Maps

November 7

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

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (November 7, 1775).

“MAPS … Montreal with all its fortifications.  The city of Quebec.”

Robert Bell, one of the most prominent American booksellers of the eighteenth century, also sold “PLANS, MAPS, and CHARTS” at his shop in Philadelphia.  In an advertisement in the November 7, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, he promoted maps depicting “Montreal with all its fortifications.  The city of Quebec.  The river St. Laurence, with the operations of the siege of Quebec, under Admiral Saunders and the brave General Wolfe.  The Harbour of Halifax.  Nova Scotia.  Canada.  New Orleans, the capital of Louisiana, with the course of the river Mississippi.  [And] The West-Indies.”

Bell moved from north to south, generally, in listing the places depicted on the maps and charts that he stocked and sold, though he seemingly made a deliberate decision to list Montreal and Quebec before Halifax.  Current events likely influenced that choice.  For its first major military initiative, the Continental Army launched an invasion of Quebec in hopes of capturing the province and convincing its inhabitants to join the American cause.  That territory had been claimed by the French Empire for centuries, but only recently became part of the British Empire as part of the settlement that brought the Seven Years War to an end in 1763.  The Americans suspected that French speakers in Quebec had little loyalty to the British.

Two expeditions conducted a dual-pronged attack on the province.  In late August, an expedition authorized by the Second Continental Congress and commanded by General Richard Montgomery departed Fort Ticonderoga in New York, headed to Montreal.  Colonel Benedict Arnold, disappointed at being passed over to lead that expedition, convinced General George Washington to send another expedition to Quebec City.  Under Arnold’s command, that expedition departed Newburyport, Massachusetts, and made a harrowing journey up the Kennebec River.

At the time that Bell ran his advertisement, Montgomery’s expedition approached Montreal and Arnold’s expedition approached Quebec, though it would take some time for news to arrive in Philadelphia for readers of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Yet those readers did know that those expeditions were underway and that Montgomery began a siege of the town and fort of Saint-Jean in September.  Bell believed that some prospective customers were already interested in maps and plans of Montral and Quebec City and that he could incite demand among others by informing them of the items available at his shop.  The maps he sold supplement the news that colonizers read in the public prints.

April 28

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

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (April 28, 1773).

“A LARGE and curious collection of the most modern PRINTS and PICTURES.”

Nicholas Brooks regularly advertised a variety of merchandise available at his shop in Philadelphia in the early 1770s, though he specialized in visual images to adorn homes and offices and often highlighted those items.  Such was the case in his advertisement in the April 28, 1773, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette.  Brooks promoted a “LARGE and curious collection of the most modern PRINTS and PICTURES” that he recently imported from London.

His new inventory included a “variety of maps of the world, and each quarter,” as well as a “general atlas, containing 36 new and correct maps.”  Those maps helped colonizers in Philadelphia, the largest city in British North America yet also an outpost in a global empire, envision their location in relation to London, other colonies, and faraway places connected via networks of trade that brought vessels from Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean to their bustling port.  Other items at Brooks’s shop also allowed colonizers to contemplate their connections to the empire, especially the cosmopolitan city at its center.  The collection of prints included “the different Macaronies of the present time, now in the greatest vogue in London.”  The term “macaroni” referred to young men, many of whom traveled in Europe, who imitated the extravagant fashions popular on the continent.  These prints gave colonizers in Philadelphia an opportunity to glimpse current fashions adopted by some of the elite in London, providing a guide for dressing themselves to demonstrate their sophistication and gentility.  For others, however, the prints served as a cautionary tale and a means of critiquing the excesses of young men who wallowed in too much luxury.  Satirical prints presented young men as feminized by their attention to fashion and their participation in consumer culture.

Even as Brooks offered such prints for sale at his shop, he also advertised jewelry and dry goods, almost certainly including textiles and garments, for customers to outfit themselves according to the latest fashions.  Colonizers had complicated relationships with consumer culture and the array of goods presented to them by merchants, shopkeepers, tailors, milliners, and other advertisers.  They critiqued even as they indulged, attempting to find the right level of participation that testified to their good taste without impugning their character by going too far.