An Early Salute to America

My personal celebration of our country's 250th year of independence, told through the oldest trade card in my collection.

Author's Note: Yes, I told this story eight months ago, but it was different then. "Living the Dream" told the story of the card's owner, John E. Tyler. I was then asked by an important publication to rewrite and condense the article with focus on the trade card itself. The revised article became the page-one story in the next edition of that publication, but the editors had taken significant license to edit and revise what I had submitted for their purposes. I respect the right of editors (I used to be one) to do that to suit the needs of the publication, but the edits stripped out the soul of my submission - my personal feelings about this treasure in my collection. I have brooded about it ever since and finally decided that I would take it upon myself to publish the version I had submitted for publication because it's that important to me that this important little slice of history can be read as I wrote it. I am not embarrassed to admit that I take pride in my writing. I hope you will enjoy this retelling from my very personal perspective. Thanks for your grace in allowing me the privilege to pass it by your eyes a second time.

J. E. Tyler, Commission Merchant. Advertising Trade Card, ca.1801. John Tyler did not add a middle initial to his name until 7 March 1801, therefore this card was produced sometime during J. E. Tyler’s proprietorship at No.44 Long Wharf, between 1801-1803. While the card could have been produced in 1802 or 1803, it seems highly unlikely.  His business had fallen off precipitously subsequent to its inaugural year. Commissioning the trade card’s design, engraving, and printing at the start of the business was feeding an opportunity, but doing so in 1802 or even worse, in 1803, would have made it an unwelcome expense and represented much less of an opportunity, given the depression that was beginning to descend on the American economy and commerce because of Europe's ongoing Napoleanic Wars (1803-1815). Relocation of his business in 1804 and realigning it into a partnership for much-needed support were probably in the planning stages long before the end of his tenancy in 1803. Rapoza collection.

Holding a 225-year-old trade card in my hand is a humbling moment; it invokes a sacred bond through centuries of time. For reasons lost in a collision of fate and chance, I have been entrusted with the privilege of this card’s current stewardship, becoming its guardian, archivist, and curator for the rest of my shortening tenure on earth. Admiration of this treasure aside, researching its story has been transformative, the opaque paper card becoming a window to the past. It’s why I collect.

Most museum examples of early American trade cards display a rendering of the   shopkeeper’s trade sign or objects emblematic of the shop’s wares. This study, however, is of a card that conveys the spreading sentiment of post-Revolution patriotism and optimism in the same moment that it directly communicates key information about the business.

Deconstructing this artifact of American material culture into several component parts allows its reassembly into a richer, more complete story of the man, his business, and his design choice in commissioning a card so different from its antecedents. It has quite a story to tell.

Context

The person who sold me this card estimated it to be late 19th century. One look told me that was wrong and thus began my research journey of discovery.

Although he had already been alive for 35 years, J. E. Tyler didn’t exist until 1801. Until then, he had no middle name – he was just John Tyler, son of John Tyler, a wealthy farmer in Mendon, Massachusetts, 7 miles north of the Rhode Island border, 34 miles southwest of Boston.

Father John became a widower when his daughter and son were just 8 and 6 years old, respectively. Despite the loss of his wife and the challenge of suddenly becoming the single parent of two small children, John Tyler senior risked everything by participating on a committee of six Mendon men who drafted a formal protest to the various acts of Parliament that trampled colonial rights and privileges, imposing duties or taxation on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. At a town meeting in March 1773, the committee of six drafted nineteen resolutions, starting with “…all Men have naturally an equal Right to Life, Liberty, and Property”; it was one of the earliest instances that such sentiments had been put in writing in the American Colonies. Despite placing themselves at great personal risk, John Tyler and the other signers voted

… that the foregoing Resolves be entered in the Town Book that our Children, in years to come, may know the sentiments of their Fathers in Regard to our Invaluable Rights and Liberties. [emphasis added]

When war broke out, John Tyler senior became a captain in the town’s militia, participating in the 1775-1776 siege of Boston and in the winter of 1777-1778 with General Washington at Valley Forge. In 1785, after almost a decade of hazarding his life for his country, he was killed in a moment of cruel irony by the falling of a large limb off a tree he was in the process of cutting down. This left John, his eldest son and namesake, to carry on his father’s legacies of pride in his estate, his family, and his new country.

