April 27

April 27, 2024April 19, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Benjamin Rush, Bristol Baths and Chalybeate Waters, Bristol Spa, Health, Pamphlet

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

*Pennsylvania Gazette* (April 27, 1774).

“These Baths and Waters … have been for some Years deservedly in the highest Repute.”

As spring gave way to summer in 1774, the proprietors of the “BRISTOL BATHS and CHALYBEATE WELLS” ran an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette to advise residents of Philadelphia and other towns that they provided services “in the most commodious Manner, for such Persons who may incline to make Use of them [during] the approaching Season.” For any “Strangers” who were not familiar with “these Baths and Waters,” the proprietors proclaimed that they “have been for some Years deservedly in the highest Repute” for their “Effects in a Number of Diseases, which had resisted every other Medicine.” The chalybeate (or iron-infused) waters had a restorative effect that made visiting the spa an occasion for recuperation as well as relaxation. The proprietors provided several examples of maladies that the bathing in and drinking the chalybeate waters alleviated. They asserted that the waters strengthened the stomach, “promoting a good Appetite,” and rejuvenated “relaxed debilitated Constitutions, whether arising from Sickness, residing too long in a warm Climate, or too free living.” In addition, the iron-infused waters “have infallibly removed” “Obstructions in the Liver, Spleen, and mesenterick Glands.”

Yet the proprietors did not ask prospective patrons simply to take their word about the effects of the baths and wells in Bristol. Instead, they declared that the “Advantages to be obtained from Chalybeate Waters are too extensive for an Advertisement, for which Reason the Public are referred” to a pamphlet “by BENJAMIN RUSH, M.D.” The prominent physician had read a paper, “Experiments and Observations on the Mineral Waters of Philadelphia, Abington, and Bristol,” to the American Philosophical Society on June 18, 1773, and then published it. The proprietors of the Bristol Baths, Rush gave a more particular Account of their Uses, and the advantageous Situation of Bristol.” Historian Vaughan Scribner explains that Rush “nurtured colonists’ expanding interest in the science and commercialization of mineral springs.” The doctor provided a “general location and description of each spring,” described experiments with “mix[ing] more than twenty-one different substances with the mineral waters,” noted several diseases the waters cured (along with only a couple of exceptions), and “contended that the springs could hardly be rivaled for their health and commercial values.”[1] In the April 27 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, printer James Humphreys, Jr., conveniently placed an advertisement on the opposite side of the page as the notice about the Bristol Baths and Chalybeate Wells. Most of it concerned an update for subscribers to “STERNE’s WORKS,” but the printer appended a note that he sold “EXPERIMENTS and OBSERVATIONS on the MINERAL WATERS … By BENJAMIN RUSH, M.D. Professors of Chymistry in the College of Philadelphia.” Perhaps that was a happy coincidence for the proprietors of the Bristol Baths and Chalybeate Waters, but maybe they had coordinated with Humphreys to have their advertisements run at the same time. Either way, they did not direct the public to an obscure pamphlet. Instead, anyone interested in learning more could easily acquire Rush’s tract.

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[1] Vaughn Scribner, “‘The happy effects of these waters’: Colonial American Miner Spas and the British Civilizing Mission,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 14, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 437, https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2016.0020.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 27, 1774

April 27, 2024August 10, 2023 Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

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*Pennsylvania Journal* (April 27, 1774).

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April 26

April 26, 2024April 18, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Broker, Effectiveness of Advertising, Jacob Valk, South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal

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

*Supplement to the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal* (April 26, 1774).

“For further particulars, enquire of JACOB VALK.”

Jacob Valk established a brokerage office in Charleston in the early 1770s. In his newspaper advertisements, he advised, “Lands, Houses, and Negroes, Bought and sold at private Sale, upon the usual Commission.” If the pages of the public prints provide any guidance, many colonizers availed themselves of his services, entrusting the broker to conduct business on their behalf. His name became a familiar sight as he placed advertisement after advertisement for his clients.

Consider the supplement that accompanied the April 26 edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal. Valk purchased an entire column on the third page, running fourteen advertisements. Some offered tracts of land for sale, while others included houses and other buildings along with land. Two of them announced sales of enslaved people, one indicating “SEVERAL NEGROES” without giving further details and the other describing “two very valuable Negro Shoe-makers.” Valk sought buyers for “A Small Sloop” and a pettiaugre (or canoe). In each instance, he invoked a familiar refrain: “For further Particulars, enquire of JACOB VALK.” He also assisted executors of estates in calling on those who had unfinished business to settle accounts, inviting them to his office “where the Particulars of that Estate now lay ready for their Perusal.” Four days earlier, Valk purchased a similar amount of space to run many of the same advertisements in the South-Carolina and American General Gazette.

