Primary Sources in Early America

It should be between 1-2 pages.

For this assignment, you can find primary sources on-line for free at:

a) The Adverts 250 Project:

Description (adapted from the website)

The Adverts 250 Project explores the history of advertising in eighteenth-century America. It features a daily image of an advertisement published in a colonial newspaper 250 years ago that day. Brief commentary accompanies each advertisement.

Daily updates are supplemented with longer posts that analyze individual advertisements in greater detail, highlight other marketing items from the period, or examine issues related to research and accessibility of historical sources.

The Adverts 250 Project also publishes a daily digest of advertisements from the Slavery Adverts 250 Project (Links to an external site.).

*Note: This project is guest curated by university students like yourselves in history courses at Assumption College.

https://adverts250project.org/

b. Freedom on the Move database of fugitives from North American slavery.

With the advent of newspapers in the American colonies, enslavers posted “runaway ads” to try to locate fugitives. Additionally, jailers posted ads describing people they had apprehended in search of the enslavers who claimed the fugitives as property.

https://freedomonthemove.org/ (Links to an external site.)

c. The Geography of Slavery in Virginia is a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers. Building on the rich descriptions of individual slaves and servants in the ads, the project offers a personal, geographical and documentary context for the study of slavery in Virginia, from colonial times to the Civil War.

http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/index.html

c. Irish Immigrant Letters Home:

From the Historical Society of Pennsylvania website:

https://hsp.org/education/unit-plans/irish-immigration/irish-immigrant-letters- home (Links to an external site.) Go to the webpage above and scroll down the page and see the links to these letters. They will have transcriptions of the letters for you. Letter: Hannah Curtis to brother John Curtis, November 24, 1845 (Links to an external site.) Letter: William Dunne to his nephew John Curtis, April 25, 1846 (Links to an external site.) Letter: William Dunne to John Curtis, November 16,1846 (Links to an external site.) Letter: Hannah Curtis to John Curtis, April 21, 1847 (Links to an external site.) Letter: William Dunne to John Curtis, April 2, 1851 (Links to an external site.) Letter: John and Jane Curtis to their mother, Bridget Dunne Curtis (Links to an external site.) d) Aspiration, Acculturation, and Impact: Immigration to the United States, 1789- 1930 (Links to an external site.). Harvard University Library.

Documents voluntary immigration to the United States. Many 19th century items. Over 400,000 pages. Over 7800 photographs. Provides contextual (secondary) information. Navigate using the left side menu. https://library.harvard.edu/collections/immigration-united-states-1789-1930

e) Immigration (Links to an external site.). Library of Congress.

Stories about various ethnic groups. Navigate via the left-hand side to choose, and then page by page within the frame. "This feature presentation links educators to primary sources from the Library of Congress' online collections." https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration

EXAMPLE OF WHAT I AM EXPECTING:

I. Select a primary source to analyze. You can use visual sources. Give a citation for where you found it. The following is a text from a runaway slave ad.

Run away in July last, from Nicholas Everson, living in East-New- Jersey, two miles from Perth-Amboy ferry, a mulatto Negroe, named Tom, about 37 years of age, short, well- set, thick lips, flat nose, black curled hair, and can play well upon the fiddle: Had on when he went away, a red-colored watch-coat, without a cape, a brown coloured leather jacket, a hat, blue and white twisted yarn leggins; speaks good English, and Low Dutch, and is a good Shoemaker; his said master has been informed that he intends to cut his watchcoat, to make him Indian stockings, and to cut off his hair, and get a blanket, to pass for an Indian; that he enquired for one John and Thomas Nutus, Indians at Susquehanna, and about the Moravians, and the way there. Whoever secures him in the nearest goal or otherwise, so that his master may have him again, shall have Forty Shillings reward, and reasonable charges, paid by

NICHOLAS EVERSON 1

Citation:

1 Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the Pennsylvania Gazette, i728-i790 (Philadelphia, I989), 34.

Part II: Select an excerpt from the readings that pertain to your primary source. Pay particular attention to the importance of consumer culture and material objects in your analysis. Cite the source.

"Clothing was perhaps the most important of the trade goods that proliferated in the colonies, and it proved as crucial a matter for the runaways as for genteel men and women...Advertisements for runaways describe their clothing in great detail: since few people had an extensive wardrobe, describing the clothes was as good as describing the man or woman. All the more reason that slaves and servants took every opportunity to take their own clothes when they absconded, along with those of their masters and mistresses. Sometimes different or finer clothes increased the chances of passing for free or being unrecognized. Hannah, described as 'of an Olive Colour,' ran with mourning attire, 'which she no doubt intends to Dress in, that she may not be known.' 1

Citation: (I am using the Chicago Style)

David Waldstreicher, "Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic," The William and Mary Quarterly: 56:2, ( Apr., 1999), 252-253.

PART III: Provide your own analysis of how the quote and primary source relate to own another and particularly to consumer culture in the history of early America.