Sean Duda is a senior at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is majoring in History with a minor in Music. Sean is from Trumbull, Connecticut. He is a member of several organizations on campus, including Music Ministry, Jazz Band, Charismatic Praise, and Advocates for Life. He enjoys learning how to play new instruments and learning about Europe in the Middle Ages and the World Wars. He has previously served as guest curator for theAdverts 250 Projectand theSlavery Adverts 250 Projectwhen he enrolled in HIS 359 – Revolutionary America in Spring 2019. He conducted the research for his current contributions as guest curator for the Slavery Adverts 250 Project when he was enrolled in HIS 400 – Research Methods: Vast Early America in Spring 2020.
After my experience as a guest curator for the Adverts 250 Project, I believe that I have taken many things that I will carry in my life going forward. I learned about how one person can make a whole group of people that would have otherwise been disinterested in early American history actually look independently and enjoy learning about history. I never knew that one person could have that kind of effect on others. All of my friends from back home have been actively looking at my posts and commenting on them to me. The single most rewarding part of this project was being able to talk to my family about my involvement in this project, because they were all enthusiastic and they all recognized that this project was a great thing for me to get involved with, and this is speaks to Professor Keyes’ dedication to trying to get his students involved with his project.
When we were first talking about the project in class I thought that it was going to be very challenging, and I was not wrong about this expectation. I think I grew as a historian and developed a few skills that I would have otherwise not had at this point if not for working on this project pushing me to learn. These skills include how to do research with digitized archives and public history sites. I believe that these new skills will help me as I continue my studies as a History major. Once work started on the newspapers, I learned that there is great attention to detail that is required when looking at primary sources, and I learned that sometimes the most important things within a primary source can be the briefest statements, depending on your perspective. An example of this would be my entry on March 26 about the harpsichord. I have had a great fascination with the history of music and with learning how to play new instruments throughout my life. When I saw the advertisement for the harpsichord I knew that I needed to talk about it.
While I really liked the harpsichord advertisement, it was not my personal favorite out of all the advertisements that I had the pleasure of researching. My favorite advertisement was actually the one about Jolley Allen from March 27. I had never actually thought about how loyalists were displaced during the war. I also liked working on the runaway slave advertisement from March 29, because I think that both of these advertisements work together to strip away the story of “good guys” and “bad guys” in the American Revolution. One of these advertisements helped me learn about loyalists as the victims of war. The other helped me to explore how the British often looked to be the best possible option for enslaved people to gain their freedom, being as the Continental Army would not even allow slaves to fight in their ranks for a portion of the war.
The Adverts 250 Project was a great opportunity for me, and I am very fortunate that I was able to contribute to it. I am hopeful that I will be able to have more experiences like this in the future at Assumption College. I also appreciate Professor Keyes’s dedication to the project and the guest curators working on it with him.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Massachusetts Gazette (March 30, 1769).
“WINE To be Sold by ROSANNA MOORE.”
Rosanna Moore advertised wine imported from other places around the Atlantic world, including Madeira, an island that lies about 450 miles off the western coast of Morocco. Wine, like many other goods, was a common import into the colonies. However, when colonists first came to Virgnia, they tried to make wine. According to Charles M. Holloway, “it was tobacco that made a market, but in the beginning wine looked more likely.” This was one of the contributing factors to the colony not doing well when it was first founded; the colonists could not trust the water source.” Holloway states that “settlers [were] often reduced to drinking from the wide muddy tidal stream, and … sometimes paid for the gamble with their lives.” Because of this, colonists relied on imported wines and they tried to make cider to replace wine. Eventually, the vineyards were actually profitable, but that would not be for a long time. Holloway gives a figure from 1768, a year before Moore’s advertisement: “Virginians exported to Britain a little more than thirteen tons of wine while importing 396,580 gallons of rum from overseas, and another 78,264 from other North American colonies.”