John Tyler the scion had started his own career in 1791 at age 25 as a Harvard-educated physician, but after just three years he left the medical profession and moved to Boston in 1794 where he listed himself as a merchant. In 1800 he located his business at No.44 Long Wharf, the shipping hub of the city. The fact that the busy city of 25,000 had other men also being identified in the newspapers as John Tyler may have contributed to the reason that the 35-year-old merchant sought out a legal change of name on 7 March 1801:

John Tyler, of Boston, in the county of Suffolk, son of John Tyler, late of Mendon, in the county of Worcester, deceased, shall be allowed to take the name of John Eugene Tyler.

As soon as the court approved his request, he immediately began using his new middle name and initial to single himself out to his customers. It was a simple but important change: John Tyler (no middle name) was selling goods at No.44 Long Wharf from 1800 to March 1801, but starting in April 1801, newspaper advertisements were identifying the proprietor as John E. Tyler, J. E. Tyler, and John Eugene Tyler – every possible version other than just his given name and surname.

Since he did not add a middle name until March 1801, this card was produced sometime during J. E. Tyler’s proprietorship at No.44 Long Wharf, between April 1801 – December 1803. While the card could have been produced in 1802 or 1803, it seems highly unlikely.  His business had fallen off precipitously subsequent to its inaugural year. Commissioning the trade card’s design, engraving, and printing at the start of the business was probably seen as a justifiable expense that fed an opportunity, but doing so in 1802 or even worse, in 1803, would have made it an increasingly burdensome expense for much less of an opportunity, compounded by the depression that was beginning to descend on the American economy and commerce because of Europe's ongoing Napoleanic Wars. Relocation of his business away from Long Wharf in 1804 and realigning it into a partnership for much-needed financial support were probably in the planning stages long before the end of his Long Wharf tenancy in 1803.

 

Physical Description

The J. E. Tyler, Commission Merchant card is quite different; falling between its paper-thin 18th century progenitors and its mass-produced, chromolithographed descendants, it is something of a missing link in trade card literature. It is a rectangular piece of semi-rigid cardstock – Ricky Jay could have easily flung it into the side of a watermelon. It was designed for a longer life and use than a newspaper page, but it is ephemeral, nonetheless.

The card is printed on just one side and exclusively in black ink. It has toned like a pot of old cream with a soupçon of specks and smears peppered lightly across its surface. Its French line borders are incomplete on the card’s right side; the thicker line suffered from too-close trimming but looks very much like that minor crime was committed as soon as the printed card had dried. Coincidentally, its unusual size – 3 5/8” x 2 5/8” – is almost identical to the modern baseball card, roughly its second cousin eight times removed on the trade card family tree.

The message on the surface communicated the name, business, and location of the printer’s customer, J. E. Tyler, Commission Merchant. His newspaper advertisements served as newsprint fanfare to announce that he was selling whatever was coming to Boston in ships. He sold cotton and cheese, glassware and anchors, bushels of beans and boxes of spermaceti candles; German Steel and Swedish Iron; coffee from Port au Prince and Trinidad; a bunch of sugar from Hispaniola and St. Croix and lots of rum from Jamaica and Tobago; superfine flour from Baltimore and Philadelphia; and coarse salt from Lisbon and Liverpool. While he sold to families, shopkeepers, and country traders, his focus was selling in large lots to businesses, even trying to advance-sell cargo. One of the newspapers in which he chose to advertise also promoted the use of its press for the printing of “Merchants’ Address Cards,” a perfect description of Tyler’s card.

1801 printing services advertisement for the Columbian Centinel office in Boston, just a few blocks down the street from J. E. Tyler's business on Long Wharf. Columbian Centinel, 12 August 1801.

