Slavery

February 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What kinds of advertisements ran in the inaugural issue of Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette 250 years ago today?

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 3, 1775).

“BENJAMIN BUCKTROUT, Cabinet maker, … STILL carries on that business.”

“To be sold … THIRTY Virginia born negroes, consisting of men, women, boys, and girls.”

Alexander Purdie launched his Virginia Gazette on Friday, February 3, 1775.  It was the third newspaper bearing that name printed in Williamsburg at the time.  John Pinkney published his Virginia Gazette on Thursdays and John Dixon and William Hunter distributed their Virginia Gazette on Saturdays.  As the imperial crisis intensified, a third Virginia Gazetteincreased access and dissemination of news and editorials (and advertisements) in the colony.

In early December 1774, Purdie and Dixon announced the dissolution of their partnership, with Dixon indicating that he would continue to publish that iteration of the Virginia Gazette with Hunter as his new partner and Purdie asserting that he would commence publication of another newspaper as soon as he attracted a sufficient number of subscribers.  He also solicited advertisers, realizing that paid notices accounted for an important source of revenue for any newspaper.

When he published the inaugural issue of his Virginia Gazette, it included seven advertisements that filled most of the last column on the final page.  Those numbers did not rival the amount of advertising in either of the other newspapers printed in Williamsburg that week, both of which had enough notices to fill an entire page, but it was a start.  Those initial advertisers signaled to others that they might consider advertising in Purdie’s newspaper a good investment.

Benjamin Bucktrout, a cabinetmaker, did not entrust his marketing efforts solely to Purdie’s Virginia Gazette.   He placed an identical advertisement in Dixon and Hunter’s newspaper the next day.  It likely enjoyed greater circulation in the more established Virginia Gazette, yet may have garnered greater notice by readers of Purdie’s Virginia Gazette as the first of only a few advertisements in that publication.

In addition to Bucktrout’s notice, one advertisement sought an apprentice to work in a store, two noted stray horses “TAKEN up” until their owners could be identified, and three concerned enslaved people.  Abraham Smith and Henry Lochhead presented “THIRTY Virginia born negroes, consisting of men, women, boys, and girls,” for sale.  Townshend Dade offered a reward for the capture and return of “a negro fellow named HARRY” who had liberated himself by running away from his enslaver the previous August.  Peter Pelham advised readers of “a runaway negro man named Goliah” who had been “COMMITTED to the publick jail” until his enslaver claimed him.  Advertisements about enslaved people represented a significant proportion of notices in each Virginia Gazette.  They amounted to nearly half of the advertisements in the first issue of Purdie’s Virginia Gazette.

December 2

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Norwich Packet (December 2, 1773).

“RUN away … a Negro Boy, named PIGGEN.”

It was the ninth issue of the Norwich Packet, a newspaper established by Alexander Robertson, James Robertson, and John Trumbull in October 1773.  The ninth issue included an advertisement that described “a Negro Boy, named PIGGEN,” who liberated himself by running away from his enslaver, James Rogers.  The advertisement documented the clothing worn by the young man, “about 19 years of age,” when he departed from New London, Connecticut.  Rogers also reported that Piggen “speaks good English,” encouraging readers to listen to Black men they did not recognize as well as take note of their apparel.  Anyone who identified Piggen, captured him, and returned him to Rogers “shall have three dollars reward.”  This advertisement resembled so many others that appeared in newspapers from New England to Georgia.