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
On many occasions Rosanna Moore would have been the only female entrepreneur advertising goods and services in Richard Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette, but that was not the case in the March 30, 1769, edition. Three other women also inserted advertisements in that issue. Elizabeth Clark, Elizabeth Greenleaf, and Anna Johnson each listed the “Assortment of Garden Seeds” they imported from London and offered for sale at their shops in Boston. Their notices appeared in a single column, one after another, forming a block of advertisements placed by women, making their presence in the public prints difficult to overlook.
Throughout the late winter and early spring of 1769, female seed sellers advertised in most of the newspapers published in Boston. It was an annual ritual that contributed to a rhythm of advertising. Just as advertisements for almanacs tapered off, a sign that the new year had come and gone, advertisements for garden seeds, the vast majority placed by women, began filling the pages of Boston’s newspapers. During the last week of March 1769, female seed sellers placed advertisements in all of the city’s newspapers except the Boston Chronicle. (Established within the past couple of years, the Chronicle had not cultivated the same volume of advertising as its competitors. All sorts of advertisers, including seed sellers, apparently preferred to pursue their marketing efforts in other publications.) Advertisements from Elizabeth Clark, Bethiah Oliver, Susanna Renken, and Elizabeth Greenleaf filled the entire final column on the last page of the Boston Evening-Post. Advertisements from Susanna Renken, Rebeckah Walker, Lydia Dyar, and Abigail Davidson appeared one after another in the Boston-Gazette, while Elizabeth Clark’s advertisement ran elsewhere on the same page. In Green and Russell’s Massachusetts Gazette (published on the same broadsheet as the Boston Post-Boy), Sarah Winsor, Susanna Renken, Anna Johnson, and Elizabeth Greenleaf occupied almost an entire column with their advertisements for imported seeds.
The merchandise offered by these female seed sellers differed from the “OLD Sterling MADEIRA … and other WINES” hawked by Moore. Renken, who noted in some of her advertisements that she had “a Box of China Ware to sell,” was the only one of those female seed sellers who regularly advertised other sorts of wares throughout the rest of the year. Although female shopkeepers comprised a significant minority of shopkeepers in port cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, they did not advertise in proportion to their numbers. Female seed sellers appear to have been the exception. Perhaps the occupation became so feminized as to outweigh any concerns about trumpeting their presence in the marketplace as suppliers rather than consumers. Even as competitors, Clark, Davidson, Dyar, Greenleaf, Johnson, Oliver, Renken, and Walker participated in a common venture when they advertised seeds in Boston’s newspapers. Rosanna Moore, the lone female entrepreneur advertising anything other than seeds in late March 1769, remained an outlier.
Who was the subject of an advertisement in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Georgia Gazette (March 29, 1769).
“RUN AWAY … A NEGRO FELLOW, named ABRAM.”
This advertisement contains the description of a runaway slave named Abram, including what he was wearing and distinguishing marks, and a reward for returning him. In running away, Abram participated in an his own act of resistance during a time of growing tensions between the British and the colonists. Unsurprisingly, many slaves were always looking for ways to become free. Noticing this sentiment, the governor of Virginia issued Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation on November 7, 1775. This proclamation offered freedom to slaves that belonged to people that were supporting or taking part in the war against the British, so long as they took up arms with the British against their masters. Many slaves took up this offer; according to Maya Jasanoff in Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, approximately 20,000 slaves joined up with the British. As for the Americans, many people who owned slaves had reservations against arming those that they had held in bondage. Jasanoff says only around 5,000 slaves fought for the colonists.[1] According to Ray Raphael, “Some who fought for the patriots were sent back into slavery at war’s end. … Patriot leaders in the South offered enslaved people as bounties to entice white recruits.”[2] It is not hard to see that slaves may have thought that their best shot at freedom would have been with the British instead of the colonists, who were not above using them as currency to entice more people to join their cause.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
At a glance, the pages of the Georgia Gazette may appear rather static to modern eyes. Like most other colonial printers, James Johnston filled his newspaper with dense text and very few visual images. Yet careful attention to the issues published in early 1769 reveals variations in organization and typography that suggest Johnston and others who worked in his printing office experimented with how they presented the news and other content in the Georgia Gazette.
