250 years ago, when William Paca and Stephen West published a pamphlet detailing the story of the ship Good Intent, they knew their hardline handling of its cargo of boycotted goods wouldn’t meet with everyone’s approval, but they probably didn’t expect to get lambasted right away by other members of their own Committee.
Yet there it was in the April 19, 1770 Maryland Gazette: a letter by four men who disavowed the pamphlet as an inaccurate record of the Committee’s deliberations, making their own dissenting votes on one particular point appear “inconsistent and ridiculous.” The four accused the pamphlet’s principal author of “constituting himself a standing Committee at Annapolis, for Six Weeks after the other was dissolved,” and requested that he “publish his Proceedings in his own Name.” Would someone rise to take the bait? We’ll see next week!
After reading such serious political stuff in the Gazette, I’ll often look for lighthearted snapshots of colonial life among the advertisements. But this week, a cluster of four notices in the bottom left corner of the paper’s third page caught my eye and stopped me cold. Three of them announced that stallions named Hector, Ranter, and Peacock were available to hire for stud services. Offered for sale in the fourth ad: “A likely young breeding Negro Woman, qualified either for Town or Country.” We’re told the names of the prized horses, but not that of this enslaved woman, who didn’t even own her own body.
Glenn E. Campbell
Senior Historian
