John Bours

January 31

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  Madeleine Arsenault

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

Newport Mercury (January 31, 1774).

“Blue kersey.”

This advertisement offered a shipment from London of “beaver coatings,” fabrics, and blankets. John Bours sold all of these items at a shop that had a golden eagle on the sign. One of the specific items that Bours advertised was kersey, multiple colors of it even. After some research, I found that kersey was a fabric often used in making clothing for enslaved people. Talya Housman, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, places kersey with other fabrics in the category of “negro cloth” or “slave cloth.” Not only were these fabrics used to clothe enslaved people, but they were also used as a way “to mark people as enslaved.”

I also learned about slavery in New England.  According to EnCompass: A Digital Sourcebook of Rhode Island History, “Rhode Island did not have the largest absolute number of enslaved people in New England,” but “it had the largest percentage of Africans, nearly all of them enslaved, among its residents.”  In addition, about one half of all the ships in the triangular slave trade came through Rhode Island, making the colony one of the anchors on the American side of transatlantic trade.  Rhode Island and other colonies in New England had more connections to slavery during the era of the American Revolution than I realized before my research.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

Along with her peers in my Revolutionary America class in Fall 2023, Madeleine was responsible for contributing to both the Adverts 250 Project and the Slavery Adverts 250 Project.  Through those projects, readings, and classroom discussions, we all learned more about the ubiquity of slavery throughout the colonies in the eighteenth century, including in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and other places that most people do not readily associate with slavery.  We examined a history of slavery well known to historians but often forgotten, intentionally overlooked, or stubbornly denied by many people.

In the course of her duties as guest curator for the Slavery Adverts 250 Project this week, Madeleine identified three advertisements about enslaved people that appeared in the January 31, 1774, edition of the Newport Mercury along with Bours’s advertisement.  A notice on the front page offered a “STOUT, healthy Negro” woman for sale.  On the final page, an advertisement seeking to sell a “LIKELY Negro” woman, “who understands all sorts of household work,” ran immediately to the left of Bours’s notice.  Another notice, this one aiming to sell a “VERY likely, hardy NEGRO GIRL, about 15 years old,” or exchange her for a “NEGRO BOY,” appeared at the top of the column that contained Bours’s advertisement.

At first glance, an advertisement for a “FINE assortment of ENGLISH and INDIA GOODS,” including kersey cloth, may not seem to have much to do with slavery in New England.  As she undertook her research, Madeleine made the connections, learning about both textiles used to clothe enslaved people and how the transatlantic slave trade contributed to commerce and consumer culture in Rhode Island before, during, and after the American Revolution.  Bours was not alone in advertising imported goods; John Bell, Samuel Goldthwait, Thomas Green, George Lawton and Robert Lawton, Paul Mumford, and Jonathan Rogers placed similar advertisements.  All of them participated in commercial networks inextricably bound to the transatlantic slave trade.  Eighteenth-century readers knew that was the case.  Advertisements offering enslaved people for sale that appeared alongside notices placed by merchants and shopkeepers served as a very visible reminder.

June 7

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Supplement to the Newport Mercury (June 7, 1773).

“A general Assortment of English and India GOODS.”

For the third week in a row, Solomon Southwick, the printer of the Newport Mercury, distributed an advertising supplement because he did not have sufficient space to print all the news and notices submitted to his printing office on Queen Street.  As usual, the standard issue consisted of four pages, created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and then folding it in half.  The supplement consisted of only two pages, one on each side of a smaller sheet … but not simply half a sheet of the paper used for printing the standard issue.

Instead, Southwick conserved his paper supply by resorting to an even smaller sheet.  Rather than accommodating three columns, the smaller sheet allowed for only two columns of the same width.  Southwick left it at that for the supplement that accompanied the May 31, 1773, edition.  For the May 24 and June 7 supplements, however, he managed to find room for a few more advertisements by creating a third column that ran perpendicular to the other two columns.  The printer placed shorter advertisements in this narrow column.

That worked well for the two lines that advised “Choice red CEDAR POSTS to sell, by THOMAS TRIPP” or the three lines about “CASH given for clean LINEN RAGES, coarse or fine, at the PRINTING-OFFICE in Newport.”  John Bours, on the other hand, ran a longer advertisement for a “general Assortment of English and India GOODS … at his shop, the sign of the golden eagle.”  To fit it in the narrow column without breaking down the type and setting it again, Southwick merely divided the advertisement in half and placed the two halves next to each other.  He did the same for a similar advertisement placed by George Lawton and Robert Lawton and his own notice about imported writing paper.  That facilitated reconstituting the advertisements when necessary to appear as usual in columns that had not been rotated when space permitted.

Bours’s advertisement did feature a slight variation on the usual practice.  When it ran in the standard issue on June 14, the printer replaced the smaller font for “GOODS” with a larger font to help attract attention.  The smaller font had been necessary to make the advertisement fit in the narrow column, but the notice received new consideration when space permitted.  Such was the exception rather than the rule when printers squeezed advertisements into what would have otherwise been margins.

Colonial printers often published advertising supplements that made such use of the space available to them.  Southwick and his counterparts in other towns devised a means of serving the advertisers who placed notices and the subscribers who read them while simultaneously minimizing the costs of producing and disseminating their newspapers.