"Famous for inventing Lies"

For many years, Mr. Boyle has assembled the names of servants whose runaway status was advertised in colonial and Revolutionary-era American newspapers throughout the thirteen colonies/states. The ads abstracted for this new volume in the Pennsylvania Runaways series are more diverse than have appeared in previous volumes and include adds for slaves and Native American runaways, identified by race and surname (when available).



Mr. Boyle's transcriptions of the runaway ads, taken from 28 different newspapers (including papers from Rhode Island to Virginia as well as Pennsylvania), provide valuable demographic information, giving name, age, sex, height, place of origin, clothing, occupation, speech, physical imperfections, and sometimes personal vignettes.