The mere Face-Painter, indeed, has little in common with the Poet; but, like the mete Historian, copies what he sees, and minutely ttaces every featute, and odd mark. . . . 'Tis othetwise with men of invention and design.
-Lotd Shaftesbuiy, 1709Here is a young man on the run in the eighteenth century, an Irish servant lad named Patrick Flanley about 19 yeats old . . . by ttade a Leathet Bteeches Maket and Skinnet; Had on when he went away a gtey homespun cloth coat, almost new, lin'd with blue shalloon in the forepart, and with btown . . . cloth in the back, Mohaif Buttons, a Leather Fawn skin vest, . . . lined with scarlet shalloon, a worn oxenbrig shirt, a pair of purple sheepskin Breeches, . . . and a pair of old round toe'd Pumps.This notice appeared in the New-York Mercury in 1754, but similar advertisements were a commonplace of American journalism virtually from the moment news papers began regular publication in the early 1700s. The subjects of the ads were the fugitives of the era: the criminals who escaped from jail and the soldiers who ran from their officers; the occasional wives and youngsters who fled their house holds; but above all the substantial number of unfree (or "bound") apprentices, in dentured servants, convict laborers, and chattel slaves who up and left their masters.Similar to the occasional acknowledgments of missing residents scattered through seventeenth-century colonial sources, runaway ads focused upon these truants, and they appeared by the thousand, probably becoming especially numerous from the Jonathan Prude is associate professor of history at Emory University.
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