Pennsylvania Evening Post

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, 1776).

“THE BATTLE of BUNKERS-HILL.  A dramatic piece of five acts, in heroic measure.”

In the fall of 1776, Robert Bell printed, advertised, and sold “THE BATTLE of BUNKERS-HILL.  A dramatic piece of five acts, in heroic measure.  By a Gentleman of Maryland.”  His advertisement in the November 7 edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post featured a quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, “Pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis,” along with a translation for readers who did not happen to know Latin, “‘Tis glorious to die in battle.”  Both the quotation and the translation also appeared on the title page of the play.  Most prospective customers were likely familiar with the Battle of Bunker’s Hill that occurred on June 17, 1775, during the siege of Boston.  Although the British won, they took such heavy losses at the hands of the Americans that they did not launch other attacks during the siege.  In that regard, the battle was an American victory, but one that came at cost.  General Joseph Warren, a patriot leader who only a few months earlier delivered the annual oration commemorating the Boston Massacre, was killed during the battle.

Bell’s advertisement did not go into such detail, perhaps because the printer expected that many prospective customers already knew the most significant details.  He expected that a “dramatic piece” would arouse both their curiosity and their patriotism, encouraging them to purchase the play.  Scholars have supplied some of the details that Bell did not include in his advertisement.  Curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for instance, explain that “the headmaster of Maryland’s Somerset Academy,” Hugh Henry Brackenridge, “responded [to the battle] with a play for his students to perform.”  Bell printed the play and distributed it more widely to American readers.  When he did so, he included a frontispiece, “The Death of Warren,” that depicted the general on bended knee with his right hand over his chest and his left hand on his rifle for support.  Concerned soldiers appeared on the left of the mortally wounded general and a fallen comrade, another American casualty, laid on the ground on the right.  John Norman, who had produced other patriotic images, engraved the scene, though Bell did not promote it in his advertisement.  Instead, he announced that he stocked “all the new publications of the Military Art” as well as “a considerable variety of books in Navigation, and other branches of the Mathematics.”

Brackenridge demonstrated his patriotism by writing the play and then resigning from his position to join the Continental Army as a chaplain.  Bell, like many other printers, artists, and booksellers presented consumers with an opportunity to show their patriotism by buying and reading the play.  Such commemoration and commodification of the events associated with the American Revolution began before the war and continued during the war.

Hugh Henry Brackenridge, The Battle of Bunkers-Hill, a Dramatic Piece, of Five Acts, in Heroic Measure (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1776). Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

November 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (November 5, 1776).

“THE Work-shop of the subscriber was broke open on Saturday night.”

It was bad luck for John Hallberstat, a leather dresser, that someone broke into his workshop in Philadelphia and stole a variety of goods during the night of Saturday, November 2, 1776.  Losing no time, he arranged for advertisements to appear in the next newspapers published in the city.  That meant Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet and the Pennsylvania Evening Post, both printed and distributed on Tuesdays.  The Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal would not come out until Wednesday and the Pennsylvania Ledger not until Saturday.  Hallberstat needed to move quickly to increase the chances that newspaper advertisements would help him recover the stolen items.

In notices with nearly identical copy, Hallberstat described the stolen goods: “twenty-four reed or summer deer skins in the hair, one feather bed, blanket and sheet, and three pairs of leather breeches just scowered.”  Most victims of theft or burglary who ran newspaper advertisements called on all readers to assist in identifying the perpetrators and returning the stolen goods.  Hallberstat, however, made a plea directly to those he thought the culprits most likely to approach to sell the items from his workshop.  “As it is likely the skins may be offered for sale to some skinners,” he declared, “they are requested to stop them and the thief.”  Similarly, “Vendue-master” or auctioneers “are requested to give information if the bed and blankets should be offered them for sale.”  Skinners and vendue masters could collude with the thief or thieves to their own advantage.  In case doing the right thing was not sufficient motivation for assisting Hallberstat, he offered “THREE POUNDS REWARD … to any person who shall discover the goods so that the owner may have them again, or for the thief or thieves so that they may be brought to justice.”

