POST THIS UP! American Broadsides from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library

The Broadside & Ephemera collection contains many advertisements. The earliest sheet in the collection is a notice from 1740 announcing that part of Roanoke Island was offered for sale by an absentee owner living in Massachusetts Bay.

An ad for a slave auction held on March 8, 1855, in Charleston was annotated with the appraised value and final selling price for several groups of enslaved persons, some of which were undoubtedly families.

An 1872 broadside from the Durham Warehouse urges its customers to “Patronize Home Enterprise” – or as we might say in Durham, “Sustain-a-Bull.”