The March 29, 1769, edition, for instance, included another advertisement with the advertiser’s name in large gothic font, replicating an innovative visual element adopted by other advertisers in recent weeks. This time, John Johnston called on prospective customers to purchase bread.
Johnston also distributed advertisements throughout the entire issue, an organizational strategy repeated from other recent issues. Paid notices, along with the usual colophon, filled both columns of the last page. Every other page featured at least one advertisement. Two appeared at the bottom of the second column on the first page. Another, Johnston’s advertisement, ran at the top of the second column on the second page. Perhaps those on the first page served, in part, as filler to complete the column. Even so, Johnston made a choice not to continue with news coverage. The first item on the next page, news from Corsica, would have fit in the remaining space on the first page if Johnston had wished to continue with news rather than switch to advertising. Similarly, it would be difficult to argue that Johnston’s advertisement on the second page appeared there solely to neatly complete a column. Its position at the top of the column forced Johnston to continue the last item on the page, a moral tale, on the following page.
The advertisement about Abram making his escape ran in the first column on the third page, immediately following the conclusion of the moral tale. News from Savannah, including the usual lists from the customs house, appeared below it. Advertisements completed the column and the rest of the page. On the third page, Johnston switched between paid notices and other content multiple times rather than grouping all of the advertisements together. Readers holding open the newspaper to peruse the second and third pages encountered a hodgepodge of content, with advertisements in three of the four columns.
Some colonial printers chose to reserve advertising for the final pages of their newspapers, inserting paid notices only after all other content appeared. That was often Johnston’s strategy when he had only enough advertising to fill the last page. On occasions that he had more than would fit on the final page, however, he experimented with interspersing advertisements among news and other content throughout the rest of the issue. This strategy likely increased the chances readers noticed some of those advertisements since they were not consigned to space reserved solely for paid notices. Anyone seeking just the news had to make more effort to distinguish among the various types of content in the Georgia Gazette when Johnston spread out the advertisements.
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[1] Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York: Penguin, 2011), 361.
[2] Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories that Hide Our Patriotic Past, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 2014), 216.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Essex Gazette (March 28, 1769).
“A fresh Assortment of Garden Seeds.”
In this advertisement for seeds Benjamin Coats mentioned beans, peas, carrots, and many other vegetables. Gardening was a common practice in the colonies, and it was often women who kept the gardens for their families. In As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth-Century Americans, Stephanie Grauman Wolf also uses advertisements about seeds to examine life in eighteenth-century America, including an advertisement from a Boston newspapers in 1748. She states, “The purchase of seeds involved women in a wider world of commerce than we might have supposed, and this involvement included selling extra produce.”[1] Gardening was one of the outlets that women used to interact with the wider world of trade in the eighteenth century. Wolf also notes that certain plants were more popular regionally: “Pease for ‘English pease porridge’ were supplanted by beans for “baked beans” in New England.”[2] She also notes that potatoes and tomatoes were popular in the northern colonies, while sweet potatoes were popular in the southern colonies.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
When readers of the Essex Gazette finished perusing Benjamin Coats’s advertisement for a “fresh Assortment of Garden Seeds” they almost immediately encountered the same inventory listed in Susanna Renken’s advertisement, published in the same column just two advertisements below. Coats and Renken did not merely offer similar wares. The copy of their advertisements was identical, with the exception of their names, the locations of their shops, and a short addendum to Renken’s advertisement that announced she “Also [had] a Box of China Ware to sell.” Coats sold his seeds locally, “Near the School-House in SALEM,” but Renken attempted to enlarge her share of the market for seeds she sold “In Fore-street, near the Draw-Bridge, BOSTON.” The lists of seeds Coats and Renken offered for sale were identical, both in content and order. Purveyors of goods often began their advertisements by acknowledging the origins, often deploying formulaic language that included the names of the vessel and captain that had transported the goods to the local port. In this case, Coats and Renken used exactly the same language: “Imported in Capt. Hulme from LONDON, and to be sold by …”
Essex Gazette (March 28, 1769).
