What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“Assurance … that when the difference is settled between England and the colonies, of having my store constantly supplied.”
In the spring of 1775, the proprietor of “MINSHULL’s LOOKING-GLASS STORE” ran a newspaper advertisement to announce that he had “REMOVED” from Smith Street to a new location “opposite Mr. Goelet’s [at] the sign of the Golden Key” on Hanover Square in New York. In addition to an “elegant assortment” of looking glasses, he stocked other items for decorating homes and offices, including brackets for displaying busts, arrangements of flowers and birds “for the top of bookcases,” and the “greatest variety of girandoles” or candleholders “ever imported to the city.” He also devoted a separate paragraph, with its own headline, to a “pleasing variety” of mezzotint “ENGRAVINGS” and the choices for frames.
John Minshull confided that he had “assurances of my correspondent in London, that when the difference is settled between England and the Colonies, of having my store constantly supplied with the above articles, as will give a general satisfaction” to his customers. Readers realized that he referred to the imperial crisis and the effects of the Continental Association, the nonimportation agreement devised by the First Continental Congress in response to the Coercive Acts. Minshull did not state that he imported his inventory before that pact went into effect on December 1, 1774. Instead, he allowed readers to make that assumption, especially when he noted that he would not receive any new merchandise from England until the colonies and Parliament reached an accord.
That did not happen. Within weeks of Minshull placing his advertisement, the Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. A little over a year later, the British occupied New York and remained in the city until 1783. Yet Minshull persevered, continued operating his shop, and, according to an advertisement in the November 8, 1780, edition of the Royal Gazette, “imported in the Fleet from England, A large Assortment of LOOKING GLASSES, adapted to the present mode of Town and Country.” He apparently managed to maintain his connections with his correspondents and suppliers in London.
Perhaps Minshull abided by the Continental Association in 1775 as a matter of political principle. Perhaps he did so merely to stay in the good graces of his customers and the community. The latter seems more likely since, according to Luke Beckerdite, “a ‘John Michalsal’ was included in a list of Loyalists” in 1775 and “a ‘John Minchull’ subsequently fled to Shelburne, Nova Scotia,” a haven for Loyalists during and immediately after the war. From August 1782 through February 1783, ran an advertisement in the Royal Gazette for his “remaining Stock” that he sold “Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!” It appears that Minshull had a going-out-of-business sale before evacuating from New York when the war ended. Before that, he resumed business as usual when circumstances changed under the British occupation, weathering the storm and attempting to earn his livelihood during uncertain times. When the “difference [was] settled between England and the Colonies,” he no longer sold looking glasses or anything else in New York.