It may not have been the first paid notice about an enslaved person that appeared in the Norwich Packet.  The first several issues have not survived.  Coverage in America’s Historical Newspapers, the most extensive database of digitized images of eighteenth-century newspapers, begins with the sixth issue.  Previous issues might have included advertisements offering enslaved men, women, and children for sale or advertisements about other enslaved people who liberated themselves.  Every newspaper published in New England at the time ran such advertisements.  Whether or not Rogers’s advertisement about Piggen was the first to appear in the Norwich Packet, it took the Robertsons and Trumbull no more than two months to incorporate this particular kind of content into their new publication.  In both northern colonies and southern colonies, printers quickly became complicit in perpetuating slavery by publishing such advertisements.  In Baltimore, for instance, the first issue of the Maryland Journal, published August 20, 1773, included an advertisement by a broker seeking to purchase and enslaved girl and a notice promising a reward for Prince, an enslaved man who emancipated himself.  In the third issue of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, published May 6, 1773, James Rivington published an advertisement offering a “Very fine Negro Boy” for sale.  Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks became the new proprietors of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy in the spring of 1773.  They continued publishing advertisements about enslaved people, a policy already in place at that newspaper.  When printers ran such advertisements, they generated revenues that underwrote the dissemination of other news during the era of the American Revolution.

August 20

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

Who were the subjects of advertisements in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Maryland Journal (August 20, 1773).

“A NEGRO GIRL, about 12 years old.”

“RAN away … Negro PRINCE.”

After many months of disseminating subscription proposals and promoting the Maryland Journal, the first newspaper published in Baltimore, William Goddard printed and distributed the first issue on August 20, 1773.  In addition to subscribers, he sought advertisers to generate revenues that would make the enterprise viable.  In an update that appeared in the May 20 edition of the Maryland Gazette, for instance, Goddard pledged that “seasonable notice will be given in this gazette, to give gentlemen an opportunity to advertise in the first number.”  Just as John Dunlap managed to do when he launched the Pennsylvania Packet, Goddard attracted a significant number of advertisers for the first issue of the Maryland Journal.  Advertising accounted for a little more than four of the twelve columns in the inaugural issue.

Those advertisements included some that previously appeared in other newspapers, including Daniel Grant’s notice that he opened an inn and tavern “at the Sign of the Fountain” in Baltimore and a lengthy notice concerning land in the Ohio River valley placed by Virginia planter and land speculator George Washington.  Other advertisers included Christopher Hughes and Company, “GOLDSMITHS and JEWELLERS,” David Evans, “CLOCK and WATCH-MAKER,” Francis Sanderson, “COPPERSMITH,” Grant and Garrison, “TAYLORS,” and Mr. Rathell, “Teacher of the ENGLISH Language, Writing-master and Accomptant.”

Maryland Journal (August 20, 1773).

In addition, Thomas Brereton, “COMMISSION and INSURANCE BROKER,” placed a short notice in which he “GRATEFULLY acknowledges the favours of his friends, and hopes for a continuance of their correspondence.”  He also reported that he “has now for sale, a Pocket of good HOPS, a 10-inch new CABLE – and wants to buy a NEGRO GIRL about 12 years old.”  In another advertisement, Richard Bennet Hall described a Black man, Prince, who had liberated himself the previously December.  Prince was captured once “at Susquehanna Lower Ferry, but made his escape, and is often seen in the neighbourhood.”  The formerly enslaved man managed to elude capture, but Hall hoped his advertisement would help put an end to that. He offered five dollars who anyone who detained Prince in a local jail “so that that the owner may get him again” or ten pounds and “reasonable charges” to anyone who delivered Prince to Hall in Prince George’s County.  In its very first issue, the Maryland Journal became an instrument for perpetuating slavery with both a brokerage notice related to the slave trade and an advertisement encouraging readers to engage in surveillance of Black men in order to identify an enslaved man who liberated himself and assist in returning him to captivity.  Goddard had prior experience publishing such advertisements in the Providence Gazette and the Pennsylvania Chronicle.  From New England to Georgia, no newspaper printer in the colonies rejected advertisements about enslaved people.  Instead, they solicited and accepted them as an integral part of generating revenues that underwrote publishing news and editorials.

June 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

Who were the subjects of advertisements in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (June 1, 1773).

“A CARGO OF ONE HUNDRED and FIFTY-FIVE Sierra-Leon NEGROES.”

