Tradesmen in the Virginia Gazette

Description

There are two broad categories of advertisements: ones that advertise services or skills, and ones that advertise wanting services or skills. The database contains both:

    

So far, the database includes advertisements from these years: 1736, 1737, 1740, 1745, 1746, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1757, 1766, 1768, 1769, 1771, 1776, 1777, 1779, and 1780. The library does not have a complete set of Gazettes for every year it was published, but the database does describe every issue from our holdings.

Methodology

The Rockefeller Library of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has one of the most complete sets of Virginia Gazette newspapers in the country. Each issue has been scanned and digitized. (Issues are available for browsing and searching on the library's public website.) As the researcher on this project, I looked through each page of the issues in our holdings to find trade advertisements, and methodically recorded the information in a computer database. Each advertisement has its own entry in the database.

The database has about fifteen main fields of information. Here is a summary of the information that has been compiled about each advertisement:

Location is the city or county that the subscriber is writing from OR where the trade is being practiced. Therefore, in the case of a recent or imminent move, the advertisement is filed under the place the subscriber is moving to.

Occupation is the general or specific name for the trade being advertised. The occupation is always singular. When more than one trade was being advertised, the first or most broad occupation was entered. For example, all ads from the Williamsburg Manufacturing Society are listed under occupation “Weaver,” except those that mention the specific need for a heckler.

The Notes field allows for 250 characters of details or clarifications for each advertisement. In the want advertisements, it is often not definitive the trade of the subscriber, and so this ambiguity is noted.

The Role drop-down list is very important to the database. It defines the relationship of each recorded person (LastName and FirstName) to the trade in question. Either the person is the “Tradesman and Advertiser,” only the Advertiser, or only the Tradesman. Along the course of the research, we added the roles of “Skilled Slave” and “Skilled Servant,” as well as “Printer (contact person)” as the need became clear.

The Wanted and Duplicate fields (both simple check-boxes) help in analysis of the data. As most advertisements are placed more than once—the average number of times a unique ad appears is about 2.7—the Duplicate field helps isolate unique advertisements.

The database also keeps track of Date of Gazette issue and Page and Column numbers, so that users of the database can easily locate the advertisement in its original context. Lastly, each advertisement is captured in a digital image stored on the CW server, whose FileName is linked to its record in the database.

While first researching and entering data, I recorded any mention whatsoever of trade, which included advertisements of runaway apprentices and slaves, a notice for a Richard Parker, carpenter, to come to the post office, etc. I stopped doing this because it seemed less helpful to an overall picture of economic activity, and much less focused than the original task of finding “advertised trades.” To search the Gazette in this manner would be more than a summer project. However, I added to recordable advertisements ones seeking journeymen or specifically skilled workers. The type of work done by the subscriber and other important economic relationships are revealed by these advertisements. The name abbreviations “LNU” and “FNU” stand for “Last Name Unknown” and “First Name Unknown.” They are used when the existence of a tradesman is certain, but his or her name is not given.

The database does not at present include tavernkeepers, ordinary-house keepers, general merchants, or schoolteachers, as these are not tradesmen in a literal sense. A list of occupations included can be found here.