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The Correspondence of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore has posted its latest blog entry, "Transcription 101." I hope you or your students find this a helpful introduction to the work that documentary editors and student transcribers do.
https://edspace.american.edu/taylorandfillmore/transcription-101/
Dear H-Net readers: I am excited to announced the publication of my new book, both as a free, open-access e-book and in traditional print format! Feel free to share the announcement below with students, fellow scholars, friends, and anyone else who may be interested.
Stranger Citizens: Migrant Influence and National Power in the Early American Republic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2021)
Yes, I agree with Marissa Rhodes that Read could have been a point of contact for someone else, and I would guess that the seller was someone who did not live or have their own business in the area. I know next to nothing about 18th-century Philadelphia, but if I were analyzing this, my hunch would be that Read's shop was in a commercial area and thus convenient to men conducting business there. In that case, I would think that Read would receive more inquiries from potential buyers who were already in the neighborhood than someone in some more distant part of Philadelphia.
Marissa, Thank you for the reply. After I posted my plea for help, I realized how poorly I worded my inquiry. However, you got at it perfectly. I initially interpreted the fact that Sarah Read was selling a slave meant that she owned it and was selling it for herself. Thus, my comment about her being successful. Then I second guessed myself. I am now realizing thanks to you and several other very helpful comments, that Sarah Read was likely simply the go-between, that she was advertising the slave for sale for someone else.
I use newspaper advertisements extensively. I may need more information but from the brief quote you gave us, I’d comment that the business is serving as a contact for a classified ad. Someone associated with the business in some way (a relative of the owners, a customer, a friend) is selling a slave and they’re using the business as a go-between since the business likely always has someone there and it’s a public place so it’s safer to invite strangers there.
