature, Leavenworth added a brief note aimed at recruiting an employee, a “hardy stout Man … who can be well recommended (for honesty, sobriety, and good nature).  A month earlier, he had advertised that a “negro man” who “speaks the Portuguese language, and bit little English” had “let himself to me.”  Suspecting that his new employee may have been an enslaved man who fled from his enslaver, Leavenworth placed a notice in the public prints.  Not long after that, an advertisement about just such a man in the Connecticut Courant featured an observation that a “Negro answering the above Discription has let himself to Mr. Jesse Leavenworth of New-Haven.”  The forthcoming innovation in his ferry service may not have been the only reason Leavenworth sought a new employee.  The Black man that he hired as he planned to launch the next stage of his business may have been captured and returned to his enslaver.

September 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Connecticut Journal (September 30, 1774).

“Yesterday let himself to me a lusty negro man … speaks the Portuguese language.”

At the end of September 1774, Jesse Leavenworth placed an advertisement in the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy to give directions for finding and hiring “the ferryman … in the east side of the New Ferry” since there had recently been some confusion that caused frustration, inconvenience, and delays.  In addition, he briefly noted, “Yesterday let himself to me a lusty negro man, about 23 or 24 years old, speaks the Portuguese language, and but little English.”  In other words, Leavenworth had hired a Black man, yet he had concerns about whether that man was free to make contracts for his labor or had seized his liberty by running away from an enslaver.  In the absence of evidence that the Black man was indeed a fugitive seeking freedom, Leavenworth hired him, yet he also alerted the public in case anyone had more information or was looking for a young Black man who spoke Portuguese an not much English.

The public prints facilitated that sort of surveillance and oversight of Black people in early America, even in Connecticut and other colonies in New England.  Elsewhere in the same issue of the Connecticut Journal, William Smith ran an advertisement that described “a MOLATTO SLAVE, half Negro and half Indian, named DICK” who “RANAWAY from … the South Side of Long-Island” in late August.  Dick did not depart alone.  An “INDIAN FELLOW, named JOE,” accompanied him, fleeing from Nathaniel Woodhull, though Smith did not specify if Joe was indentured or enslaved.  Apparently, he was not free because Smith offered a reward to anyone who “secures him or them in any of his Majesty’s Gaols, or shall bring one or both of them to their Masters.”

Leavenworth could have taken similar action, delivering the unnamed Black man to the jail in New Haven and placing an advertisement for his enslaver to claim him.  Such advertisements appeared with regularity, most often in southern colonies and occasionally in New England.  They demonstrated the precariousness of living their everyday lives that Black people, including free Black men and women, faced since they could be imprisoned solely on the suspicion that they might be enslaved people who escaped from their enslavers.  Although Leavenworth chose to hire rather than imprison the young Black man who spoke Portuguese, his simultaneous decision to make an announcement in the newspaper also testified to the level of suspicion that Black people encountered as well as how colonizers used the power of the press to regulate them.