Samuel Prince

February 13

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (February 13, 1775).

“Orders for the West-Indies and elsewhere, compleated on the shortest notice.”

Samuel Prince, a cabinetmaker, produced furniture in his workshop “At the sign of the chest of drawers, in William-Street, near the North Church, in New-York” in the 1770s.  In February 1775, he took to the pages of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury to promote a “parcel of the most elegant furniture, made of mahogany,” imported from the West Indies, “of the very best quality.”  In addition to the “chest of drawers, … desks and book cases of different sorts, [and] chairs of many different and new patterns” that he had on hand, Prince made “all sorts of cabinet work in the neatest manner, and on the lowest terms.”

While he certainly sought customers in New York, he also indicated that he accepted “Orders for the West-Indies and elsewhere” and shipped the furniture to his clients.  That Prince addressed prospective customers in the West Indies testified to the circulation of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury and other colonial newspapers.  The cabinetmaker had a reasonable expectation that prospective customers in faraway places would see his advertisement.

Prince promised that he “completed” orders “on the shortest notice, an appeal with additional significance since the Continental Association went into effect.  Devised by the First Continental Congress, that nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation agreement was designed to use commerce as leverage for convincing Parliament to repeal the Coercive Acts.  The fourth article specified that the “earnest Desire we have not to injure our Fellow Subjects in Great Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies, induces us to suspend a Non-exportation until the tenth Day of September 1775.”  If Parliament did not take satisfactory action by that time, “we will not, directly or indirectly, export any Merchandise, or Commodity whatsoever, to Great Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies.”  In other words, Prince and prospective clients in the West Indies had a short window of opportunity for placing orders, producing the furniture, and shipping it.  Prince did not violate the provisions of the Continental Association, but he likely had that looming deadline in mind when he pledged to fill orders “on the shortest notice.”

April 8

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 6, 1772).

“He is to be spoke with at Mr. Samuel Prince’s, Cabinet-maker, at the Sign of the Chest of Drawers.”

Newspaper notices accounted for the vast majority of advertising in eighteenth-century America, but not all advertisers resorted to the public prints.  Some posted broadsides or distributed handbills, trade cards, and billheads.  Some artisans affixed labels to furniture produced in their shops.  Others did not use printed media at all.  Instead, they relied on shop signs to mark their locations and communicate to prospective customers what kinds of goods and services they provided.

Far fewer shop signs survive than newspaper advertisements, but various sources suggest that colonizers encountered a rich visual landscape of shop signs as they traversed the streets in towns from New England to Georgia.  The April 6, 1772, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury testifies to some of the shop signs in the city during the era of the American Revolution.  In the colophon, incorporated into the masthead, Hugh Gaine declared that he printed the newspaper “at the Bible and Crown, in HANOVER-SQUARE.”  Elsewhere in the newspaper, John Sheiuble, an “ORGAN BUILDER, from PHILADELPHIA,” informed readers that they could speak with him “at Mr. Samuel Prince’s, Cabinet-maker, at the Sign of the Chest of Drawers, in New-York.”  Prince’s shop sign made it into the public prints because a fellow artisan used it as a point of reference in his advertisement.  Whether or not they read the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, many colonizers likely associated the Sign of the Chest of Drawers with Prince and the furniture produced in his shop.  Sheiuble believed that the device was so widely recognized in the city that he did not need to mention the name of the street or any nearby landmarks to direct readers to Prince’s shop.

Sheiuble’s advertisement did not include a depiction of the Sign of the Chest of Drawers.  Merely mentioning the sign likely evoked an image in the minds of those who had seen it, but left others to rely on their imaginations.  On occasion, advertisers did adorn their newspaper notices (or trade cards and billheads) with images that replicated their shop signs.  For the most part, however, short descriptions, like the Sign of the Chest of Drawers, account for how much we know about the images colonizers glimpsed in the windows or hanging above the doors of eighteenth-century shops.