It is obvious that I find old newspapers fascinating. The items serve as snapshots of the time, giving a picture of what was then happening in the same spaces we occupy today. In addition, the incidents described and unfamiliar terms used are often springboards for further exploration. The $30 reward
Runaway ads were fairly common in eighteenth and nineteenth century newspapers. Sometimes the runaways were slaves, but not so often above the Mason-Dixon line, where there were fewer slaves. In Pennsylvania it was frequently a servant or an apprentice who had run away. The descriptions of the missing persons were