Fish Merchants

Christopher P. Magra

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511576621.004

2 - Fish Merchants

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 July 2009

Christopher P. Magra

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Christopher P. Magra: Affiliation:
California State University, Northridge

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I have heard of a certain Merchant in the west of England, who after many great losses, [was] walking upon the Sea-bank in a calm Sun-shining day; observing the smoothness of the Sea, coming in with a checkered or dimpled wave: ‘Ah (quoth he) thou flattering Element, many a time hast thou enticed me to throw myself and my fortunes into thy Arms; but thou hast hitherto proved treacherous; thinking to find thee a Mother of increase, I have found thee to be the Mother of mischief and wickedness; yea the Father of prodigies; therefore, being now secure, I will trust thee no more.’ But mark this man's resolution awhile after, periculum maris spes lucri superat [hope for money overcomes the danger of the sea].

The Gerry family in Marblehead, Massachusetts, owned and operated one of the most successful fish exporting businesses in eighteenth-century New England. Thomas Gerry (1702–1774), the patriarch, was born in Newton Abbot in Devonshire, located in England's West Country, a region with historic ties to the Atlantic cod trade. He came to colonial Massachusetts as a twenty-eight-year-old master of a merchant ship in 1730 and decided to settle in Marblehead, then an up-and-coming fishing port. Four years later, he married Elizabeth Greenleaf, the daughter of a Marblehead saddler and a relation of John Elbridge, who had been collector of customs in Bristol, England, before he died and left the Greenleaf family an estate in excess of one million pounds sterling.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Fisherman's Cause
Atlantic Commerce and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution
, pp. 26 - 48

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511576621.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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