Last week, For the Record reviewed Estate Inventories and demonstrated how documents in the collection offer unique insights into Manhattan life from the era of George Washington’s presidency through the runup to the Civil War. Remarkably rich with detail, these records simultaneously remind us of how different—and yet how familiar—New York City life was, 200 years ago. 

This week, For the Record continues the analysis of the collection focusing on three themes: Enslaved people in New York City, Tools of the trade: artisans and shopkeepers, and Booksellers and personal libraries. 

Enslaved people in New York City 

Ownership of human beings was not outlawed in New York State until 1827. The estate files therefore cover several decades when the practice was still legal. References to enslaved persons can be found in some of the estates. For example, consider the short asset list of Samuel Clews who died in 1808 and who owned a boarding house and livery stable on Water Street. His estate included a “Negro Man Slave,” whose appraised $100 value was greater than the combined value of all of Mr. Clews’ other possessions. The appraisers saw fit to note that Samuel Clews also owned a female slave who “ran away 14 Months ago.”  

Similarly, Samuel Kips of the Kips Bay family left a modest collection of household furniture, tableware, and “6 old books” whose combined value came to barely $350 at his death in 1804. But he also listed three “negro girls” whose appraised value was $492. 

A different story emerges from the estate of James Arden, a wealthy merchant whose estate inventory is notable for the methodical and detailed picture it paints of his home at 12 Greenwich Street. Arden’s appraisers worked floor-by-floor and room-by-room, allowing us to reconstruct how his residence was organized and appointed. The appraisers even distinguished between what was in his desk (silver knee buckles and certificates for bank shares) and what was on the desk (“ink stand paper quills & pencils”). James Arden’s estate file says nothing about enslaved people, although it lists the modest contents of a “Garret & Servants Bed Room:” 

More of the story emerges from Arden’s actual will, which is not part of the estates collection at the Municipal Archives. [The James Arden will record is accessible via Ancestry.com, New York, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1659-1999.] His will manumits “my two female slaves Nancy and Nan” as well as Nan’s son Frank. Arden may have had in mind something other than a guilty conscience or even benevolence, however—his will goes on to say that these manumissions were to be conducted “according to law so as to discharge my estate from all future responsibility on their account.” James Arden’s story shows the ways in which the estate lists may be combined with other sources to reconstruct life in old New York.  

Tools of the trade: artisans and shopkeepers 

As the United States developed its own workshops and factories and weaned itself from dependence on imported goods from Europe, how were these establishments stocked? What tools, equipment, and finished products might be encountered upon entering a cabinetmaker’s shop, or that of a cooper, a printer, or a weaver? New York became America’s largest city in 1790, and it manufactured a remarkable variety of products. One example of a workshop’s contents is found in the 1821 estate of Christopher Corley, a gunsmith on Water Street. 

Corley’s assets included a wide and formidable array of weapons, as well as the accoutrements needed to deploy them. Some of Christopher Corley’s weaponry from his estate inventory include manufacturing equipment such as “Two sets of gun smith tools,” anvils and bellows, a “lathe and apparatus,” vises, and emery. The large number of gun stocks (800!) and the presence of cannonades (a short cannon used at close-range) suggests that Morley’s customers may have included the military. 

The printer Jonas Booth’s 1850 estate inventory offers a window into developments of interest to historians of information technology as well as historians of advertising, and even of the circus! Booth was an Englishman from Manchester, which has been called “the first industrialized city.” Booth learned the printing trade and arrived in America in 1822 with knowledge not merely of how to print, but how to design and even manufacture every component of the printing process, from making ink to designing and building the printing press itself. His business at 147 Fulton Street became known for Booth’s ability to print jobs fast (he built the first steam-powered printing press in America) and large. One of Booth’s specialties were enormous color posters, used especially to advertise traveling circuses. His estate inventory includes a Napier Printing Press, complete with steam engine, as well as large quantities of colored printing ink and a Harris paint mill that ground color ingredients for mixing up inks. Circus posters, some of which measured ten feet on a side, exemplify ephemera and examples from Booth’s shop are extremely rare and prized as works of art. 

Rope, twine, string: cordage was a big part of 18th and 19th century life. A large sailing ship could be rigged with up to 40 miles of rope of various sizes. Maps of Manhattan showed surprising numbers of ropewalks, where pre-industrial technology created all types of cordage by having men walk and twist fiber. The few surviving ropewalks document the equipment and supplies working ropemakers required 200 years ago. The 1848 estate of Samuel Abbott offers a scholar of industrial technology a wealth of detail, with an arcane set of specialized terms: crown wheel, side wheel, Jenny wheel.

