Samuel Douglass

December 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Dec 6 - 12:6:1769 Georgia Gazette
Georgia Gazette (December 6, 1769).

“HAS JUST IMPORTED, in the ship Georgia Packet, Capt. George Anderson, from London.”

Colonial merchants and shopkeepers often informed prospective customers of the origins of their goods, including how they arrived in the colonies. In an advertisement in the December 6, 1769, edition of the Georgia Gazette, for instance, Samuel Douglass noted that he “HAS JUST IMPORTED” new merchandise “in the ship Georgia Packet, Capt. George Anderson, from London.” Douglass was not alone in noting that he replenished his inventory with goods transported via the Georgia Packet. Lewis Johnson hawked “A FRESH SUPPLY OF MEDICINES” that was “IMPORTED in the Georgia Packet, Capt. Anderson, from London.” Similarly, Reid, Storr, and Reid listed dozens of items “JUST IMPORTED, in the Ship Georgia Packet, Capt. George Anderson, from London.” Since advertisements ran for weeks or sometimes even months, this information helped consumers determine how recently merchants and shopkeepers had acquired their goods. They consulted the shipping news from the customs house to make those determinations.

The shipping news in the December 6 issue identified several vessels that “ENTERED INWARDS at the CUSTOM-HOUSE” in the past week, including “Ship Georgia Packet, George Anderson, London.” Readers saw for themselves that Douglass, Johnson, and Reid, Storr, and Reid did indeed carry a “FRESH SUPPLY” of goods “JUST IMPORTED.” All three advertisements ran on the same page as the shipping news, facilitating consultation. Douglass’s advertisement even appeared directly below news from the customs house. The shipping news also supplement advertisements placed by other merchants and shopkeepers. Rowland Chambers, for example, sold flour, produce, and other commodities “On board the sloop Charlotte,” which the shipping news indicated “ENTERED INWARDS” from New York just two days earlier.

A proliferation of advertisements for consumer goods appeared in the December 6 edition of the Georgia Gazette. Details about the origins of those goods incorporated into the advertisements in combination with the shipping news confirm why the newspaper suddenly had more such advertisements than in recent weeks. While providing information about the vessel that transported the goods might seem quaint to twenty-first-century readers, it served an important purpose for consumers in eighteenth-century America. After consulting the shipping news, they could make their own assessments about some of the claims made in advertisements and then choose which shops to visit accordingly.

October 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Oct 25 - 10:25:1769 Georgia Gazette
Georgia Gazette (October 25, 1769).

“Samuel Douglass, HAS JUST IMPORTED … GOODS, suitable for this and the approaching season.”

Digital technologies, including keyword searches, often streamline the process of doing history. Keyword searches of digitized newspapers, for instance, allow historians to quickly identify items relevant to their research questions. Yet keyword searches are neither infallible nor comprehensive. They often overlook material that historians could readily identify when examining documents, both original and digital surrogates, with their own eyes.

Consider this advertisement for “A Large and Compleat ASSORTMENT of EAST-INDIA and EUROPEAN GOODS” that Samuel Douglass placed in the October 25, 1769, edition of the Georgia Gazette. Note that the advertiser’s name appears in a distinctive font as a headline. That helped to distinguish Douglass’s advertisement from others. Curious about how many times Douglass deployed this strategy, I did a keyword search via Readex’s America’s Historical Newspapers, the database where I encountered this particular advertisement. I restricted the date to 1769 and the publication to the Georgia Gazette. I selected “Samuel Douglass” as the keyword. The search returned nine results, but did not include this particular advertisement or any other iterations of it. Realizing that optical character recognition often has difficulty with the “long S” used frequently in the eighteenth century, I ran a second keyword search for “Samuel Douglafs.” This yielded zero results.