How did two advertisers end up publishing virtually identical copy? Examining the publication history of the advertisements provides some clues. Both advertisements first appeared in the Essex Gazette on March 14, 1769, and ran again on March 21 and 28. Prior to that, Renken’s advertisement ran in three Boston newspapers. It first appeared in the Boston Evening-Post and the Boston-Gazette on February 27, without the note about “China Ware,” and then continued weekly in each of those newspapers (March 6, 13, 20, and 27). It did not run in the Boston Post-Boy (published concurrently with Green and Russell’s Massachusetts Gazette) until March 6, a week after it first appeared in the other newspapers, but after that it also ran every week for the rest of the month. That one included the note about “China Ware,” suggesting that Renken may have clipped it from that newspaper and submitted it to the Essex Gazette with instructions to publish it without alteration.
Renken’s advertisement ran in newspapers printed in Boston and distributed far beyond that city eight times before she and Coats published nearly identical advertisements in the Essex Gazette. Coats certainly had plenty of opportunities to see the advertisement and either clip it or copy it to transform into an advertisement intended for his local newspaper. This would have been a particularly efficient means of generating copy if Renken had been his supplier, especially if he did not realize that she planned to expand her marketing campaign beyond Boston’s newspapers. Alternately, if both Coats and Renken dealt with the same commercial seed suppliers from England, they could have both copied from letters or printed lists provided by correspondents on the other side of the Atlantic. That does not explain, however, the time that elapsed between Renken’s first advertisement in Boston and Coats’s advertisement in the Essex Gazette two weeks later.
For the past several years Renken had aggressively advertised garden seeds in Boston’s newspapers in the spring. The Essex Gazette commenced publication in August 1768, making the spring of 1769 the first time that Renken could also advertise in that newspaper. Perhaps she initially overlooked it as a new option. If she did sell seeds wholesale to Coats for resale in Salem, that might have prompted her to think about better addressing the market for her merchandise in the nearby town. In that case, Coats probably would not have been pleased to see her advertisement appear simultaneously with his in his local newspaper, but he did have the advantage of proximity to prospective customers in Salem. Neither of them apparently felt so concerned about the similarities between their advertisements that they found it necessary to submit revisions for further insertions. Cooperation and competition between Coats and Renken seemed to exist side by side as their advertisements appeared one above the other.
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[1] Stephanie Grauman Wolf, As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth-Century Americans (New York: harper Perennial, 1994), 90.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Massachusetts Gazette [Green and Russell] (March 27, 1769).“TO BE SOLD BY Jolley Allen.”
Jolley Allen, a merchant from London, had been selling goods in Boston since 1755. In this advertisement he listed many things, from clothes to china to tea. I am interested in the man selling those goods. Allen was a known Loyalist. He had remained in Boston under the British occupation in 1775 and 1776. He planned to leave with his family on a private ship named Sally whose captain was Robert Campbell when the British and all of the other Loyalists planned to evacuate in March 1776. The Allens planned to leave on March 14, 1776. They boarded the ship for their voyage, planning to follow the British vessels to Nova Scotia. According to the New England Historical Society, on March 17 “it became clear just how inept Robert Campbell was. Over the next 24 hours, Campbell managed to collide with two other fleeing British ships, nearly capsize Sally and finally run it aground while the British ships sailed away for Nova Scotia.” The crew then anchored the ship near Provincetown, which was not under British control. Allen then lost all of his possessions to the residents of Provincetown. He later went back to his old home in Boston and found that his barber had taken up residence in his house. For a short time Allen rented a room in his former home. He eventually escaped to London in Febraury 1777, where he published “Account of the Sufferings and Losses of Jolley Allen, a Native of London” in hopes of being compensated for his losses during the American Revolution.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
Almost without fail, Jolley Allen placed distinctive advertisements in Boston’s newspapers in the late 1760s. They were not distinctive so much for their contents. After all, Allen listed the same sorts of items stocked by shopkeepers throughout the city and throughout the colonies. Instead, his attention to graphic design made Allen’s advertisements distinctive. In most cases advertisers submitted copy to the printing office and compositors assumed responsibility for the format of newspaper advertisements. However, the consistency of graphic design elements in Allen’s advertisements across multiple newspapers, whether borders enclosing his lists of goods or ornamental type flanking his name in the headline, demonstrate that Allen negotiated with printers and compositors to have specific visual elements included in his advertisements. That made his advertisement in the March 27, 1769, edition of Green and Russell’s Massachusetts Gazette particularly noteworthy, in addition to its size. Filling two of three columns on the final page, Allen’s advertisement dominated the page.
