What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
New-York Journal (July 18, 1771).
“86—.”
For several weeks in 1771, Nesbitt Deane promoted “HATS, MANUFACTURED by the Advertiser” in the New-York Journal. His advertisements concluded with “86—,” a notation intended for the compositor rather than readers. Most advertisements in the New-York Journal included two numbers, the first corresponding to the issue in which the advertisement first appeared and the other indicating the final issue for the advertisement. That allowed the compositor to quickly determine whether an advertisement belonged in the next issue when arranging notices and other content on the page in advance of going to press.
George Ball’s advertisement for “A Neat Assortment of CHINA, GLASS, STONE and DELPH WARES” in the same column as Nesbitt’s advertisement for hats in the July 18 edition, for instance, concluded with “88 91.” That signaled to the compositor that Ball’s advertisement first appeared in “NUMB. 1488” on July 11 and would continue through “NUMB. 1491” on August 1. That was the standard run, four issues, for many advertisements. According to the colophon, John Holt, the printer, charged “Five Shillings, four Weeks, and One Shilling for each Week after.” Many advertisers tended to pay for the minimum number of issues and then discontinued their notices. Others, like Jacobus Vanzandt and Son, arranged for their advertisements to appear for longer durations. Their notice for imported textiles, garments, and housewares in the column next to Nesbitt’s notice concluded with “79 87,” indicating that they specified that it should run for nine weeks.
Deane apparently did not select an end date when he initially placed his advertisement in “NUMB. 1486” on June 27. Instead, he opted to let it run indefinitely until he decided to remove it. The dash instead of a second number communicated to the compositor to continue inserting the advertisement until instructed otherwise, while the “86” aided in keeping the books. The printer did not need to consult previous editions when calculating how much Deane owed when he eventually stopped running his advertisement. Many, but not all, printers included similar notations in advertisements that appeared in American newspapers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
New-York Journal (February 21, 1771).
“To all the Friends of LIBERTY … 61 71.”
Last week the Adverts 250 Projectfeatured this advertisement calling on “all the Friends of LIBERTY” to mark the fifth anniversary of “the Repeal of the oppressive Stamp-Act.” That initial examination of the advertisement focused on the importance that colonists placed on commemorating the events the culminated in the American Revolution even before the skirmishes took place at Lexington and Concord or the Continental Congress declared independence. Another aspect of this advertisement, however, caught my attention when I first selected it for the Adverts 250 Project.
The notation on the final line – “61 71” – presented a mystery. Similar notations appeared on the final lines of most advertisements in the New-York Journal. Either the printer, John Holt, or the compositor inserted these numbers to indicate the first and last issues in which an advertisement should appear. They replicated the last two digits of the issue numbers of those newspapers. For example, the February 28, 1771, edition of the New-York Journal was “NUMB. 1469,” so any advertisements with “69” as the first number in the notation ran for the first time in that issue and any advertisements with “69” as the second number in the notation ran for the last time. The notations, therefore, were intended for those who worked in the printing office rather than for readers.
I noticed the “61 71” notation for a couple of reasons. First, it indicated that the advertisement ran for eleven weeks, an odd number in general, made even more odd by the fact that Holt’s pricing structure of “Five Shillings, four Weeks, and One Shilling for each Week after” (listed in the colophon every week) resulted in most advertisements running for four weeks because advertisers incurred the lowest possible cost. Eleven weeks seemed like a long time to run the advertisement, but it had interesting implications. Issue 1461 happened to be the first issue of the new year, published on January 3, 1771. Had those who planned the commemorations of the fifth anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act considered the event worthy of notice so far in advance?
While possible, that did not seem right. After all, I previously examined every issue of the New-York Journal published in January and February 1771 to identify advertisements to feature on the Adverts 250 Project and advertisements about enslaved people for the Slavery Adverts 250 Project. I did not recall seeing this particular advertisement in any of those issues before selecting it from the February 21 edition. I doubted that I had managed to skip over it in seven consecutive issues of the New-York Journal. When I examined each edition in search of this particular advertisement, I discovered that it did not appear prior to February 21. It ran in four consecutive issues, starting on February 21 and concluding on March 14, in issue 1471. The advertisement appeared in the last edition of the New-York Journal before the commemoration of the repeal and the celebration of “so general and important a Cause.”
