Who was the subject of an advertisement in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
“JAMES, a mulatto slave, … took on abrupt leave of his overseer.”
Thomas Jones of Patapsco Neck in Baltimore County made a significant investment in his efforts to recover James, “a mulatto slave” who liberated himself by running away in the spring of 1775. James “took on abrupt leave of his overseer” on March 29 “and has not yet returned” by the time Jones composed an advertisement on April 3. It first ran in the Maryland Gazette, published in Annapolis, in the April 13 edition and then appeared in nearly every issue for the next year. The notice made its forty-second appearance in the April 11, 1776, edition. That was also the last time that it ran. While that may have been because someone finally captured James and returned him to bondage, the timing suggests that after a year the enslaver gave up.
Frederick Green, the printer of the Maryland Gazette, did not list the advertising fees in the colophon in 1776, but four years earlier Anne Catharine Green and Son did: “ADVERTISEMENTS of a moderate Length, are inserted the First Time, for 5s. and 1s. for each Week’s Continuance.” If the son continued charging the same fees when he operated the press after the death of his mother, that meant that Jones paid five shillings for having the type set and the space the advertisement occupied in the April 3, 1775, edition and then another shilling for each of the forty-one subsequent insertions. Overall, that amounted to two pounds and six shillings.
The investment made by Jones meant revenue for the printing office. The colophon from 1772 that listed the advertising fees also gave the annual subscription fee: twelve shillings and six pence per year. The forty-six shillings that Jones spent on his advertisements almost covered four subscriptions. He was prepared to spend even more to recover James, offering “TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD … if he should be taken up out of the province, or 60 miles from Baltimore town in the province, and brought home; five pounds of at the distance of 40 miles, three pounds if 20, and forty shillings [or two pounds] if 20 miles; with reasonable travelling expence.” Whether or not Jones had to pay out a reward, he did have to pay Green for publishing the advertisement. The notice concerning James helped pay for the dissemination of other news in the Maryland Gazette during the first year of the Revolutionary War.