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A Tidewater Merchant In New Hampshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Robert W. Lovett
Robert W. Lovett
Affiliation:
Head of Manuscript Division at Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration
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Abstract

In post-Colonial days and well into the nineteenth century the merchant's role in smaller communities was incredibly versatile and complicated. This study calls attention to one such “Yankee trader,” who was the focal point for scores of enterprises but whose nonspecialized adventures became progressively restricted with changing times.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , Spring 1959 , pp. 60 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1959

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References

1 This article is a revision of a talk before the Durham Historic Association on April 28, 1958. It is based largely on the Frost Collection in Baker Library, Harvard Business School. This collection, comprising 67 volumes and 2 boxes and covering the period from 1764 to 1884, was presented by Miss Sarah L. Frost, Miss Elizabeth R. Frost, and Mrs. James C. Sawyer [Mary Fepperell Frost]. The writer is indebted to Miss Elizabeth and Miss Sarah Frost and to their nephew, Mr. Charles Sawyer, for permission to consult material still in their possession and for answers to several inquiries about the history of the Frost family. Mr. Philip C. Wilcox, President of the Association, was also of assistance at the beginning of my research.

2 The family still has in its possession in Dover and Durham, New Hampshire, records of John Frost and George Frost I (the name was then spelled Ffrost); and it is possible that further organization and study of these records will reveal more of the relationships of the 1790's.

3 John Burleigh, Frost's father-in-law, also kept a store, at Newmarket. Records of this enterprise are part of the Frost collection in Baker Library.

4 Much later an artist sketched how the area must have looked at the height of its activity. The sketch hangs in the Frost home in Durham and is reproduced in Saltonstall, William G., Ports of Piscataqua (Cambridge, 1941).Google Scholar

5 Wille agreed to carry on tillage at the halves, to pay one-half of all taxes, to make cider at the halves, to labor with Frost at $8.00 a month after he finished hoeing, to put up all the fence, said Frost finding the boards, to deliver to Frost one-half the butter and cheese from two cows, all the winter apples and one-half the produce, and not to cut any wood; Frost in turn was to supply the oxen and farming utensils.

6 Saltonstall, op. cit., pp. 180–191.

7 Taylor, D.Foster, “The Piscataqua River Gundelow,” American Neptune (April, 1942).Google Scholar Taylor traces the various spellings of the word, and finds that “gondola” might be used when speaking of a boat for carrying passengers only, “gondela” of one for passengers and freight, and “gundelow” (pronounced gun-low) for freight only.

8 Taylor, op. cit., American Neptune.

9 A sister of George Frost II also married a Mellen.