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Entrepreneurship and Western Development: The Case of Micajah T. Williams*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Harry N. Scheiber
Harry N. Scheiber
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Dartmouth College
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Abstract

As an important business figure in the development of the West, Micajah Williams' career well illustrates the interlocking character of public and private economic interests during the early nineteenth century. This article suggests comparable functions of entrepreneurs such as Williams in public-works agencies and profit-oriented firms, and argues that the state canal enterprises served to recruit and train a significant number of western business leaders.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , Winter 1963 , pp. 345 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1963

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References

1 The two available studies of Williams are sketchy and inadequate: Perry, Elizabeth W., “Micajah T. Williams,” Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly, vol. I (January, 1898), pp. 1–15Google Scholar; and Williams, Samuel M., “Micajah Terrell Williams: A Sketch,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. VI (1922–1923), pp. 303–313Google Scholar. The papers of Micajah T. Williams (hereafter cited as Williams Papers) were for many years misplaced, but were rediscovered in 1960 and made available to the author by the Ohio State Library in Columbus, especially through the courtesy of Miss Ruth Hess, to whom the author wishes to express his gratitude.

2 For the western urban merchant's activities and outlook, see Wade, Richard C., The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790–1830 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 76–88, 106–109Google Scholar.

3 On Joy and Villard, see Cochran, Thomas C., “The Legend of the Robber Barons,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. LXXIV (July, 1950), pp. 307–321Google Scholar; and Cochran, , Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890 (Cambridge, Mass., 1953)Google Scholar, passim. On the careers of early western businessmen, see the biographical articles in monthly issues of Museum Echoes (Ohio Historical Society), vol. XXXIII (1960).

4 Achilles Williams to “Cousin and Perry,” February 14, 1874, Williams Papers. The Williams Papers include sketches of Williams by contemporaries, parts of which are printed in Perry, “Micajah T. Williams.”

5 Articles of agreement, October 4, 1815, October 29, 1819, Williams Papers.

6 Scheiber, Harry N., “The Ohio Canal Movement, 1820–1825,” Ohio Historical Quarterly, vol. LXIX (July, 1960), pp. 233–37Google Scholar; Still, John S., “Ethan Allen Brown and Ohio's Canal System,” Ohio Historical Quarterly, vol. LXVI (January, 1957), pp. 22ffGoogle Scholar.

7 Ibid., pp. 33–35.

8 Report of the Committee on Canals (Columbus, 1822)Google Scholar, passim.

9 Scheiber, “The Ohio Canal Movement, 1820–1825,” pp. 237–38.

10 Williams to E. A. Brown, February 3, 1823, Ethan Allen Brown Papers (Ohio State Library).

11 Williams to Alfred Kelley, June 10, 1823, Canal Commission Papers (Ohio State Archives, Columbus). For detailed documentation of the work of the canal commission, see Scheiber, “The Ohio Canal Movement, 1820–1825,” pp. 238–52.

12 Williams' notebooks, kept while in New York, are in the Williams Papers. Correspondence between Williams and De Witt Clinton is in Clinton Papers (especially for 1823–1825) in Columbia University Library.

13 Williams to Brown, August 2, 1823, Brown Papers; Williams to Kelley, August 6 and August 9, 1823, Canal Commission Papers; Williams to T. Worthington, September 19, 1823, Thomas Worthington Papers (Ohio State Library).

14 Williams to Brown, January 24, 1824, Brown Papers.

15 Samuel Forrer, MS sketch of Williams, Williams Papers.

16 Scheiber, “The Ohio Canal Movement, 1820–1825,” p. 245. See also Scheiber, , “Urban Rivalry and Internal Improvements in the Old Northwest,” Ohio History, vol. LXXI (October, 1962), pp. 228–30Google Scholar.

17 Brown to Kelley, March 4, 1824, Canal Commission Papers. For a full study of the Falls Canal promotion, see Trescott, Paul B., “The Louisville and Portland Canal Company, 1825–1874,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. XLIV (March, 1958), pp. 686–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Scheiber, “The Ohio Canal Movement, 1820–1825,” p. 250.

19 Ibid., pp. 247–48; Williams to Brown, March 15, 1824, Brown Papers.

20 Alfred Kelley, MS sketch of Williams, July 27, 1844, Williams Papers; Williams to Brown, December 26, 1824, January 14, 1825, Brown Papers.

21 Report of the Committee on Canals (Columbus, 1822), p. 14Google Scholar.

22 Report of the Canal Commissioners, January 10, 1825 (Columbus, 1825)Google Scholar.

23 Canal Commission Minute Books, I, entry of February 7, 1825, Department of Public Works Records (State Office Building, Columbus).

