ABSTRACT
In its first century of European settlement, the young American colony experienced a population flux opposite to that of all its later phases: there was a perceived dearth of immigration to the New World. Communications discharging from the colonies homeward to England were replete with entreaties for expanded settlement. A promotional literature written to lure English citizens to the American colony, represented by such writs as Gabriel Thomas’s 1698 “Account of Pennsylvania,” coalesced to become what some have regarded as the West’s first advertising campaign.