When it came to advertising, Charles Crouch, the printer of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, did good business in terms of notices about enslaved people.  Such advertisements, whether offering enslaved people for sale or offering rewards for the capture and return of those who liberated themselves by running away, generated significant revenue for Crouch and other printers.  Consider the June 1, 1773, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal.  It carried sixty-one advertisements.  Among those that hawked a variety of consumer goods and services appeared two notices from the printer, seven legal notices from courts held in various towns throughout the colony, and sixteen about enslaved people.  Thirteen concerned upcoming sales, while the others the described enslaved people, including Flora, a “Washer and Ironer,” who escaped from their enslavers.

Visual images made the preponderance of advertisements about enslaved people all the more striking.  Enslaved people populated the page just as they populated the busy port of Charleston as well as towns and plantations in the countryside throughout the colony.  Images adorned fourteen of the advertisements in the June 1 edition, four of them depicting vessels at sea for advertisements seeking cargo and passengers and ten of them depicting one or more enslaved people.  Nine of those woodcuts of enslaved people appeared in a single column on the third page, the repetition and proximity making them all the more difficult to overlook.

Those advertisements described captives who arrived in Charleston “after a short Passage from AFRICA,” “from the Gold Coast,” “directly from GAMBIA,” “directly from the Coast,” “from GAMBIA,” “From CAPE-MOUNT, (A RICE COUNTRY),” “from Angola,” “directly from the Coast of Africa,” and “from the Gold-Coast.”  The images not only represented the presence of enslaved people in Charleston and throughout the colony; they also testified to the scenes in the ships that transported enslaved people across the Atlantic and the scenes at auction sites that put Black bodies on display for examination and scrutiny by prospective buyers, though sanitized for consumption in the public prints.  Printers, like Crouch, helped perpetuate slavery and the slave trade via the words and images that they allowed (and encouraged) advertisers to publish in their newspapers.

December 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Virginia Gazette [Purdie and Dixon] (December 3, 1772).

“To be HIRED for a Year, and delivered on New Year’s Day, FOUR Negro MEN, five young WOMEN, and a BOY.”

As the new year approached in December 1772, “FOUR Negro MEN, five young WOMEN, and a BOY” faced the prospects of their living and working conditions changing significantly, though they may not have been aware that was the case.  Anne Blair took to the pages of Alexander Purdie and John Dixon’s Virginia Gazette to advertise that she offered those enslaved people “To be HIRED for a Year, and delivered on New Year’s Day.”  In other words, she did not seek to sell them to other enslavers but instead “rent” them, just as she offered a plantation in Prince George County “to be rented, for a Year, or Years.”  Blair did not provide any additional details about the enslaved men, women, and boy.  She did not list their skills or occupations, nor did she mention whether any of them were relations who risked separation upon being “HIRED for a Year.”

Blair was not alone in acting as an absentee enslaver who sought to collect the wages earned by enslaved people hired out to other colonizers.  On the same day that her advertisement appeared in the Virginia Gazette, a notice about a “smart, sensible” enslaved woman, “Who is a good Sempstress, a plain Cook, and extreamly well qualified to do every Business about a House,” ran on the first page of the South-Carolina Gazette.  The advertisement advised that the woman was “To be Sold, or hired by the Month.”  The shorter term meant more flexibility for any colonizer who “hired” the enslaved woman.  It did not take into account anything that she might think about the arrangement.  All that mattered was the convenience of “her present Proprietor,” an anonymous advertiser who depended on the printers to act as intermediaries and brokers.  That “Proprietor” stated that he wished to sell or hire out the enslaved woman only because “he has no Employment for her” in his own household.

Before, during, and after the era of the American Revolution, enslaved people faced upheavals in their lives beyond the buying and selling undertaken by enslavers.  Many also experienced the hiring out system, an alternate form of extracting their labor while treating them as commodities rather than people.  The early American press played a role in perpetuating those practices.  Newspaper advertisements and the printers who published them facilitated various forms of buying, selling, trading, and hiring out enslaved people.