24 Arthur H. Cole has noted that the entrepreneur in the profit-oriented firm “in some respects is one variety of a rather large genus, the heads of various types of social and political organizations.” In a similar vein, John G. B. Hutchins has said that the essence of business history is “the administration of affairs within organizations;” the unit examined “need not be privately owned and profit oriented.” And Joseph Schumpeter recognized that in certain public undertakings, “the entrepreneurial function was as clearly present and as distinctly vested in individuals as it is in private industry.” Cole, , in Change and the Entrepreneur (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), p. 106Google Scholar; Hutchins, , in “Recent Contributions to Business History: The United States,” Journal of Economic History, vol. XIX (March, 1959), p. 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schumpeter, , Business Cycles (2 vols., New York, 1939), vol. I, p. 284Google Scholar.

25 Habakkuk, John H., “The Entrepreneur and Economic Development,” Lectures on Economic Development (Istanbul, Turkey, 1956), p. 5Google Scholar. See also Schumpeter, Joseph, The Theory of Economic Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), pp. 93–94Google Scholar.

26 Williams to S. Forrer, October 3, 1827, Samuel Forrer Papers (Dayton and Montgomery County [Ohio] Public Library). For a full discussion of entrepreneurial functions and psychology of the Ohio canal commissioners, see Scheiber, Harry N., “Internal Improvements and Economic Change in Ohio, 1820–1860” (Ph. D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1962), chap. 2Google Scholar.

27 Kelly to Williams, April 12, 1831, Williams Papers. Kelly himself resigned in 1834 only after both intial canal projects were completed. He had been in ill health for several years, but had not resigned earlier, he said, because “the discouraging circumstances and serious difficulties with which we were surrounded might [have induced] the belief that I was impelled to do so by despairing of ultimate sucess.” Kelley to Canal Commission, January 24, 1834, Canal Commission Papers.

28 Williams Papers, 1825–1833, passim; Williams to Kelley, February 19, 1832, Canal Commission Papers; Canal Commission Minute Books, vol. I, pp. 139–40. For comparable entrepreneurial functions of a private canal promoter, see Aitken, Hugh G. J., The Welland Canal Company: A Study in Canadian Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 25ff., 57, 111ffGoogle Scholar. What was true of Upper Canada when William H. Merritt undertook promotion of the Welland Canal project was also true of Ohio in the early 1820's, that “the country merchant was still the typical if not the only variety of businessman with which the society was familiar. Experience in the promotion, management, and financing of large-scale business organizations was negligible.” Ibid., p. 23.

29 Williams to Kelley, May 23, 1830, March 29, 1831, Canal Commission Papers; Samuel Maccracken to S. Forrer, April 30, 1834, Board of Fund Commissioners Letter-books (Ohio State Archives).

30 Agreement dated May 16, 1831, Williams to “Gents. in New York,” February 20, 1833, letter to (?), November 12, 1832, Williams Papers; Williams to E. Whittlesey, February 4, 1841, Elisha Whittlesey Papers (Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland).

31 Williams to E. Hayward, April 7, 1831, J. Bryan and W. Minor to Williams, March 23, 1831, W. Irvin to Williams, March 24, 1831, Williams Papers.

32 Memoirs (MS) of Samuel Williams, vol. III, pp. 518ff (Ohio Historical Society); Alfred Kelley to Williams, April 12, 1831, Williams Papers.

33 Williams to Benjamin Tappan, May 16, 1834, Benjamin Tappan Papers (Ohio Historical Society); see also Williams to Gov. Robert Lucas, November 25, 1833, Official Governors' Papers (Ohio Historical Society).

34 Williams to Whittlesey, February 4, 1841, Whittlesey Papers. Williams' interest in the Wabash and Erie Project was increased by virtue of the fact that his brother, Jesse Williams, was chief engineer in the Indiana state service.

35 Williams to Arthur Bronson, May 4, 1833, Williams Papers.

36 Miller, Nathan, The Enterprise of a Free People: Aspects of Economic Development in the New York State during the Canal Period, 1792–1838 (Ithaca, 1962), pp. 138ffGoogle Scholar.

37 Williams to Bronson, May 4, 1833, Williams Papers; see also Bronson to Williams, June 4, 1833, ibid.

38 Olcott to Williams, May 22, 1833, ibid. For a discussion of banking practices in the 1830's, see Hammond, Bray, “Long and Short Term Credit in Early American Banking,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. XLIX (November, 1934), pp. 79–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the founding of the Trust Company, see Weisenburger, Francis P., Passing of the Frontier (Wittke, Carl [ed.], History of the State of Ohio, vol. III, Columbus, 1941), pp. 308–309Google Scholar. In 1834–1835, the Bronson-Olcott-Butler group also considered the possibility of establishing a trust company on the New York model in the Florida Territory. F. Bronson to Olcott, March 18, 1835, Thomas Olcott Papers (Columbia University).