Hallberstat was fortunate that his advertisement ran in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet at all on November 5.  It appeared as (almost) the last item at the bottom of the last column on the third page.  That would have been the final type set in place for that issue since printers tended to print the first and fourth pages on one side of the broadsheet first and finished with the second and third pages on the other side.  Only a brief note from the printer followed Hallberstat’s notice: “Advertisements omitted this week for want of room shall be inserted in our next.”  The printer selected some advertisements to exclude.  Given the urgency of Hallberstat’s advertisement, the printer may have made sure to give it a place in the November 5 edition.  That increased the chances that Hallberstat might recover the stolen goods.  Waiting to published the advertisement in the next issue on November 12 made it even less likely that it would yield the result that Hallberstat sought.

November 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (November 2, 1776).

“EDWARD POLE … MAKES and sells all kinds of the best FISHING TACKLE.”

As the Pennsylvania Evening Post carried news about the war and decisions made by the Continental Congress in the fall of 1776, it also carried a variety of advertisements, including one in which Edward Pole promoted the goods available at his “TACKLE SHOP in Market-street, near the Court-house, Philadelphia.”  Pole informed readers that he “MAKES and sells all kinds of the best FISHING TACKLE, for use of either sea or river: and has now on hand a very general assortment.”  He stocked “artificial flies, minnews and chub, leads, Indian grass, swivels, nets, and a great variety of other sorts too tedious for an advertisement.”  He intended for that last comment to entice prospective customers to visit his shop to see the “great variety” for themselves.

Pole called attention to his advertisement with a woodcut depicting a fish.  That image accounted for one-third of the space that he purchased for that notice.  It also distinguished it from all other advertisements in that issue since it was the only one to feature a woodcut.  By November 1776, consumers in Philadelphia likely associated that image with Pole and his tackle shop.  He had previously used it in advertisements in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet in May and June 1774, in the Pennsylvania Ledger in January 1775, and again in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet in April 1776.  Now it appeared in the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Few entrepreneurs commissioned woodcuts depicting some aspect of their business to adorn their newspaper advertisements.  Those who did owned those woodcuts and could collect them from one printing office and deliver them to another at their discretion.  Such was the case with Pole, who published an image associated exclusively with his business in multiple newspapers.  Doing so required more than submitting copy to printing offices.  It meant that he had to oversee the woodcut itself, handing it over to printers when he ordered new advertisements, retrieving it when he discontinued his notices, and storing it securely during the interim when he did not advertise.  For Pole, running advertisements in local newspapers required more than quill, ink, and paper to write the copy.  He also managed the woodcut, a physical object, the produced the image that represented his tackle shop.

October 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 29, 1776).

“Different kinds of beer, as usual, equal in quality to any in this city.”

Francis Wade was back in business and he wanted the public to know it!  In late October 1776, the brewer began running advertisements in the Pennsylvania Evening Post that both acknowledged that his “absence for some time past obliged him to shut up his brewery” in Philadelphia and announced that he “has began to brew for the season.”  In early November, he inserted the same advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette in his effort to increase his market penetration by reaching more prospective customers.

Wade did not explain his absence, nor did he give directions to his brewery.  Perhaps he assumed that “his former customers and others that are disposed to make trial of his beer” knew where to find him.  For several months in late 1774 and early 1775, he ran advertisements that directed “his old country customers” to his new location at the corner of Fourth and Race Streets.  Perhaps Wade believed that his brewery became such a familiar location once he established himself there that he did not need to elaborate on his location, despite his recent absence and suspension of production.

Now that Wade’s brewery was operating again, he hoped that his former clientele and new customers would purchase the “different kinds of beer” offered there.  He pledged that all of them were “equal in quality to any in this city,” putting him in competition with other brewers that included Robert Hare and his Best American Draught Porter.  He claimed that customers could expect such quality “as usual,” suggesting that he believed his beer already earned that reputation and he wanted consumers to recall that was the case.  Even if he exaggerated, Wade stood to benefit from such puffery.  Prospective customers who had never tried his beer, he may have reasoned, might find such assertions convincing when they contemplated “mak[ing] trial of his beer” in their own homes or serving it in their taverns.

October 27

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 26, 1776).