Booksellers and personal libraries 

The estate files contain numerous lists of books. Some were impressive personal libraries containing both literature and professional titles, such as law books or medical treatises. An example was the collection of Richard Harison (1747-1829), one-time law partner of Alexander Hamilton, whose obituary called him “the patriarch of the New-York Bar; a man of great legal acquirements, and much general erudition.”

Harison’s estate included a remarkably large library consisting of 1,200 titles, most of which were sets ranging from two to 25 or more separate volumes. His library therefore had perhaps 3,000 to 5,000 bound books! Most were kept at his “country seat,” which was a mansion on property stretching all the way from 8th to 9th Avenues and from West 30th to 31st Street! Harison’s library was astounding in its range and sophistication, supporting his reputation of having “much general erudition”—unsurprisingly it included Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton and the 20 volume Encyclopedia Britannica but also Isaac Newton on physics, Samuel Johnson’s seminal Dictionary, and such obscurities as a two-volume poem entitled Botanic Garden written by Charles Darwin’s grandfather and Jean Baptiste Bellegarde’s long-forgotten Reflexions Upon Ridicule. Harison still found time to be the first United States Attorney for New York, a state assemblyman, and Alexander Hamilton’s law partner. 

Another fascinating book list is that of Samuel Bartlett, who operated a combined bookshop, publishing house, and circulating library at 78 Bowery until his death in 1822, after which his brother Caleb took over the business. 

A portion of Samuel Bartlett’s estate inventory, listing items from his shop that included books, plates for printing, sets of chessmen, and old songs valued at ½ cent each, more than 5,000 quills, and pinions—mechanical pieces used in hand-operated printing presses. Try finding a shop selling that combination today! 

In the 18th and early 19th centuries there were no public libraries in New York, and few private libraries—The New York Society Library, founded in 1754, is a rare surviving example. However, small “circulating libraries” were not uncommon, offering subscribing members borrowing privileges. An idea of the cost to join a circulating library can be found in a startling ad for a combined “Corset Establishment and Circulating Library” operated on Maiden Lane by Mrs. Bower in 1824: $5 per year. Nonsubscribers could borrow individual volumes for 6 or 12½ cents, depending on their size.

The contents of Samuel Bartlett’s bookshop and library at his death in 1822 is in his estate file. Bartlett’s lending library of 1,384 volumes was described as “nearly all old books…mostly novels, plays, romances and similar works of little value,” and was valued altogether at just $200. However, three densely packed pages are devoted to books for sale. The list is particularly valuable because it indicates the number of copies of each work that were in inventory, giving us an idea of how many of each book Mr. Bartlett thought he could sell.

Many of the books represented by dozens or even hundreds of copies were evidently for student use, such as 485 copies of “Key to Dilworth.”  This was A Key to Dilworth’s Arithmetic, written by an anonymous “Teacher of Arithmetic” and intended to serve as a companion volume to the widely used arithmetic textbook by Thomas Dilworth. Twenty-two copies of American Cookery, followed by 387 copies of Dream Books represents an interesting juxtaposition in Samuel Bartlett’s estate inventory. 

American Cookery, widely considered to be the first fully American cookbook, was published in 1796. Its author, Amelia Simmons, is credited with being the first cookbook author to pair turkey with cranberry sauce, and to use the Dutch term cookey for little baked desserts. Samuel Bartlett kept almost two dozen copies in his shop. 

What about 387 copies of the next entry in Bartlett’s inventory, for “Dream Books”—plus more than 900 additional copies listed on another page? Did large numbers of pre-Freudian New Yorkers record or otherwise analyze their dreams? Hardly—Dream Books were cheap publications that purported to associate dream imagery with specific numbers, which in turn could be wagered on in popular but illegal Policy games. Samuel Bartlett appears to have had a thriving business selling Dream Books.  

Let’s close with a look at an unexpected record to emerge from the Municipal Archives’ estate inventories: a description of the elements of a funeral service in 1826! Elias Baldwin died in a voyage to Curacao in November 1825, and his body was returned to the New York area for burial. Unusually, his estate appraisers elected to list in considerable detail the costs associated with his funeral rather than confining themselves to his assets at death. Many of the items are self-evident (“the sailors who assisted on board the ship inlaying Mr. Baldwin out”); others less so (12 cents for “pyrogenous acid,” also known as wood acid. It has antimicrobial properties and may have been used to help preserve the corpse). There were clerks and coffin attendants and a hearse driver, and even—as in mythology—$8 to pay the ferryman to bring the deceased to New Jersey. 

In contrast to the detail lavished on Elias Baldwin’s funeral, the rest of his appraised estate listed only a handful of assets—but one stands out for its brush with history: an “uncertain” amount due from “Col Aaron Burr, for services rendered by deceased in his life time.” 

Readers are welcome to explore the updated collection inventory in the Collection Guide.