39 Williams to Bronson, May 4, 1833, Williams Papers.

40 Lot Clark to Williams, June 6, 1833, Olcott to Williams, May 22, 1833, Bronson to Williams, June 4, 1833, ibid.

41 In addition to correspondence of May–December, 1833, ibid., see Weisenburger, Passing of the Frontier, pp. 308ff., and Huntington, C. C., “History of Banking and Currency in Ohio before the Civil War,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, vol. XXIV (1914), pp. 369ffGoogle Scholar.

42 Butter to Williams, February 28, 1834, Williams Papers.

43 Huntington, “History of Banking and Currency in Ohio,” p. 370; copy of charter and other printed materials in bound volume of publications relating to the Trust Company (Ohio Historical Society Library). For a summary of the views of the New York group, see Bronson to Williams, June 4, 1833, Williams Papers.

44 Clark to Williams, June 6, 1833, ibid.

45 For a few months, the 1834 banking crisis occasioned by contraction of Bank of the United States operations left in question whether funds could be raised in New York. Butler to Williams, February 18, 1834, ibid. But in March, Arthur Bronson averred that money-market uncertainty offered conditions “quite auspicious for placing the stock and control of this Institution in proper hands.” Bronson to Olcott, March 4, 1834, Olcott Papers.

46 Williams to Bronson, February 8, 14, 1834, Williams Papers.

47 Williams to Bronson, December 16, 1834, ibid.; C. J. Wright to Simon Perkins, September 26, 1834, Simon Perkins Papers (Western Reserve Historical Society). Among the fund commissioners who served as trustees at various times during 1834–1843, were Simon Perkins, Daniel Kilgore, Alfred Kelley, Samuel Maccracken, and Gustavus Swan.

48 Williams to B. Tappan, May 6, 1834, Tappan Papers; C. J. Wright to S. Perkins, September 29, 1834, Elisha Whittlesey to Perkins, October 20, 1834, Perkins Papers.

49 Williams to E. Hayward, November 30, 1834, Williams Papers. Williams' family included seven children.

50 One hostile stockholder complained in 1835 that the Trust Company was “managed at Williams beck, and the rest here play second fiddle.” J. C. Wright to E. Whittlesey, August 17, 1835, Whittlesey Papers. See also Whittlesey to Isaac Bronson, December 5, 1836, March 31, 1837, Williams to G. Hoyt and others, December 14, 1836, ibid.

51 See state commissioners' annual reports relating to Trust Company, in volume of printed materials on the company (Ohio Historical Society); and Williams to J. Morrison, July 10, 1840, Williams Papers.

52 Columbus Western Hemisphere, December 30, 1834; see also E. Whittlesey to Williams, August 3, 1835, Whittlesey Papers.

53 William Parry to Lytle, January 25, 1835, C. Macalester to Lytle, December 18, 1834, Robert Lytle Papers (Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, Cincinnati). The impression that the Trust Company was allied to the Van Buren faction appeared reasonable enough in that Olcott, Butler, and Bronson were all leading members of New York's “Albany Regency,” with which Van Buren had been intimately associated in Democratic politics.

54 Williams to Bronson, December 16, 1834, Williams Papers; Williams to E. A. Brown, October 4, 1835, Brown Papers. See also Smith, James G., Development of Trust Companies in the United States (New York, 1922), pp. 263–65Google Scholar.

55 Maccracken to Perkins, January 29, 1835, Perkins Papers.

56 Weisenburger, Passing of the Frontier, p. 336; Williams to Perkins, October 27, 1836, May 29, 1837, Perkins Papers.

57 Weisenburger, Passing of the Frontier, pp. 101ff.

58 State of Ohio, Executive Documents, 1838–39, No. 39, p. 5; Scheiber, “Internal Improvements and Economic Change in Ohio,” chap. 11. In April, 1840, the Trust Company was also named as the eastern transfer agent of the board of canal fund commissioners.

59 Alfred Kelley to Perkins, December 12, 1839, Perkins Papers; J. N. Perkins to Williams, January 15, 1840, Williams Papers.

