Mistaken Identity

December 22

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

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (December 22, 1773).

“WAS committed … a man, by the name of John Smith, being described in the Gazette as a runaway servant.”

John Anderson, the jailer in Newtown in Bucks County, placed an advertisement in the December 22, 1773, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette in hopes that it would come to the attention of Thomas Tempel of Pennsbury Township in Chester County, though he likely desired that other readers might supply additional information to help him sort out a situation at his jail.  Anderson reported that on December 13 he detained a man named John Smith,” being described in the Gazette as a runaway servant, his person and cloathing exactly answering the said advertisement.”  At least some colonizers closely read newspaper advertisements that described runaway indentured servants, convict servants, and apprentices or enslaved people who liberated themselves, making it worth the investment for masters and enslavers to place those notices.

Anderson stated that the man he believed was Smith “passed [in Newtown] by the name of Peter Woodford, alias Peter Shanley” and produced “former indentures” when he claimed he had been “a bound apprentice to Richard Plumer” in Lower Makefield Township in Bucks County.  The jailer doubted this story and even the documents that Smith presented because the advertisement that previously ran in the Pennsylvania Gazette “mentions it is likely he would change his name.”  Runaway servants and others often utilized that strategy to increase their chances of making good on their escapes.  Accordingly, Anderson considered it “very likely he is the described person.”  He did not mention any efforts to contact Plumer to determine whether the alleged Smith was actually his former apprentice.  Instead, he advised that if Temple “has any commands upon the said person here described” that he should “come, pay charges, and take him away.”  Otherwise, Anderson would sell Smith (or whoever he was) into a new indenture “in four weeks,” apparently unconvinced by his insistence that he was Peter Woodford or the documents he carried.  A man of low status, unknown to the jailer in Newtown, did not seem to have much recourse to avoid this fate, though perhaps someone that Anderson considered trustworthy would see the advertisement and intervene on the detained man’s behalf.  The prisoner also faced the possibility that Tempel would indeed go the Newtown and positively identify him.  The power of the press had the potential to negate or, perhaps more likely in this instance, to strengthen the authority exercised by the jailer.

December 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Dec 3 - 12:3:1767 New-York Journal
New-York Journal (December 3, 1767).

“I advertise this that the Names may be distinguished and my character not stained.”

Weert H. Banta, a carpenter, took out an advertisement in the New-York Journal in hopes of resolving a case of mistaken identity and remedying any damage done to his reputation as a result of the confusion.

Banta reported that Weert C. Banta, also a carpenter, had published an advertisement concerning the “Elopement” of his wife, Elizabeth, two months earlier. In that fairly standard runaway wife notice, the other Banta proclaimed that Elizabeth departed “without any cause” and that he was “apprehensive [she] may run me [into] Debt.” To that end, he desired to “warn all Persons, that they do not Trust, harbour or entertain her, on my Account, for I will pay no Debt of her contracting.”

Due to the similarity of their names and their shared occupation, many readers of the New-York Journal and other residents of the city had mistaken Weert H. Banta for Weert C. Banta. The former Banta clarified that he had not placed the advertisement. Furthermore, his wife’s name was Hannah, not Elizabeth. Not only did he seek to sort out the confusion, he implored “that the Names may be distinguished and my character not stained.”

Banta may have also worried about his wife’s reputation, but as a carpenter “noted through the whole City” he expressed primary concern about his own character and what friends, neighbors, and business associates would think of him. Advertisements for runaway wives typically depicted the absent women as the transgressors in marital relationships, but they still did not reflect well on the men who placed such notices in the public prints. That a wife had “eloped” revealed that her husband failed to exercise proper authority or to maintain order in his own household. These advertisements may have been considered a necessary last resort as a means of reining in recalcitrant wives or at least saving husbands money they did not authorize runaway wives to spend, but they did so at the expense of their masculinity. Anxious not to lose face, Weert H. Banta needed his fellow colonists to know that Hannah, his wife, had not run away. Instead, he competently governed his own household.