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Some Remarks on the Business of a New York Ship Chandler in the 1810's

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Fritz Redlich
Affiliation:
Mercer University

Extract

The Baker Library of Harvard University received during the past year an unidentified New York ship chandler's daybooks covering roughly the years 1811-15. These books depict some aspects of the work of a small concern in this line of trade, a trade which was typical of the numerous ports in the old and new worlds in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Type
Other
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1942

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References

1 According to the New York City Directory for 1814-15. It is interesting that Boston had 26 ship chandlers in 1850. according to the Boston Almanac for the year 1851.

2 Ehrenberg, Richard, Grosse Vermögen, ihre Entstehung und ihre Bedeutung (Jena, 1925), vol. ii, pp. 4 ff.Google Scholar

3 Albion, Robert Greenhalgh, in The Rise of New York Port (1815-1860) (N. Y., 1939), gives on p. 415Google Scholar an excerpt from Doyle's ledger of 1825. The list of port expenses of a China clipper, reprinted by the same author on p. 414, also clearly distinguishes between ship chandlery on the one hand and provisions, fresh provisions, bread, tea, flour, and livestock on the other.

4 Some of the information contained in the following paragraph was kindly unearthed by Paul North Rice, chief of the reference department of the New York Public Library.

5 It is not impossible that Barker's partner Hallock was related to James C. Hallock, Senior, who, after having been instrumental in the creation of the New York Clearing House, was its first assistant manager. (The Barker and Hallock families were Quakers.)

6 Emery, William M., The Howland Heirs (New Bedford, Mass., 1919), pp. 245246.Google Scholar

7 Albion, op. cit., p. 415. It will be remembered that 12½ cents equaled one bit, or the eighth part of a Spanish piece of eight.