60 Williams to J. N. Perkins, March 27, 1840, ibid.

61 Williams to J. N. Perkins, March 9, 1840, ibid.; Williams to S. Perkins, July 20, 1840, Perkins Papers.

62 Williams to Whittlesey, February 4, 1841, Whittlesey Papers; Williams to L. Ransom, August 1, 1840, Williams Papers. On the Whitewater Canal, see Moore, Waldo C., “Early Ohio Internal Improvements,” The Numismatist, vol. XXXI (1918), pp. 372–74Google Scholar; and MS memoir of Erasmus Gest, Gest Papers (Ohio Historical Society).

63 Agreement of May 5, 1835, Williams Papers. See Still, Bayrd, Milwaukee: The History of a City (Madison, 1948)Google Scholar, for the role of Kilbourne in the early history of the town.

64 I. A. Lapham to his father, July 27, 1836 (copy), Increase Lapham Papers (Ohio Historical Society).

65 Kilbourne to Williams, January 18, 1840, J. N. Perkins to Williams, March 27, 1840, Williams Papers. On the Rock River Canal, which grew out of the earlier slackwater project, see Smith, William R., The History of Wisconsin (Madison, 1854), vol. III, p. 373Google Scholar.

66 Agreement of Februaiy 6, 1839, and correspondence of April 1839, Williams Papers.

67 Williams to J. Morrison, July 10, 1840, ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 In 1843, for example, Williams commented that the depression would “give a new stimulus to the growth of the city,” citing low construction costs in Cincinnati. Williams to J. N. Perkins, April 8, 1843, ibid.

70 Williams to Joseph Lake, April 7, 1840, Williams to I. A. Lapham, October 16, 1840, ibid.; Williams to Daniel Kilgore, August 31, 1840, Daniel Kilgore Papers (Ohio Historical Society).

71 Alfred Kelley to Williams, March 17, 1842, Williams Papers.

72 The stockholders' attack on Williams focused upon what several trustees regarded as irregular operations in New York. See Williams to J. N. Perkins, September 4, 1840, ibid.; Williams to Simon Perkins, October 3, 1840, Perkins Papers.

73 Kelley declared that Williams' partnership with Dow was “extremely injurious to the interests and reputation of the [Trust] Company.” Kelley to E. Whittlesey, December 22, 1841, Whittlesey Papers. When Williams finally did resign, however, at least a few of the trustees asked him to reconsider. Williams to S. Hubbard, October 7, 1843, Williams Papers.

74 Williams to H. Espy, February 2, 1843, ibid. Williams formed an additional partnership in 1844 in the banking firm of Williams & Wheeler, Cincinnati. Agreement of January 1, 1844, ibid. See also Cleveland Herald, December 20, 1841.

75 Williams to Fearon, July 25, 1840, Williams to Gen. Walter Cunningham, May 5, 1843, and correspondence of June 1843, ibid.

76 As early as November 1840, Williams had been suffering from an “impediment in respiration.” Daniel Tilden to Williams, November 28, 1840, ibid.

77 Williams to his son, February 12, 1844, ibid.; date of death given in Perry, “Micajah T. Williams.” The stroke was apparently suffered after his resignation as Trust Company president.

78 In an interesting allusion to the Bank War, Williams wrote to the New York agent of the Trust Company: “I am really for a national bank as soon as you please if it can be placed on a proper basis. But, I think you New Yorkers who have destroyed the present Bank because it was not in New York, will not be content with one located in Washington City.” Letter to J. N. Perkins, February 24, 1841, Williams Papers.

79 See Williams to his son, July 18, 1842, ibid.

80 For a synthesis of recent research, see Goodrich, Carter, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (New York, 1960)Google Scholar. Manipulation of canal tolls by state authorities to aid local manufacturers, an extreme example of “state mercantilism,” is discussed in Scheiber, Harry N., “Rate-Making Power of the State in the Canal Era: A Case Study,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. LXVII (September, 1962), pp. 397ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 On Kelley, see Marvin, Walter R., “Alfred Kelley,” Museum Echoes, vol. XXXIII (February, 1960), pp. 11–13Google Scholar. On the canals as training school for engineers, see Calhoun, Daniel H., The American Civil Engineer: Origins and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 47ffGoogle Scholar. For a review of writings on entrepreneurship, see Sawyer, John E., “Entrepreneurial Studies: Perspectives and Directions, 1948–1958” Business History Review, vol. XXXII (Winter, 1958), pp. 434–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Jesse Lynch Williams: In Memoriam (Ft. Wayne, n. d.); Knapp, Horace S., History of the Maumee Valley (Toledo, 1876), pp. 415–22Google Scholar; Calhoun, American Civil Engineer, p. 211; Samuel Forrer Papers, passim; Francis Cleveland to Williams, December 1, 1832, Williams Papers.