December 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  J. Rioux

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

South-Carolina and American General Gazette (December 16, 1771).

“A CARGO OF Upward of NINETY Prime SLAVES.”

Advertisements in early American newspapers contain some of the most degrading language used towards fellow human beings. On December 16, 1771, the South-Carolina and American General Gazette published a listing for a large group of enslaved people to be sold, likely by auction. John Edwards and Company and Elias Vanderhorst stated, “To be sold … A CARGO of Upward NINETY Prime SLAVES, Being the first Choice out of a large Cargo at Barbados.” This choice of words signals to modern readers that racism was embedded in the United States from the very beginning.

The words “Choice” and “Prime” was often used in regards to goods. In essence, these men, women, and children were being described as objects, as commodities. The language in this advertisement stripped them of their identities, demonstrating that some people were valued less than others. This is contradictory to precious words written during the same era: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson wrote those words less than five years after the men, women, and children in this “CARGO” were deprived of their liberty.

John Cheng, a historian who teaches at George Mason University, declares, “‘Race” explained why Africans were slaves, while slavery’s degradation supplied the evidence for their inferiority.” The repercussions of such ideology continue today as Black Lives Matter and other organizations have emerged to address the ongoing dehumanization that too often takes place in American society.

**********

ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

Rioux, as he prefers to be called, completed this entry in the spring of 2021 when he enrolled in my research methods class, a course required of all History majors before they take the capstone research seminar in their senior year.  In addition to selecting an advertisement to feature for the Adverts 250 Project, he also served as the guest curator for the Slavery Adverts 250 Project this week.  This advertisement about a “CARGO OF … Prime SLAVES” is one of the sixty-one advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children that appeared in colonial American newspapers from New England to South Carolina during the week of December 12-18, 1771.  His classmates all undertook the same assignments: select one advertisement to feature on the Adverts 250 Project (not necessarily about slavery) and serve as guest curator of the Slavery Adverts 250 Project for a week.  I incorporated the same assignments into my Revolutionary America, 1763-1815, class this semester.

I’m preparing Rioux’s entry for publication and writing my own commentary on the same day that I have devoted many hours to grading final projects for my Revolutionary America course.  Many students confess to some initial trepidation about taking on these responsibilities when I first introduce the projects in class.  After all, these are not the essays that they expected to write in a history class.  Like Rioux, however, they become proficient at using databases of digitized eighteenth-century newspapers, identifying advertisements that belong in the project, and placing them in historical context.  That they examine so many advertisements about enslaved men, women, and children certainly has an impact, much more than when I supplied representative examples for consideration during lectures and discussion.  Encountering the advertisements in the original sources, seeing their frequency and their proximity to other contents of early American newspapers, helps my students understand the ubiquity of notices presenting enslaved people for sale or offering rewards for the capture and return of those who liberated themselves.  When they do the research themselves, it becomes impossible for my students not to recognize how entrenched slavery was in everyday life throughout the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Books, articles, and lectures make the same point, but many of my students report that it becomes more real when they see it for themselves as they examine newspapers from the period.  This also allows them to reach their own conclusions as they test the arguments made by historians against what they find in original sources from early America.

June 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Supplement to the Boston-Gazette (June 17, 1771).

“For further Particulars, enquire of Edes & Gill.”

Two short advertisements about enslaved people appeared in the June 17, 1771, edition of the Boston Evening-Post.  One announced, “TO BE SOLD, A likely Negro Fellow about 15 Years of Age.”  The other declared, “A Negro Child of a good Breed, to be given away.”  The same day, two other advertisements ran in the Boston-Gazette.  “To be Sold for Want of Employ,” stated one, “A likely Negro Woman, about 33 Years old, remarkable for Honesty and a good Temper.”  The other described “a Negro Man named Dick or Richard” who liberated himself.  The clever fugitive for freedom possessed a forged pass.

