Yet it could hardly say more about the spirit of an age.
"Ran away from the Subscriber living in Annapolis, a young Country-born Negro Man named Harry," it said. "He is of a yellowish Complexion, near 6 Feet high, brisk and active. Had on and took with him a Wig, a new Felt Hat, a grey Pea Jacket, red Waistcoat and Breeches ...
"Whoever takes up the said Negro, and delivers him to me, at Annapolis, shall have THREE POUNDS Reward."
People seldom wax more eloquent than when describing something they've lost, and Nicholas MacCubbin, one of many slaveholders in 18th-century Annapolis, was no exception.
Vivid details, racial condescension and all, McCubbin's plea for the return of a runaway slave - placed in the Maryland Gazette in the 1750s - was a sight typical during the state's slavery era.
It's also one of the thousands the Historic Annapolis Foundation hopes will bring the period to life in Project Run-A-Way, a new multimedia enterprise the foundation will roll out in two weeks as the centerpiece of its second Black History Month seminar.
Based on the texts of ads found in the Gazette and the Maryland Republican from the 18th and 19th centuries, the project will weave theater, period couture, blogging and the contributions and memories of local citizens into "a community dissertation" on one of the least savory and most poignant chapters in the state's history.
"It's a tragic era, obviously, but against that backdrop, an inspiring one," says Heather Ersts, a foundation vice president. "This is a chance to get to know some courageous people who risked their lives for freedom. The stories ... provide windows into this [region's] history that hasn't been done before."
Organizers hope to turn the project into a full-fledged dramatic production by this time next year, one that features actors portraying characters described in the ads. It will include an extensive online scholarly component and costumes to go on permanent display.
At the heart of the project, though, are the ads themseves - succinct, often eyebrow-raising slices of life from a time whose values we only sketchily understand.
Hayes-Williams mentioned a source of information she had especially enjoyed using. Starting in the early 1700s, she said, the Gazette, a statewide four-page weekly based in Annapolis, ran a constant stream of ads in which slaveholders tried to recapture escaped servants. The state's other big paper, the Republican, followed suit through the mid-1860s.
Historians had noted the ads, which appeared in virtually every edition of the papers during that time, but no one had studied them systematically.
They were a godsend for Hayes-Williams, a seventh-generation Annapolitan and student of local history who is always on the lookout for the sort of details that can make the past spring to life.
"It was a great way to learn of some of the minutiae of day-to-day existence during that time," she says.
She could almost see the people described: a "tall, slim, yellowish color'd Fellow, named Ishmael, with something remarkable about his Chin;" a "dark mulatto, nineteen years old ... with remarkable spare slim feet, legs and thighs, [and] a scar upon the side of his right knee, occasioned by sticking an ax in it."
But no details were more specific than those used to describe clothes. One frustrated owner wrote of a man in "a Grey Coat, the sleeves laced with Red Plush, and trimmed with Red Button-holes, and Brass Buttons, a Pair of Red Stockings, and Grey Breeches." Two 1760 escapees wore "white Country fill'd Cloth Coats and Breeches lined with Rolls, with flat Metal Buttons, new Osnabrigs [coarse linen] Shirts, Country Knit Stockings, and Negro Shoes nail'd all around."
Such details often led to capture in an era when the population of Annapolis barely cracked 1,000, and even Baltimore was just establishing itself as a major town.
"Everyone knew everyone," says Glenn E. Campbell, history director for the organization.
Hayes-Williams and Preston - best known for "4 Women of Annapolis," a one-woman show in which Preston inhabits characters from local history - discussed staging, of all things, a fashion show based on the descriptions.
They never got to try it, but six months ago, as Historic Annapolis Foundation officials sought a theme for this year's Black History Month seminar, the two mentioned the idea, and it sparked a buzz that surprised even Preston.