Such attention to graphic design made Allen’s advertisements easy for prospective customers to recognize. Multiple iterations of his advertisements, especially over extended periods, also suggest that after initially agreeing with the printer and compositor on the format that Allen simply submitted a copy of an earlier advertisement cut from the newspaper, along with revisions marked or attached, when he wished to revive his marketing campaign. His advertisement from March 27, 1769, replicated almost exactly an advertisement that he previously ran nearly nine months earlier in the July 3, 1768, edition of the Boston Weekly News-Letter. The new version included a slightly altered headline, “TO BE SOLD BY Jolley Allen” rather than “Now ready for Sale, at the most reasonable Rate, BY Jolley Allen,” but the shopkeeper’s name still appeared in a much larger sized font than anything else in the newspapers with the exception of the masthead. Decorative ornaments forming diamonds flanked his name. The list of goods he offered for sale was almost exactly the same in terms of both content and order. For the few items missing from the previous version, he likely crossed them off the copy he submitted to the printing office. A limited number of new items appeared at the bottom of the first column and the top of the second, perhaps written in the margins or on a separate sheet by Allen. A final note to “Town and Country Customers” ran across both columns at the bottom, replicating the format of the earlier advertisement. In addition, manicules appeared in all the same places in both advertisements, including three printed upside down at the end of lines rather than at the beginning. This suggests that the compositor faithfully followed the graphic design elements present in the earlier advertisement.
Note the manicules enclosing Allen’s money back guarantee for tea. Massachusetts Gazette [Green and Russell] (March 27, 1769).Allen likely had to invest some time in working with printers and compositors to achieve the format he desired for his advertisement the first time it ran in any of Boston’s newspapers. That facilitated the process for subsequent insertions since he could simply submit a copy from a previous publication with any revisions marked, trusting the compositor to replicate a design already established.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
Supplement to the New-York Journal (March 23, 1769).
“A HARPSICHORD, completely fitted, Maker’s Name (Mahoon, London:).”
This brief advertisement offered a harpsichord for sale. Harpsichords are often referred to as the “predecessor” of the piano. When Romance music started to come about at the beginning of the nineteenth century, everyone started to move over to pianos. This was due to the fact that pianos were more expressive and had more dynamics. This became even more true when Beethoven started working with piano builders in the early nineteenth century to make louder pianos before he went completely deaf. One of the main drawbacks to the harpsichord, that the piano did not have, was that no matter how softly or forcefully a musician pushed down on a key of a harpsichord the volume rang with the same amount of sound at all times.
During the eighteenth century many of the wealthy and elite had a harpsichord in their homes for entertainment. Ed Crews writes that “harpsichords were expensive in Great Britain and its North American colonies. During the 1700s … most harpsichords in America were made in Great Britain. Because of the cost, the instrument was a status symbol. The powerful, the refined, and the wealthy made sure they had one in their homes.” The harpsichord in this advertisement was made in London. Poorer colonists sometimes learn to sing in church or learned to play instruments that were less costly and of lower overall quality compared to the harpsichords owned by their wealthier counterparts.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
Working with undergraduate guest curators sometimes offers a brief respite from examining the featured advertisements in favor of reflecting on pedagogy. All of the guest curators currently working on the Adverts 250 Project are currently enrolled in my upper-lever Revolutionary America, 1763-1815, course at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. As long as they abide by the methodology for the project they may examine whichever advertisements they wish. However, as project manager I reserve the right to review and approve all advertisements included in the project. I encourage guest curators to submit their proposed advertisements for approval before they conduct further research or begin writing about them.