Each of those advertisements testified to the presence of slavery in northern colonies in the era of the American Revolution.  As colonists debated their rights and objected to abuses perpetrated by Parliament, many continued to enslave Africans and African Americans.  They turned to the same newspapers that kept them informed about politics and current events to facilitate the buying and selling … and even giving away … of enslaved men, women, and children.  In offering a reward for the capture and return of Dick, David Edgar encouraged all readers, whether enslavers or not, to engage in surveillance of Black people to detect the fugitive seeking freedom.  Newspapers, especially advertisements, helped perpetuate slavery in early America.

Most of those advertisements in the Boston Evening-Post and the Boston-Gazette on June 17 had another similarity:  the extent that the printer participated in the transaction.  Edgar was the only advertiser who signed his notice.  Both advertisements in the Boston Evening-Post concluded with “Enquire of the Printers.”  The one offering a “likely Negro Woman” for sale in the Boston-Gazette advised, “For further Particulars, enquire of Edes & Gill.”  In addition to being well known as printers of that newspaper, their names appeared in the colophon at the bottom of the column that featured that advertisement.  The printers of both newspapers not only generated revenues by publishing advertisements about enslaved people but also actively took part in the buying, selling, and giving away of enslaved men, women, and children.  They played the role of information brokers beyond the printed page, providing additional services to enslavers who placed and responded to advertisements.

January 12

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

SlaveryProvidence Gazette (January 12, 1771).“A Likely strong Negro Man.”

On January 12, 1771, an advertisement for a “Likely strong Negro Man, about 28 Years of Age,” ran in the Providence Gazette.  It was just one of dozens of advertisements concerning enslaved men, women, and children that appeared in newspapers published throughout the colonies during the week of Sunday, January 6, through Saturday, January 12.  From New England to South Carolina, newspapers contributed to the perpetuation of slavery by publishing advertisements about buying and selling enslaved people, notices that described enslaved people who liberated themselves and offered rewards for their capture and return, and advertisements about suspected “runaways” who had been committed to jails in northern colonies and workhouses in southern colonies.

Newspaper printers, including John Carter of the Providence Gazette, generated revenues from publishing at least seventy-one such advertisements.  They appeared in newspapers in every region:  six advertisements in five newspapers in New England, eleven advertisements in four newspapers in the Middle Atlantic, twenty-five advertisements in three newspapers in the Chesapeake, and twenty-nine newspapers in the Lower South.  This tally almost certainly undercounts the total number of newspaper advertisements concerning enslaved people published that week.  Two of the four pages of the January 8 edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal are missing.  Portions of the January 10 edition of Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette are so damaged as to be illegible.  No copies of the Georgia Gazette from 1771 survive, though other sources confirm that newspaper continued publication throughout the year.  This census of newspapers notices concerning enslaved men, women, and children provides only the minimum number of such notices that readers throughout the colonies encountered that week.

That being the case, these advertisements were a familiar sight, a part of everyday life in the colonies … and not just colonies in the Chesapeake and the Lower South.  In New England, the Boston Evening-Post, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, the Massachusetts Spy, the New-Hampshire Gazette, and the Providence Gazette all carried advertisements concerning enslaved people.  In the Middle Atlantic, the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, the Pennsylvania Chronicle, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the Pennsylvania Journal did as well.  Today it may seem striking to some to glimpse an advertisement about the sale of a “Likely strong Negro Man” in the pages of the Providence Gazette in the early 1770s, that advertisement did not seem out of place to readers in Rhode Island and elsewhere in New England and other colonies when it was published.

October 27

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project , , , ,

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

Providence Gazette (October 27, 1770).

“WANTED immediately, Fifteen likely NEGROES.”

