Emergence of Advertising in America

Duke University’s “The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 – 1920” is a great resource for learning more about the early advertising history in the United States. This collection, which has over 9,000 images, is organized into eleven categories – almost all of the advertisements produced before 1870 are in “Broadsides” and “Advertising Ephemera.” Yet there is still a wide variety of material from the Civil War era, as one can find broadsides for political parties (Democrat, Republican) to advertisements for hotels. If you want to find more broadsides from the Civil War, check out the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s collection, which I discussed in a previous post.