“THE JOURNALS of the PROCEEDINGS of CONGRESS, held at Philadelphia from January to May 1776.”

As the Revolutionary War continued in the fall of 1776, printers in Philadelphia printed, advertised, and sold “THE JOURNALS of the PROCEEDINGS of CONGRESS, held at Philadelphia.”  William and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, advertised the volume for “September to January last” in the October 23 edition of their newspaper.  That issue also carried a notice from Robert Aitken, “Printer and Bookseller opposite the London Coffee-House,” that announced he published and sold “the JOURNALS of the PROCEEDINGS of CONGRESS … from January to May 1776.”  In addition to coverage in newspapers, readers could keep well informed of the debates and decisions of the Continental Congress over the past year by purchasing the journals.

Three days later, Aitken ran the same advertisement in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, though that one described the new volume as “about three hundred and forty pages” while the other advertisement stated that it “contain[ed] nearly 240 pages.”  (The new advertisement in the Pennsylvania Evening Post was correct.)  For one dollar, buyers acquired the book “in blue boards.”  That left it to each purchaser to make their own selections about a binding, if they wanted the journal bound at all, in consultation with a bookbinder.  Aitken sold just the text, keeping production costs down.  That made the journal even more accessible to readers who wanted more detail about the proceedings of the Continental Congress in those crucial months after the anonymous publication of an inflammatory political pamphlet called Common Sense in January 1776.  Even though the title stated that the volume covered the proceedings “to May 1776,” it concluded with business conducted on April 29 (just as the previous volume for “September to January last” covered September through December).  Still, it provided an important supplement to what appeared in newspapers and a record for both the public and political leaders to consult as citizens of the new nation simultaneously fought a war for independence and created a national identity.

October 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 22, 1776).

“THE curious in ancient literary works on the ART of HEALING … may not purchase [a] variety of Latin authors.”

Robert Bell, one of the most prominent American printers and booksellers during the era of the American Revolution, achieved his reputation, in part, through advertising extensively.  Advertisements for books and pamphlets that he printed or sold regularly appeared in newspapers published in Philadelphia, where he ran a “book-store, next door to St. Paul’s church, in Third-street,” in 1776.  Before the war, he frequently inserted subscription proposals for books he intended to publish if enough customers subscribed (or reserved copies in advance) in newspapers from New England to South Carolina.  That made him a familiar figure to readers throughout the colonies.  In 1776, however, he confined his advertising mostly to Philadelphia.

In an advertisement that ran in the October 22, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, Bell targeted prospective customers interested in medical texts.  He had a special flair for describing both himself and his customers.  For instance, he had previously named himself “the Provedore to the Sentimentalists.”  In this advertisement, Bell addressed the “curious in ancient literary works on the ART of HEALING,” informing them that they “may now purchase [a] variety of Latin authors.”  In case that subject matter was too obscure, he also promoted alternatives that some readers might have considered more practical.  Bell stocked “a few modern English writers on medicinal and surgical subjects.”

Bell could have left it at that, but he chose to add a nota bene to remind prospective customers that he also sold books from other genres.  “All the military authors lately published may be had at said BELL’s,” he proclaimed, in case readers had not noticed the many advertisements for military manuals that he frequently placed in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and other newspapers.  A reminder certainly did not hurt, he likely reasoned, since so many printers and booksellers also advertised an array of military manuals published in Philadelphia in 1775 and 1776.  For readers not interested in medical texts and military manuals, Bell also offered “numbers of miscellaneous, instructive, and entertaining works, in various branches of literature” that they could browse when they visited his shop.  He intentionally targeted certain readers, while also extending an invitation to all readers to see which books and pamphlets they could purchase at “BELL’s book-store.”

October 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 19, 1776).

“The printers of the several newspapers in this city are desired to insert the above.”

On October 19, 1776, the Pennsylvania Evening Post carried an advertisement from the Committee of Accounts associated with the “late Committee of Inspection for the city and liberties of Philadelphia” that had been organized according to the Continental Association, the nonimportation agreement devised by the First Continental Congress in the fall of 1774.  The Committee of Accounts requested that “ALL persons who have any demands … deliver their accounts to any one of [its members] on or before the tenth day of November.”  This was the last call for any outstanding accounts since the committee “intended finally to settle this business.”  The advertisement warned the public “to take notice … as every account not furnished on or before that day must be excluded.”