The broker must have factored the cost of advertising into the “usual Commission” that he received for his services, especially considering that he was one of the best customers for the printing offices in Charleston. That he continuously placed newspaper advertisement testifies to his confidence in their general effectiveness, though not every notice may have achieved the desired results. Running so many simultaneously allowed him to distribute the risk and rewards of advertising. Even if some advertisements did not attract buyers, sellers, or associates seeking to settle accounts, others apparently did. When considered collectively, Valk came out ahead on what he invested in advertising. His individual clients, however, would not have had the same experience had they gone it alone. If they paid Valk on commission following a transaction he facilitated, then they paid only for successful advertisements without losing money on notices that did not produce the intended results.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 26, 1774

April 26, 2024April 18, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

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*South-Carolina and American General Gazette* (April 26, 1774).

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*South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal* (April 26, 1774).

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April 25

April 25, 2024April 17, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Auctioneer, Bell Over Door, Boston-Gazette, Employee at Door, Martin Bicker, Unhappy Neighbors

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

*Supplement to the Boston-Gazette* (April 25, 1774).

“A Bell … which is erected over his Auction-Room Door.”

Martin Bicker’s neighbors were not happy with him. As the auctioneer explained in an advertisement addressed “To thePUBLIC” in the Boston-Gazette in the spring of 1774, some of them objected to one of the methods he deployed to get bidders into his “Auction-Room.” Bicker had hired someone to stand “at his Door to invite Gentlemen and others to his public Sales.” In other words, he stationed an employee at the entrance to engage passersby in hopes of convincing them to check out the items going up for bid. That innovation supplemented other marketing efforts undertaken by auctioneers, including newspaper notices, catalogs, handbills, and previews of goods in advance of auctions.

Other colonizers in the vicinity of Bicker’s auction house apparently did not care for this innovation. He reported that it “has given Dissatisfaction to some” and singled out “Gentlemen Shopkeepers in particular.” Perhaps those shopkeepers claimed that they did not like the noise or the constant presence of Bicker’s employee on the street outside the auction house, but most likely they really opposed the competition that potentially affected their own sales. After all, both consumers and retailers who bought to sell again could often find better bargains at auctions than they could get at local shops and stores. Bicker underscored in his advertisement that the public should attend his auctions “for their own Advantage.” An employee outside his door could have made that point to prospective bidders in greater detail repeatedly throughout the day and within earshot of nearby “Gentlemen Shopkeepers.” They may have worried that someone lurking on the street made their customers anxious about becoming the target of unwanted appeals or having to extricate themselves from uncomfortable conversations as they sought to go about their business, but concerns about losing those customers to the auction house probably motivated their complaints just as much.

Bicker devised a solution that he “flatters himself cannot fail giving universal Satisfaction, as he sincerely wishes so to do,” though the tone suggested that he was not sincere nor that he cared much about the “Satisfaction” of the “Gentlemen Shopkeepers.” He may very well have been thumbing his nose at them when he installed a bell “over his Auction-Room Door.” In an earlier advertisement, he noted that a red flag marked his location. The bell, a new enhancement, likely attracted as much notice, drawing attention to his auction house and calling prospective bidders to his sales from an even greater distance than the employee stationed at the door. Bicker’s concern for the “Gentlemen Shopkeepers” may have been a polite fiction considering that he concocted a solution with so much potential to cause just as much “Dissatisfaction.”

Slavery Advertisements Published April 25, 1774

April 25, 2024August 10, 2023 Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

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Boston-Gazette (April 25, 1774).

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*Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy* (April 25, 1774).

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*New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury* (April 25, 1774).

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*Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury* (April 25, 1774).

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*South-Carolina Gazette* (April 25, 1774).

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April 24

April 24, 2024April 17, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Imported Magazines, James Rivington, Rivington's New-York Gazetteer, Westminster Magazine

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

*Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer* (April 21, 1774).

“Any number may be had separate to complete sets, or the whole done up in the usual magazine form.”