Function

In August 1801, Boston’s Columbian Centinel newspaper ran an advertisement for other printing services it could provide from its office just a few blocks down the street from J. E. Tyler's business on Long Wharf. The first product in its list printed matter was "Merchant's Address CARDS" (emphasis in original), referring to the type of card J. E. Tyler had commissioned. The printer is not listed on Tyler's card but it is interesting to note that he advertised in the Centinel in the same year that the ad ran; it was certainly possible that he had them print up his "Merchants' Address Cards" as well.

The card was almost certainly produced in a small print run, perhaps about 100 cards, and therefore strategically intended for the most preferred clients – the big-quantity and repeat-purchasing business customer. It was not a mass-produced piece of ephemera arbitrarily handed out to any man, woman, or child who happened to stroll by No.44 Long Wharf – that's what trade cards would become after the American Civil War, but John Tyler's world was long before the dramatic improvements in printing technology that allowed for much larger and cheaper print runs.

It's possible but unlikely that the image on John E. Tyler's trade card was a copy of a sign over his business. The various shops and warehouses on Long Wharf during the first decade of the 1800s were identified by a street number – like John E. Tyler's No.44 Long Wharf location – and none, including Tyler, identified their location additionally as "at the Sign of ...". When Tyler was starting his business on Long Wharf, building numbers were just beginning to replace expensive building signs as business locators and the “merchants’ address” form of trade cards were increasingly becoming the preferred means to promote the business and impress the customers.

Paul Revere, "A view of part of the town of Boston in New-England and Brittish [sic] ships of war landing their troops! 1768." In the left foreground is Long Wharf, starting in the city and extending out into the harbor a half mile at one point in its history, but this image shows landfill and Boston's buildings already surrounding some of the wharf. The wharf is surmounted by a long row of buildings that were the merchants' shops and warehouses, counting houses, chandleries, etc. When John E. Tyler was proprietor at No.44, where Long Wharf still jutted into the harbor, ships docked on the opposite side of the wharf from his building, so his location was not yet surrounded by land. Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society.

Culture

It also comes as no surprise that Tyler’s card is not festooned with images of his wares; as a commission merchant, his list of merchandise often changed with every arriving shipload. Instead of having his card filled with images of glassware, candles, lumber, and all sorts of food products he may or may not have in inventory at any given time, the two images he included – a bald eagle and palm fronds – were clearly not trade emblems but symbols with personal meaning.

The pride J. E. Tyler felt in his new country, the legacy of his patriotic father, and his new business were all illustrated symbolically by the bald eagle – bold, strong, majestic, independent, and free; its broad wings stretched out into spread-eagle position, ready to soar at any moment of its choosing, yet controlled enough to display the commission merchant’s business banner. The eagle’s head is haloed by glory rays, classic symbols of a divine origin, suggesting the sacred nature of its mission. When the J. E. Tyler trade card was created in 1801, it must have felt like Heaven was in his corner.

Palm fronds tied to the bottom of the eagle’s oval perch were also likely chosen for their historic symbolism: the fronds from the common desert palm tree have been used for centuries to symbolize Messianic triumph over life's most severe obstacles – sin and death – and they worked equally well to symbolize America’s emergence as a victorious country. Patriotism and Christianity had become twin beacons in John Tyler’s life (upon his public profession of religion in 1793, at age 27, he was baptized, “it not having been done for him in his infancy”). The overall card design may also have intended to subliminally project the eagle in the role of a phoenix, resurrected as Jesus had been and as the former doctor was trying to become in his new occupation and city.