Hoping to get the word out as widely was possible, the committee included a request to the “printers of the several newspapers in this city … to insert” the advertisement.  Those printers, however, did not immediately comply with that request.  The Pennsylvania Ledger, also published on October 19, did not carry the notice.  If the committee had delivered copy only to the Pennsylvania Evening Post and simply expected other printers to see the advertisement in that newspaper and then reprint it then the Pennsylvania Ledger would not have had an opportunity to run the advertisement on the same day.  It could have appeared, however, in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet on October 22, but it did not.  The printer did include a note that “Advertisements omitted this week for want of room shall be inserted in our next.”  The next day, neither the Pennsylvania Gazette nor the Pennsylvania Journal carried the advertisement.  In addition, the Pennsylvania Evening Post did not run the advertisement a second time in its October 22 and October 24 editions.  So far, the “printers of the several newspapers in this city” did not take heed of the request to publish the committee’s notice.

In the end, none of those printers opted to insert the advertisement.  The committee had allowed for three weeks between its initial appearance and the November 10 deadline for submitting accounts.  In that time, the notice did appear in the Pennsylvania Evening Post two more times, once on October 29 and again on November 7.  That it ran three times suggests that the committee may have paid the standard rate for an advertisement, a fee that included setting the type and three insertions.  They may have hoped that other printers would publish the notice gratis as a public service, but they ended up disappointed if that was the case.  It does not appear that the committee delivered copy to each printing office but instead depended on local printers monitoring the content in other newspapers.  It was possible, but unlikely, that no other printer in Philadelphia happened to see the advertisement and the request to print it.  Instead, those printers seemingly made other choices about what to publish with limited space and a shortage of paper.

October 15

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

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

Supplement to the Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 15, 1776).

“He likewise returns thanks to such of his friends who have been pleased to employ him.”

Henry Snelling apparently thought that advertising worked.  In the spring of 1776, the “WATCHMAKER from London” inserted an advertisement in the April 20 edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Three months later, he ran another advertisement on July 18.  Another three months after that, he placed yet another advertisement “to acquaint the public that he performs the said business in all its branches.”  He promised that customers who “will please to favour him with their commands, may depend on his care in executing the same.”

Pennsylvania Evening Post (April 20, 1776).

Comparing the format of the three advertisements reveals some of the decisions that Snelling made as he tinkered with the copy each time that he ran a new notice.  He retained nearly identical copy throughout the three advertisements, but he seemingly did not alert the printing office that he would likely run subsequent advertisements after the one that ran in April.  The printer broke down the type and set it again when Snelling resumed advertising in July.  The new advertisement featured identical copy, making it almost indistinguishable from the previous one except for differences in line breaks near the end.  In addition, Snelling added a note: “Clocks and Watches bought and sold by commission.”  A manicule directed attention to the addition.  Once again, Snelling apparently did not indicate that he planned to run the same advertisement again in a few months.  The October version had almost identical copy with a minor revision to the final note about buying and selling watches on commission.  Significant changes in format make it clear at a glance that the printer rest the type.  The new version had a drop cap for the “H” in “HENRY,” while the previous version had a drop cap for the “B” in “BEGS.”  The words “CHAINS” and “SEALS” appeared in all capitals in the October advertisement but not in the July version.  The manicule on the final line disappeared.  None of the line breaks repeated.

Pennsylvania Evening Post (July 18, 1776).

These changes in format demonstrate that Snelling made new decisions to invest in advertising once again, first in July and then in October.  If he did not consider his previous notices effective, he likely would not have continued to pay for additional advertisements, especially not a third time.  In the absence of market research that reveals the effectiveness of newspaper advertising in eighteenth-century America, the reiteration and updating of advertisements suggests that the advertisers at least believed that placing notices yielded results.

October 10

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 10, 1776).

“Excellent GREEN and BOHEA TEA.”