James Rivington, the printer of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, cultivated alternate revenue streams at his printing office. Many printers were also booksellers, peddling books they imported from England. Such was the case with Rivington. He devoted a portion of his advertisement in the April 21, 1774, edition of his newspaper to “NEW BOOKS,” listing several that he had on hand. He also promoted other items from among the “fresh Parcel of Goods” he recently received. Like many other printers, he sold “cakes for making ink” and popular patent medicines, yet he also stocked a more elaborate inventory of other kinds of goods, including “Shaving boxes fitted with soap and brushes,” “CASES of METHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS,” and “WESTON’s Snuff, fresh and very excellent.”

The printer and bookseller also advised prospective customers that “This Day are come to hand the Magazines and Reviews.” In particular, he hawked “THE WESTMINSTER MAGAZINE,” proclaiming that he had copies “For every month of the last year.” An associate on the other side of the Atlantic had assembled the annual run of the magazine and shipped it to Rivington to peddle to colonizers interested in a review of “the history, politicks, literature, manners,” and other cultural touchstones “of the year 1773.” To further entice readers, the magazine was “adorned with a variety of well executed copperplates” that buyers could leave intact or remove to frame and display in homes, shops, or offices. For those who had already purchased some editions but not others, Rivington allowed that “Amy of the numbers may be had separate to complete sets.” He also offered “the whole done up in the usual magazine form, and lettered on the back.” In other words, a bookbinder would compile all the issues of the Westminster Magazine from 1773 into a single bound volume and label the spine. That transformed the separate issues from ephemera into an attractive collection that would enhance any library.

Rivington advertised the Westminster Magazine at the same time that Isaiah Thomas continued marketing the Royal American Magazine, the publication that he launched earlier in the year. The Royal American Magazine was the only magazine published in the colonies at the time. Only about a dozen American magazines had been published before that, most of them folding in less than a year and none of them lasting longer than three years. Instead of American magazines, colonizers usually bought imported magazines from booksellers or received them from correspondents. Rivington’s method of importing, advertising, and disseminating the Westminster Magazine and other magazines was familiar and standard practice, making the Royal American Magazine the novelty in the American marketplace.

April 23

April 23, 2024April 15, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Community of Readers, English Liberties, Free Copy, John Carter, List of Subscribers, Providence Gazette, Subscription Papers

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

“Subscribers Names may be annexed to the Work.”

When John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, set about publishing a new edition of English Liberties, Or the Free-Born Subject’s Inheritance: Containing Magna Charta, Charta de Foresta, the Statute de Tallagio non Concedendo, the Habeas Corpus Act, and Several Other Statutes, with Comments on Each of Them, he started with subscription proposals. Early American printers often did not take books directly to press. Instead, they disseminated proposals that described their intended projects, simultaneously seeking to gauge the market and to incite demand. In requesting that subscribers reserve their copies in advance, sometimes asking them to pay a deposit, printers determined whether publishing proposed books would be viable ventures and, if so, how many copies to print to avoid producing surplus copies that cut into profits. Subscription proposals ran as advertisements in newspapers and, for some proposed works, “Subscription-Papers” circulated separately as handbills, broadsides, and pamphlets.

Many printers recruited local agents to assist them in collecting the names of subscribers and how many copies each wished to reserve. Carter did so with English Liberties. In an update in the April 23, 1774, edition of the Providence Gazette, he advised that the book “is now in great Forwardness.” Most likely much of the type had been set and supplies, such as paper, acquired by the printing office. Carter instructed the “Gentlemen who have favoured the Printer hereof in promoting Subscriptions … to return [their subscription papers] by the last of May.” He needed to receive them by that time so “the Subscribers Names may be annexed to the Work.” That was a popular strategy for inciting demand among prospective customers, promising that their names would appear along with others who also subscribed. They became part of a community of readers, even if they never met, and, in this instance, a community of citizens committed to those “ENGLISH LIBERTIES” that had been “The free-born Subject’s Inheritance” for generations. Printers suggested to those who had not yet subscribed that they needed to do so if they wished to be recognized alongside their friends and acquaintances and the most prominent members of their communities who already made a statement about the causes that they supported by subscribing for one or more copies.

Carter deployed other marketing strategies to encourage subscriptions for English Liberties. He warned that “very few will be printed more than are subscribed for,” so anyone who even had an inkling that they might want a copy should not depend on waiting to purchase the book after it went to press. In addition, Carter offered a premium: “Those who subscribe for six, to have a seventh gratis.” Subscribers who purchased multiple copies would receive a free one as a reward.