As it did in most issues, the Providence Gazette published on October 27, 1770, featured advertisements placed for various purposes.  Benoni Pearce and Elijah Bacon announced that they had “opened a BAKE-HOUSE.”  Joseph Russell and William Russell sought passengers and freight for a ship departing for London in early November.  Joseph Whipple offered a house to rent and a store and wharf for sale.  John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, hawked printed blanks and an almanac for 1771.  Hampton Lillibridge proclaimed that he “WANTED” to purchase enslaved women and children “immediately.”

Advertisements like the one placed by Lillibridge were not uncommon in the Providence Gazette and other newspapers published in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.  Colonists turned to notices in the public prints to aid them in buying and selling enslaved people.  In other instances, they inserted advertisements to warn about runaways who liberated themselves from those who held them in bondage, offering descriptions to identify them and rewards to colonists who captured and returned them to their enslavers.  Even colonists who did not themselves make claims to owning enslaved people participated in the surveillance of Black people — carefully scrutinizing their bodies, clothing, and comportment — that helped to maintain the institution of slavery.

Printers played a critical role in perpetuating slavery in early America.  From New England to Georgia, they printed advertisements that were disseminated as widely as their newspapers and brokered information that did not otherwise appear in print.  In his effort to purchase enslaved women and children, Lillibridge instructed readers to contact him directly in Newport or via “the Printing-Office in Providence.”  Carter not only garnered revenues from publishing notices about enslaved people, he also facilitated sales through “enquire of the printer” advertisements.  In many instances, the buyers and sellers remained anonymous to the public, though the evidence of the slave trade was quite visible on the printed page, interspersed among other advertisements.

Such notices were a familiar sight when readers perused eighteenth-century newspapers.  Lillibridge’s advertisement for “Fifteen likely NEGROES” in the Providence Gazette may seem stark and out of place to modern readers unfamiliar with the history of slavery in Rhode Island and the rest of New England, but it was unremarkable at the time, just another element of a massive cultural and commercial infrastructure that maintained a system of bondage and exploitation.

July 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Jul 21 - 7:21:1770 Providence Gazette
Providence Gazette (July 21, 1770).

“Some Negroes likewise to be sold.”

For several weeks in the summer of 1770, Henry Paget took to the pagers of the Providence Gazette to advertise several properties for sale in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.  Those properties included a farm in Smithfield, Rhode Island, a “Lot of very good Land” near Ware, Massachusetts, and a house near Reading, Connecticut.  He also offered for sale his “Dwelling-House” with “Shops and a good Store below” in Providence, promoting its prime location “near the Great Bridge, and handy to the College.”  Yet Paget’s notice was not merely a real estate advertisement.

At the conclusion of the advertisement, Paget inserted two additional lines indicating that he also sought to sell enslaved people:  “Some Negroes likewise to be sold.  For further Particulars enquire of said Paget.”  He did not provide further details.  He did not state how many enslaved people he intended to sell.  He did not say how many were men or women or children.  He did not list any ages.  He did not report on the skills any of them possessed.  Other advertisements sometimes included those “Particulars,” but many did not.

Eighteenth-century newspapers, including those published in New England, frequently carried advertisements that casually mentioned enslaved people for sale.  In many instances, such sales were not the primary purpose of the notices.  Instead, such sales appeared as postscripts to advertisements placed for other reasons, such as Paget’s real estate notice, or enslaved people were included alongside various commodities, treating them as though they were nothing more than commodities themselves.  Rather than focusing exclusively on enslaved people, many advertisements made casual reference to enslaved people, integrating the buying and selling of men, women, and children into other daily activities and commercial transactions.

At a glance, Paget’s advertisement does not appear to be an advertisement offering enslaved people for sale.  The headline, “His FARM,” suggests that it was a real estate notice.  That might make it easy for modern readers to overlook those final two lines unless they read carefully.  For readers of the Providence Gazette in 1770, however, enslavement was part of the fabric of everyday life.  Advertisements that hint at “Some Negroes likewise to be sold” only begin to tell much more extensive stories of enslavement in colonial and revolutionary New England.