Prevalence of Advertising Ephemera

January 17

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

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

Essex Gazette (January 17, 1774).

“ALL Persons who have … Subscription Papers … are desired immediately to return the same.”

Samuel Hall and Ebenezer Hall, the printers of the Essex Gazette, inserted a brief notice in the January 17, 1775, edition to request that “ALL Persons who have in their Hands any Subscription Papers for printing the Independent Whig … to return the same to the Printers hereof.”  They referred to a project that they had first announced more than fifteen months earlier on September 23, 1773, with another advertisement in their newspaper.  On that occasion, they confided that “A Number of the principal Gentlemen in this Town … encouraged the Publication” of the work that Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard first distributed as a weekly magazine in London in 1720.  For those not as familiar with that “celebrated Performance,” the printers gave the full title: “THE Independent Whig, Or, A Defence of primitive Christianity, and of our Ecclesiastical Establishment, against the extravagant Claims of fanatical and disaffected Clergymen.”

The Halls informed the public that they could subscribe to the work at their printing office in Salem.  Those not yet certain that they wished to reserve copies could examine the “Proposals.”  The printers eventually published subscription notices in the Massachusetts Spy in February 1774, hoping to reach even more prospective customers in Boston and other towns throughout the colony.  Yet the Halls apparently did not limit their marketing efforts to newspaper advertisements, choosing to circulate “Subscription Papers” that likely described the purpose of the book and the conditions for ordering copies.  They may have requested that friends and associates post the subscription proposals in their shops and offices, recruiting the assistance of local agents in other towns.  Such items often featured space for subscribers to sign their names, making their support of the project visible to others, though local agents sometimes compiled separate lists.  No copies of the “Subscription Papers” that the Halls mention in their newspaper advertisement survive, at least not any that have been identified and cataloged yet.  Their newspaper notice testifies to a more extensive culture of marketing media in early America than the collections in research libraries, historical societies, and private collections reveal.  How much advertising ephemera circulated that has been lost without any mention in the public prints?

August 24

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

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

Pennsylvania Journal (August 24, 1774).

“They neatly engrave: Shop Bills; Bills of Exchange; Bills of Lading.”

When John Norman, “ARCHITECT and LANDSCAPE-ENGRAVER, from London,” arrived in Philadelphia in May 1774, he introduced himself to prospective clients via an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Journal.  A few months later, he once again took to the pages of that publication, this time to announce that the partnership of Norman and Ward, “ENGRAVERS and DRAWING-MASTERS,” had opened a shop where they engraved a variety of items and sold “an assortment of Pictures and Frames … much cheaper than imported.”  In addition, they established “an Evening Drawing School” for teaching “that most noble and polite Art in all its various and useful Branches.”  Still a newcomer in the city, Norman devised multiple ways to earn his livelihood.

The various kinds of engraving that Norman and Ward proposed testified to the prevalence of advertising in early America, especially in urban ports.  They indicated that they could produce all sorts of items but could not list them all because they were “too tedious to mention in an Advertisement.”  Yet they named more than a dozen kinds of engraved items, leading their list with “Shop Bills.”  They likely meant both trade cards with an engraved image that filled the entire sheet and billheads that featured an engraved image at the top and blank space for recording purchases.  On occasion, merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans wrote receipts on the reverse side of trade cards.  Norman and Ward next named “Bills of Exchange; Bills of Lading; [and] Bills of Parcels.”  Those could have been simple printed blanks, but that would have defeated the purpose of ordering them from an engraver rather than acquiring those common business forms from printers who produced them in volume.  In this instance, the bills of exchange, bills of lading, and bills of parcels likely included engraved images, not solely text, that served as advertisements for the merchants who ordered them.  Later in the list, Norman and Ward considered “Devices for News-Papers” important enough to include rather than “too tedious to mention.”  Presumably they produced woodcuts in additional to copperplate engravings.  In addition to newspaper printers seeking images to adorn their mastheads and stock images for use elsewhere, the engravers offered their services to advertisers who desired unique images that represented their businesses exclusively.  Trade cards, billheads, and other advertising ephemera have not survived in the numbers that they were likely produced and circulated in early America, yet Norman and Ward’s advertisement suggests that they were part of everyday life as colonizers engaged in commerce and participated in consumer culture.