I knew that this particular advertisement appeared in the Georgia Gazette because I previously downloaded the issue that included it from America’s Historical Newspapers, yet the database’s own keyword search overlooked it. Finding other instances, if there were any, would require systematically viewing every page of the Georgia Gazette. Digital technology certainly made copies of that newspaper originally published in 1769 more accessible, but doing a keyword search was not more efficient. In fact, when it comes to examining a newspaper page by page, accessing each page via a database of digitized images goes much more slowly than consulting the originals. In such instances, accessibility and efficiency are a trade off. Keyword searches have become a powerful tool for historians … sometimes. Depending on the questions they wish to ask, however, sometimes traditional methods yield more results … and more quickly.

May 24

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

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

May 24 - 5:24:1769 Georgia Gazette
Georgia Gazette (May 24, 1769).

“JUST IMPORTED, in the SHIP GEORGIA PACKET … from LONDON.”

When the Georgia Packet arrived in port in the spring of 1769, it delivered merchandise from London to several merchants and shopkeepers in Savannah. The May 24, 1769, edition of the Georgia Gazette included four advertisements that listed that vessel as the source of wares now available for purchase. The advertisers, however, adopted different strategies for promoting their new inventory.

Samuel Douglass and the partnership of Reid, Storr, and Reid published advertisements that most resembled each other, listing dozens of items in stock. Such litanies appeared frequently in newspapers throughout the colonies, a popular means of demonstrating the many choices for consumers. Reid, Storr, and Reid were more restrained in compiling their list. They introduced “An ASSORTMENT of the MOST USEFUL ARTICLES imported into this province” before naming various textiles, accessories, and other items. Their list extended sixteen lines, concluding with “&c.” (the eighteenth-century abbreviation for et cetera) to indicate that prospective customers would encounter far more items at their store in Johnson’s Square. Douglass, on the other hand, did not make an explicit appeal to an “assortment” of goods. Instead, he listed for more items, from fabrics to hardware. His list extended forty-seven lines, nearly three times the length of Reid, Storr, and Reid’s catalog of goods, before concluding with a promise that Douglass had even more to offer: “many other articles too tedious to mention.”

The other two advertisements for goods that recently arrived via the Georgia Packet were much shorter. In the course of only four lines, the partnership of Cowper and Telfairs stated that they carroed a “large and well assorted CARGO of GOODS, suitable for the place and season.” They attempted to entice customers by offering “reasonable terms,” but they did not elaborate on their merchandise. Apparently they expected “large and well assorted” to sufficiently make a point about consumer choice. Cowper and Telfairs may have also benefited from the lengthy lists published by their competitors. Those litanies gave prospective customers a sense of the wares delivered by the Georgia Packet, perhaps prompting some to do some comparison shopping in several stores regardless of how many items appeared in each advertisement.

Finally, Solomon Solomons also published a comparatively short advertisement, only six lines. Rather than an array of goods, he specialized in a “small Assortment of JEWELERY” that he had “JUST IMPORTED, in the SHIP GEORGIA PACKET … from LONDON.” His strategy emphasized exclusivity rather than expansive choices for consumers. With fewer direct competitors than Douglass, Cowper and Telfairs, and Reid, Storr, and Reid, Solomons may not have considered it imperative to catalog his new merchandise in the public prints.

One other advertisement also listed goods “Just imported from London,” though it did not explicitly identify the Georgia Packet as the source. According to the shipping news, the Georgia Packet was the only ship that had arrived from London recently, so it almost certainly carried the “Assortment of Medicines” that Lewis Johnson listed in an advertisement that rivaled Douglass’s advertisement in length.

These five advertisements were the only notices in the May 24 edition that promoted new consumer goods. (Others offered secondhand items for sale.) Together, they accounted for nearly one-quarter of the content in the issue. In a port the size of Savannah, the arrival of a single ship, the Georgia Packet on May 17, had a significant impact on both the commercial landscape and the information distributed throughout the colony in Georgia’s only newspaper the following week. The news items in the May 24 issue all originated from London, like the wares promoted to prospective customers. The news and goods transported on that ship crowded out other content that might otherwise have appeared in the public prints that week.