Carter did indeed insert a list of “SUBSCRIBERS NAMES” at the end of the book. They appeared in somewhat alphabetical order, with last names starting with “A” coming first, followed by “B,” and so on. Carter indicated the town for subscribers who did not reside in Providence and, within each letter, clustered subscribers from the same town together. That made it easier for subscribers to determine which of their neighbors had joined them in supporting the enterprise. Most were from towns in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, but some subscribed from greater distances, including Robert Johnston of Chester County in Pennsylvania and Thomas Tillyer in Philadelphia. The roster of subscribers included nearly five hundred names, mostly men, but also Mrs. Elizabeth Belvher of Wrentham, Massachusetts, several lawyers and ministers, and even Darius Sessions, the deputy governor of Rhode Island. For those who subscribed for multiple copies, Carter listed how many. A few purchased two or three copies, but more commonly subscribers purchased six, a sign of the effectiveness of the printer’s marketing strategy.

Not all subscription proposals resulted in publishing books. Printers sometimes learned that they could not generate sufficient demand. In this case, however, the combination of the subject matter’s relationship to the political climate, widespread distribution of subscription papers to local agents, publishing the names of subscribers, and free copies for those who purchased at least six contributed to the success of the venture, though it had taken more than a year.

April 22

April 22, 2024April 15, 2024 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Anna Johnson, Classification, Classified Ads, Elizabeth Greenleaf, Garden Seeds, Lydia Dyar, Massachusetts Spy, Susanna Renken

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

“GARDEN SEEDS.”

Susanna Renken advertised “GARDEN SEEDS” in several newspapers published in Boston throughout the spring of 1774, just as she had been doing for many years. Many of her competitors, including Lydia Dyar, Elizabeth Greenleaf, and Anna Johnson, did the same. Each of them deployed the same headline, “GARDEN SEEDS,” and listed the many options they stocked in their shops. Dyar’s advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy included a final notation, “4 m,” intended for those who worked in the printing office, not for readers. It indicated that her advertisement should run for four months before the compositor removed it. All the advertisements placed by Boston’s female seed sellers became familiar sights in the public prints, an annual ritual that marked the changing of the seasons.

Their notices often appeared together. In the April 22 edition of the Massachusetts Spy, for instance, four of their advertisements filled most of a column, running one after another with Greenleaf’s first, followed by Dyar’s and Renken’s, and finally Johnson’s. That merits notice because printers did not tend to arrange advertisements by purpose or genre in eighteenth-century newspapers. Paid notices were not classified advertisements because they were not clustered together according to classification or category. Instead, they appeared in whatever order the compositor made them fit on the page. The eight advertisements immediately to the right of those placed by the female seed sellers included one for a pamphlet for sale, two for imported textiles and “all sorts of Groceries … except TEA,” one for imported silks and “Hard-Ware and Cutlery GOODS,” one for a lottery to benefit Harvard College, one for “CHOICE MADDER,” a plant used in dyeing, one for “ENGLISH, India, and Scotch Goods, suitable for the season, one for a school for girls, and one for millinery goods “of the newest fashion,” in that order. No guiding principle seemed to dictate which one followed which. Yet the compositor made a choice to place the advertisements for “GARDEN SEEDS” together, even opting to put Sarah Dawson’s notice first. The “Widow of the late Joseph Dawson, Gardner,” marketed a “collection of grafted and inoculated English FRUIT TREES,” but also happened to mention an “assortment of GARDEN SEEDS.” That apparently convinced the compositor to position her advertisement with those from Dyar, Greenleaf, Johnson, and Renken.

This practice made the notices placed by female seed sellers in Boston during the era of the American Revolution precursors to classified advertisements that would eventually run in American newspapers in later periods. For the most part, however, advertising in early American newspapers did not have that level of organization when it came to the order in which they appeared.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 22, 1774

April 22, 2024August 10, 2023 Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

These advertisements appeared in colonial American newspapers 250 years ago today.

*South-Carolina and American General Gazette* (April 22, 1774).

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	April 26 \| The Adver… on August 9
	April 25 \| The Adver… on April 5
	April 24 \| The Adver… on April 3
	April 23 \| The Adver… on December 18
	Loyalist Trails 2024… on April 19

The Adverts 250 Project

An Exploration of Advertising During the Era of the American Revolution, 250 Years Ago This Week

Slavery Advertisements Published April 27, 1774

Slavery Advertisements Published April 26, 1774

Slavery Advertisements Published April 25, 1774

Slavery Advertisements Published April 22, 1774