It turned out that the advertisement first appeared in issue 1468, not 1461. The notation contained an error, probably the result of the compositor substituting the last digit of the second issue for the last issue of the first. Few if any readers of the New-York Journal likely noticed this error. After all, such notations in any advertisements were not intended for them. For this historian of advertising and early American newspapers more than two centuries later, however, the notation contained a lot of potential meaning, especially in terms of how extensively those who planned the commemoration of the repeal of the Stamp Act advertised the upcoming fifth anniversary. Although the advertisement did not as many times or for as long as the notation suggested, it still signaled an important act of remembering on the part of many colonists.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Supplement to the New-York Journal (August 3, 1769).
“79–.”
Like many other eighteenth-century printers, John Holt, the printer of the New-York Journal, inserted numbers at the end of advertisements. These numbers were not intended for readers but instead for those who worked in the printing office. They indicated how long an advertisement should run. For instance, an advertisement announcing that the brigantine Rebekah would sail for Jamaica appeared in the supplement that accompanied the August 3, 1769, edition of the New-York Journal. The compositor inserted the numbers 85 and 88 on the final line, 85 indicating that the advertisement first ran in issue 1385 on July 20 and 88 indicating that it would make its final appearance in issue 1388 on August 10. After that, the compositor would remove it. Similarly, Jonathan Hampton’s advertisement featuring a woodcut that depicted a Windsor chair also included 85 and 88 on the final line, though an earlier iteration included the numbers 63 and 72 instead. Hampton had inserted the advertisement for ten weeks earlier in the year, apparently determined it had been worth the investment, and then inserted it again for a shorter run.
Other advertisements, however, included a single number and a dash. Samuel Francis (better known today as Samuel Fraunces) ran an advertisement that concluded with “79–“ instead of two numbers. Similarly, Jarvis Roebuck had “62–“ on the final line of his advertisement. In each case, the number indicated the issue that the advertisement first appeared: issue 1362 on February 2 for Jarvis and issue 1379 on June 8 (the same date at that opened the advertisement) for Francis. What did the dash mean? How did the compositor interpret it when deciding which items belonged in an issue and which should be removed?
The publication history of these two advertisements reveals that the dash did not indicate that an advertisement should run continuously. Francis’s advertisement ran for five consecutive issues (June 8, 15, 22, and 22 and July 6) before appearing sporadically in six more issues (July 20, August 3 and 24, September 7, and October 12 and 26). Roebuck’s advertisement ran sporadically from the start, appearing on February 2 and 9, March 2 and 30, April 13 and 27, May 25, June 1, 8, and 29, July 27, August 3, 24, and 31, September 14, and October 12. Seemingly no particular plan corresponds to the publication schedule for the sixteen insertions of Roebuck’s notice over the course of nine months.
Perhaps the dash indicated that the compositor had carte blanche to insert the advertisement when necessary to complete a page. These two advertisements were the final items in the August 3 supplement, though they did not always appear at the end of an issue or supplement. Moderate in length, they may have been convenient filler when the compositor estimated that an issue or supplement ran short of other content. Paired numbers, like “85 88,” streamlined bookkeeping and production of the New-York Journal, but this arrangement for continued yet sporadic insertions required careful attention to bookkeeping. The printer or another employee in the printing office would have had to peruse each issue to see which advertisements with dashes appeared and then update the ledger accordingly.
What role did advertisers play in this process? Could they instruct the printing office to insert an advertisement on a week-by-week basis? If compositors made decisions about including advertisements, did advertisers pay for every insertion? Did advertisers receive any sort of discount for this arrangement? Did advertisements every run after advertisers no longer wished for them to appear? It seems unlikely that Francis would have been enthused about an advertisement promoting the summer entertainments at Vauxhall Gardens to appear in the New-York Journal in late October.
Some of the numbers compositors inserted at the end of advertisements clearly indicated their purpose in the operation of a printing office and the production of colonial newspapers. Other notations, however, only hinted at their purpose and now raise tantalizing questions about how printers, compositors, advertisers, and others used them. The dash at the end of some advertisements certainly served some purpose; otherwise compositors would not have taken the time to include such notation. A more systematic survey of advertisements combined with careful examination of printers’ ledgers may reveal some of the practices that printers found efficient and effective in running their shops in the eighteenth century.