One thing that is quite clear from 18th and early 19th century advertising trade cards is that the designs were purposeful, symbolic, and well planned to communicate a lot and make a strong, memorable impression about the business in a small space. There was nothing haphazard and accidental in the symbolism and design of the J. E. Tyler trade card; it was left to the viewer of 1801 and 2025 to intuitively figure out what those messages were. But the bald eagle was the new symbol of America and as such would have resonated strongly in Boston at the beginning of the 19th century. Having the fairly thick and durable trade card at home or tucked in a pocket made it an ideal memory aid to find Tyler’s business for the first time or to remember where it was when standing among the clatter and clamor of people, horses, carriages, oxen, and cargo-mounded wagons on the docks in busy Boston. The back of the card was blank, as most early cards were, so that the proprietor could record notes of pending or completed sales before handing it to the customer. This example has no writing on the reverse; it remains blank, still waiting to record a sale that, unfortunately, became increasingly infrequent.

Interpretation

In 1801, J. E. Tyler was caught up on the same breezes of optimism and patriotic nationalism that floated through Boston at the dawn of the new century, especially among the docks of the merchant trade. They vividly remembered the economic suffocation of the blockade during the Revolution and were determined to reverse the pains of the past into a future full of promise. The city-wide exuberance was reflected in Boston’s 1801 Independence Day festivities. The jubilant and patriotic celebration was marked by church bells ringing throughout the city, the red, white, and blue Stars and Stripes waving everywhere, and salutes being fired from the frigates Constitution and Boston in the harbor. An orator exhorted a large gathering of his fellow citizens “to feel, and to be AMERICANS,” and many toasts were offered to the new nation; the American eagle finding its way into several:

May every savage beast and bird of prey that shall dare to infest this happy country, or to attempt any depredations either by sea or land, be caught and held fast in the talons of the American Eagle.

May it bring the Barbarians to a sense of their duty … and make them crouch to the American Eagle.

Boston's shop and tavern signs often echoed their owners' newfound postwar patriotism, such as the Golden Eagle Tavern (1784) on Brattle Street and the Eagle Tavern (1798) on Fore Street, the crew recruiting location for the Frigate Constitution. Massachusetts copper cents were the first of many U.S. coins to bear the eagle motif.

(left) Charles Thomson's design for the Great Seal of the United States, 1782. Reports of Committees of Congress; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, Record Group 360; National Archives. (right) Massachusetts Copper Cent, 1787. Photo: courtesy of Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/ImageDetail/587640 .

The challenge for 21st century viewers of the J. E. Tyler trade card is to overlook the physiologically inaccurate, almost cartoonish rendering of the bald eagle and the palm branches. The bird’s “bald” head is depicted as little more than an eye mask; the secondary feathers are entirely missing from most of both wings; and the head seems too large for a body that is far too short. Even the palm branches were likely created from the imagination rather than a Bostonian engraver's first-hand observation of Middle Eastern palms. The engraver was not trying to reproduce museum-worthy, ornithologically and botanically accurate illustrations.

What the card illustration lacked in scientific accuracy, it made up for in engraved elegance. Calligraphic flourishes and embellishments framed and highlighted the proprietor’s new name and the all-important address of his business, No.44 Long Wharf, Boston. The engraver’s linework was rendered in great detail, giving curving depth to the palm fronds, motion to the banner, scales on the feet, and finesse to the shafts and vanes of each feather. The high-quality paper stock was stiffer and smoother than the era's standard rag writing paper and, combined with the finely engraved linework printed on it by copperplate, the result intentionally conveyed the quality of the card, the new business, and the esteemed customer.

Having contemplated his entire life, I feel that his trade card reflects the high point of his life – at least the business portion of it. Newly married, moved to the state capitol, and ready to do business with the world in one of the busiest locations on Boston’s docks, he commissioned the card – probably the only artwork he ever commissioned – to reflect his optimism, ambition, and excitement as a new Boston merchant in the new United States. It was a bold, proud, and free expression of his dream. His subsequent business and personal life do not seem to have lived up to this apex frozen in time, but we see it now, 224 years later, and are humbled at the thought that this country we enjoy so much was built on the backs of people who weren’t afraid to dream.

 

Lynn Massachusetts History – History of Medicine – 19th-Century Health Remedies – Vintage Medical Ephemera – 19th-century Medicine