This results in guest curators frequently choosing advertisements that I would not have considered or passing over advertisements that I would like to include in the project. When Sean presented this exceptionally brief advertisement for my consideration I initially attempted to wave him off of it and on to another advertisement. I thought that it might be a difficult choice for someone working as a guest curator for the first time. As an alternative I directed him to an advertisement in the same column of the March 23, 1769, edition of the New-York Journal, a subscription notice for printing “AN HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF THE CAMPAIGNS IN NORTH AMERICA, For the Years 1757, 8, 9, and 60 … By CAPTAIN JOHN KNOX.” We covered the Seven Years War at the beginning of the semester, so I reasoned that Sean could readily make connections between course content and that advertisement.
Sean, however, explained that he had intentionally chosen the advertisement about the harpsichord. As a Music minor, he previously enrolled in a course that examined the history of music. He wanted to draw together material from classes in different disciplines. Once I heard Sean’s explanation I enthusiastically approved the advertisement for the harpsichord. His choice achieved one of my goals for incorporating undergraduate guest curators into the project to fulfill the requirements of my Revolutionary America course: challenging students to consider connections between the material they encounter in my class and what they have learned in other History courses and classes offered by other departments. In addition, Sean demonstrated another point that I make to guest curators when we first discuss the project. The advertisement for the harpsichord was deceptively brief. At the beginning of the semester most of Sean’s peers may have passed over it, questioning its significance. Yet Sean used it to tell a robust story about entertainment, status, and changing technologies in the era of the American Revolution.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Providence Gazette (March 25, 1769).
“Pepper by the Bag.”
Joseph and William Russell advertised a few different commodities, such as pork, pepper, cordage, duck, indigo, and nails. Pepper was one of the biggest imports that came from Asia into Europe; it was one of the most valuable resources that the British imported from British India to Europe and the colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pepper had been one of the bigger sources of conflict between the British and the Dutch in earlier years, according to K.N. Chaudhuri in The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760. Though the wrestling for dominance over India by European powers took place earlier than the Russells published their advertisement in the Providence Gazette, it bore great weight when observing the later outcomes and rewards that the British and the colonists reaped from those earlier efforts in securing a steady flow of resources from India, including textiles and pepper.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
When it came time to select which advertisement to feature today, Sean had very few options. The Providence Gazette was the only newspaper published in colonial America on Saturday, March 25, 1769. While it often carried dozens of advertisements that filled the entire final page and often spilled over to other pages, only five paid notices ran in the March 25 edition. They did not amount to an entire column. Two were legal notices and one offered a forge for lease. Only two offered goods for sale: the advertisement placed by the Russells and an even shorter notice for “best English Hay and Hay-Seed” to be sold by Hezekiah Carpenter. Guest curator Zach Dubreuil already examined the Russells’ advertisement last week. While the methodology for the Adverts 250 Project usually specifies that an advertisement should be featured only once, I instructed Sean that he could work with this advertisement as long as he consulted with Zach to choose a different aspect to analyze.
Those five notices were not, however, the sole mention of advertising in the Providence Gazette that week. At the bottom of the column John Carter, the printer, inserted a short announcement: “Advertisements omitted, for Want of Room, shall be in our next.” The relative scarcity of advertising in that issue apparently was not for lack of notices submitted to the printing office, as often seemed to be the case with the Boston Chronicle, but rather too much other content that Carter considered more important at the moment. Printers needed to carefully manage such situations. Especially at times of political turmoil, they had an obligation to disseminate news to their readers as quickly as they acquired it or risk losing readers, yet revenues from advertising were essential to the continued operation of colonial newspapers. The notice that “Advertisements omitted … shall be in our next” informed clients who expected to see their advertisements in the March 25 edition that they would indeed appear the following week after only a brief hiatus. That strategy was not Carter’s only option. Printers throughout the colonies sometimes issued half sheet supplements comprised of advertising when news (and other advertisements) filled the standard issue. Carter may not have had sufficient additional paid notices to merit doing so, or he may not have had sufficient time to produce a supplement. Even though few advertisements ran in the March 25 issue, the printer still addressed the business of advertising in the pages of the newspaper.