An advertisement in the October 10, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post alerted readers that a “SALE of a neat assortment of MERCHANDIZE, being the remains of a store,” would take place “at JOHN HART’s VENDUE store” on the following Tuesday.  The notice listed an array of textiles that rivaled many of the lists published in newspaper advertisements before the war, including “velvets and velverets, rattinets, shalloons, calimancoes, tammies, … white and embossed serges and flannels, chintzes, cottons, calicoes and printed linens.”  Eighteenth-century consumers could distinguish among that variety of fabrics and many more.

In addition to that “MERCHANDIZE,” the advertisement also highlighted “Excellent GREEN and BOHEA TEA.”  For a time, tea had been a prohibited item.  Patriots in Boston tossed tea into the harbor in December 1773 and made bonfires of tea in other communities to protest the duties and other regulations on colonial commerce imposed by Parliament.  Tea figured prominently in the Continental Association, a nonimportation and nonconsumption pact devised by the Second Continental Congress in the fall of 1774.  Advertisements for tea disappeared from American newspapers for a while, but circumstances changed once the war began.  Once the king declared the colonies in rebellion and ordered the closure of ports at the end of March 1776, nonimportation and nonconsumption testified to the effectiveness of the British blockade rather than the Continental Association.  In addition, some merchants claimed that they possessed tea that they smuggled into the colonies but did not have a chance to sell before the Continental Association went into effect.  On April 13, 1776, Congress allowed for selling and consuming tea.  Tea began to appear in newspaper advertisements once again, though not nearly as often as it had in the 1760s and early 1770s.  More tea hit the market as the result of privateers capturing British ships and their cargoes.  The advertisement for the sale of tea at Hart’s Vendue Store did not mention the origins of that tea, though the local committee of inspection may have cleared it for sale.

With the extensive list of textiles and the “Excellent GREEN and BOHEA TEA,” the advertisement for an upcoming sale of a “neat assortment of MERCHANDIZE” resembled advertisements that so frequently appeared in American newspapers before the war.  However sincere their political principles, consumers still desired all sorts of goods.  As the Continental Association eroded, they resumed their previous purchasing habits.

October 8

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 8, 1776).

“He proposes giving LECTURES in FRENCH after the most easy and concise method possible.”

Francis Daymon had competition.  For years the “MASTER of the French and Latin Languages” taught “the useful and polite French language in the newest and most expeditious method” to genteel residents of Philadelphia, the most cosmopolitan city in British North America.  He operated and frequently advertised a “FRENCH ACADEMY,” first at his house on Front Street, “nearly opposite the London Coffee-House,” and later “in the Library Room in Carpenters Hall.”  In addition, he offered private lessons to “Ladies and Gentlemen” who wished to be “instructed at their places of abode.”  On October 5, 1776, he advised readers of the Pennsylvania Evening Post that “he continues to instruct gentlemen in the French language in the most expeditious method, agreeable to the late improvements of the French academy.”  Pupils could now find him “on the south side of Market-street, the fifth door below Fourth-street.”

Three days later, Bartholomew le Petite ran his own advertisement in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, addressing the same readers who recently perused Daymon’s notice.  Le Petite informed “the ladies and gentlemen of this city, that he proposed giving LECTURES in FRENCH after the most easy and concise method possible for the scholar to obtain the knowledge and propriety of writing and speaking it with propriety.”  After all, those seeking to deploy their familiarity with the “polite and useful language” to demonstrate their sophistication wished to avoid the embarrassment of clumsy execution that would mark them as pretenders rather than truly genteel.  Le Petite did not make any mention of “the French academy” on the other side of the Atlantic, choosing not to burnish the same sort of credentials that Daymon so often incorporated into his advertisements.  Instead, he focused on making his lessons as accessible as possible via his “most easy and concise method.”  That may have been an attractive prospect to new students as well as students who had been frustrated when receiving lessons from Daymon or others.  Le Petite’s methods might prove the most effective.

Whether learning French for the first time, seeking to expand their vocabulary and improve their pronunciation, or desiring to brush up on their skills, students could compare advertisements from two instructors published within days of each other.  Those advertisements did more than merely announce that French lessons were available.  They played a role in guiding students to the instructors so they could make informed decisions about which one they wished to hire.