Wheeling Intelligencer Ads, July 1863

[Becky Morgan]

I figure if anything was available in Wheeling, it had to be PEC.
If anyone is interested, I can post several more ads from the week of July 2-9. All of these repeated daily on page 2 of the paper.
Two things jumped out at me: G. W. Reessing's address is still "Wheeling, Va.", and D. Nicoll and Bro.'s ad features "suspenders", rather than "braces". I was wondering whether they might be sock suspenders, but it seems unlikely.

--Becky Morgan

G.W. Reesing & Co. 86 & 88 Market St. Wheeling, Va.
Dealers in Fruits, Nuts, Cigars, Tobaccos, Fancy Groceries and Foreign Produce generally offer for sale at the lowest cash prices,
50 kits No. 1 and 50 do No. 2 mackerel
200 boxes Scotch herring 50 kegs Holland do.
20 sacks almonds 10 sacks Filberts
10 do Cream Nuts 10 do Walnuts
3 bbls Pecans (?)00 Boxes Raisins
200 drums Figs (?)00 cases Tomato Catsup
25 cases quarts Pepper Sauce
100 bushels African Ground Nuts
50 cases 1 and 2 lbs. Cans Cove Oysters
30 do quart and pint (?) Plain Pickles
100 do Brandy Peaces and Cherries
500 doz assorted hermetically sealed Fruits.
10 cases Sardines in ¼ (?)
400 lbs. Genuine English Dairy Cheese.
5 cases Limburg Cheese.
50 boxes Western Reserve Cream Cheese
3 cases Stuart's double refined Loaf Sugar, by the loaf only
100 boxes Fox's Cincinnati Starch.
3 pockets (sic) Mocha CoffeeAlso a general assortment of Fancy and staple brands Smoking and Chewing tobacco, together with a general assortment of all Fancy Groceries.
Army dealers are respectfully referred to our general stock.

MERRIMAC PRINTS, Ballard Veil Flannels, Gauze Flannel, Shirting Flannels, small plaid
Shirting Muslins, just received by GEO. R. TAYLOR

50 CENTS
RECEIVED this day by express 600 Hoop Skirts at very low prices. I will sell a good Skirt for 50 cents. J.B. Rhodes

SUSPENDERS, Gloves, Hosiery, Shirt Collars, neck ties, etc. For gents and boys at the Variety Store
D. Nicoll and Bro.

[markj]

Hi Becky,

I can't answer for anyone else, but I, for one, have only rarely seen "braces" used in period advertisements. For example, aside from "braces" being used to describe men's items in periodicals such as "Godey," "Arthur," &c., most everyone else seems to have used "suspenders" on a day-to-day basis. The term is even included in the 1862 list that Congress drew up specifying what sutlers could offer to troops.

In short, my theory is that "braces" was used more by those with pretensions to the "upper-crust." Perhaps you've seen something else?

Incidentally, the "Intelligencer" is a nice little paper. I went through quite a bit of it last year while doing research for the Rich Mountain event. To my knowledge, it was the original source of the semi-famous "Statement of David Hart," whose family's farm was in the center of the engagement.

Regards,

Mark Jaeger

I figure if anything was available in Wheeling, it had to be PEC.
If anyone is interested, I can post several more ads from the week of July 2-9. All of these repeated daily on page 2 of the paper.
Two things jumped out at me: G. W. Reessing's address is still "Wheeling, Va.", and D. Nicoll and Bro.'s ad features "suspenders", rather than "braces". I was wondering whether they might be sock suspenders, but it seems unlikely.

--Becky Morgan

G.W. Reesing & Co. 86 & 88 Market St. Wheeling, Va.
Dealers in Fruits, Nuts, Cigars, Tobaccos, Fancy Groceries and Foreign Produce generally offer for sale at the lowest cash prices,
50 kits No. 1 and 50 do No. 2 mackerel
200 boxes Scotch herring 50 kegs Holland do.
20 sacks almonds 10 sacks Filberts
10 do Cream Nuts 10 do Walnuts
3 bbls Pecans (?)00 Boxes Raisins
200 drums Figs (?)00 cases Tomato Catsup
25 cases quarts Pepper Sauce
100 bushels African Ground Nuts
50 cases 1 and 2 lbs. Cans Cove Oysters
30 do quart and pint (?) Plain Pickles
100 do Brandy Peaces and Cherries
500 doz assorted hermetically sealed Fruits.
10 cases Sardines in ¼ (?)
400 lbs. Genuine English Dairy Cheese.
5 cases Limburg Cheese.
50 boxes Western Reserve Cream Cheese
3 cases Stuart's double refined Loaf Sugar, by the loaf only
100 boxes Fox's Cincinnati Starch.
3 pockets (sic) Mocha CoffeeAlso a general assortment of Fancy and staple brands Smoking and Chewing tobacco, together with a general assortment of all Fancy Groceries.
Army dealers are respectfully referred to our general stock.

MERRIMAC PRINTS, Ballard Veil Flannels, Gauze Flannel, Shirting Flannels, small plaid
Shirting Muslins, just received by GEO. R. TAYLOR

50 CENTS
RECEIVED this day by express 600 Hoop Skirts at very low prices. I will sell a good Skirt for 50 cents. J.B. Rhodes

SUSPENDERS, Gloves, Hosiery, Shirt Collars, neck ties, etc. For gents and boys at the Variety Store
D. Nicoll and Bro.

[Becky Morgan]

My favorite Intel clips from this batch of papers are the skirt ad (note he said he'd sell *A* good skirt for 50 cents, not all of them) and the little ad in the government notice column: "The sale of condemned ordnance &c. scheduled for June 30 at Harper's Ferry has been postponed indefinitely." I rather imagine it had.

When it comes to Wheeling papers, the real entertainment starts when the Register goes into business ca. Sept., 8, 1863. The two papers would battle daily until they finally merged. I was researching the July 4...oh, dear, 1880 or 1884? ;'ve forgotten!... wreck of the steamer Scioto and was amused by the editorial bickering still going on two decades after it started. At times during the late war, it's hard to tell the two were writing about the same event.

--Becky Morgan

[LindaTrent]

Two things jumped out at me: G. W. Reessing's address is still "Wheeling, Va."

Hi Becky,

I've gone over all the Gallipolis Journal newspapers of 1863, and one thing that I often notice is near the end of the ad is a date. This date usually depicts the date that an ad began running, and occasionally I've found that merchants purchase ads several months in advance. I pulled out one paper at random that had a lot of ads in it, one very generic one not relevant to seasonal or fashion changes had run for over a year! Other ads ran for much shorter periods of time, some ran from week to week.

I would assume that G. W. Reessing felt as though his ad could run for a certain period of time and paid up weeks, even months in advance, and the type-setter never bothered to re-set the state come June. But that's just a guess. Is there a date near the end of the ad?

[Becky Morgan]

Yes, he first put the ad in the paper on April...I think 15, when his store was, of course, in Virginia. The same page features a lot of ads for "spring merchandise" entered in March or April and tagged for so many Tuesdays or however many weeks. Legal ads to this day will often be tagged with something like "Feb 1/3 Thurs." which means the ad is to run for three weeks on Thursday.