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
Boston Chronicle (March 23-27, 1769).
“Several BARRELS of SOAP, and a variety of European GOODS.”
In this advertisement Elias Dupee is trying to sell a few different kinds of goods, including apparel and other goods useful around the house. He points out specifically that he has several “BARRELS of SOAP” as well as “a variety of European GOODS.” This soap may have been produced in the colonies since Dupee listed it separately. This is worth noting because soap was a very large import into the colonies from Britain; the colonists preferred to import soap from overseas instead of making soap themselves. In “Baubles of Britain,” T.H. Breen talks about how this was the case. He notes, “One English traveler discovered to her surprise that in rural North Carolina women seldom bothered to produce soap. It was not a question of the availability of raw materials. Good ashes could be had at no expense. But these rural women were consumers, and they preferred to purchase Irish soap ‘at the store at a monstrous price.’”[1] That the soap that Dupee advertised may have been made in the colonies points to a shift in the colonies moving towards more self-reliance at a time that they reduced imports to resist the taxes from the Townshend Acts.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes
Today Sean and I have deviated slightly from the Adverts 250 Project’s methodology in order to explore an aspect of early American newspaper publication that often confuses modern readers the first time they examine eighteenth-century newspapers: the date listed in the masthead and, sometimes, at the top of each page.
Consider the Boston Chronicle. The masthead for issue 78 includes this date: “From THURSDAY, MARCH 23, to MONDAY, MARCH 27, 1769.” The top of each page included the name of the newspaper and a date, “March 23—March 27.” What does this mean? When was that issue printed and distributed to subscribers? Does that date mean that it was printed on March 23 and readers should not expect another issue until March 27? Or does that date mean that the issue was printed on March 27 and covered the period since March 23? Twenty-first-century readers cannot make a determination in a glance. Sean and his peer were confused by the dates when they first encountered them, as was I when I began working with eighteenth-century newspapers.
Examining the content of issue 78 of the Boston Chronicle reveals when it was published. In particular, the dates listed in some of the advertisements prove useful, unlike the dates attached to some of the news items. For instance, news from Philadelphia was dates March 9, news from New York March 20, and news from New London March 17. The advertisement immediately below Dupee’s auction notice, however, reported that “a likely Negroe Fellow, (named CATO)” ran away from George Watson of Plymouth on March 25. That date indicates that issue 78 could not have been published on March 23. Instead, it was published on March 27 and contained all of the news, advertising, and other content for the period since the previous issue that bore the date “From MONDAY, March 20, to THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 1769.”
This example points to an aspect of working with undergraduate guest curators that I particularly enjoy: the fresh eyes that they bring to sources that have become very familiar to me. As I mentioned above, I also questioned the dates on newspapers like the Boston Chronicle when I first began examining eighteenth-century newspapers, but I have become so accustomed to that convention that I hardly remembered it until Sean and others raised questions about what appeared to be a confusing date. Over the course of this semester, as in past semesters, I have observed undergraduate guest curators achieve greater mastery of early American history, including gaining some of the expertise of print culture specialists. They have done so via exploration of primary sources they have selected on their own rather than merely responding to readings that I have gathered for them.
In the process, Sean and I decided to depart from the methodology that dictates that the featured advertisement must have appeared in a newspaper published exactly 250 years ago today. Instead, he chose one published 250 years ago this week so we could examine how colonists thought about the dates on newspapers in addition to the goods and services advertised in those newspaper.
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[1] T.H. Breen, “‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 119 (May 1988): 79.
Sean Duda is a sophomore at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is double majoring in History and Education. He is also pursuing a minor in Music. He is a member of several organizations on campus, including Music Ministry, Jazz Band, Charismatic Praise, and Advocates for Life. He enjoys learning how to play new instruments and learning about Medieval Europe.
