NATHAN BROOKS PAPERS, 1666-1917
Vault A45, Brooks, Unit 1
Extent: 54 linear feet (87 containers, including 2 artifact containers and 3 oversized containers, plus 9 volumes).
Organization and arrangement: Organized into nine series: Series I. Estate papers, 1666-1864; Series II. Separate deeds and other property-related documents (plans, leases, agreements, etc.), 1786-1856; Series III. Papers and records related to legal and other offices held, 1769-1863; Series IV. Papers relating to legal practice, 1791-1861; Series V. Financial and business papers, 1796-1864; Series VI. Abel Moore papers, 1801-1857; Series VII. Tilly Merrick papers, 1780-1837; Series VIII. Merrick and Minot family papers, 1731-1858; Series IX. Nathan Brooks and Brooks family personal papers, 1777-1917. Multiple schemes of arrangement have been followed in processing the collection. For more information about arrangement within each series, click to the individual series descriptions below.
Biography: Lawyer Nathan Brooks (1785-1863) was a key player in the financial, commercial, political, and social life of nineteenth-century Concord, Massachusetts, and of the Middlesex County court system. Brooks established a presence in town and county before Concord's commercial self-containment was altered by the rapid spread of the railroad and its political importance was diminished by the loss of the county courts to Cambridge and Lowell. He maintained an active legal practice from the early part of the century into the Civil War years.
Born in Lincoln, Massachusetts, Nathan Brooks was the fourth son of Joshua Brooks (farmer, tanner, and veteran of the Battle of Concord) and his wife Martha. Tutored by the Rev. Charles Stearns, he entered Harvard in 1804, earned tuition money by teaching school, and graduated in 1809. He gained his knowledge of law in Concord under the tutelage of legendary lawyer Samuel Hoar and of Thomas Heald. Admitted to the Middlesex Bar in 1813, Brooks practiced in Concord first out of an office on Lexington Road, later shared a building on Main Street with Sam Hoar, and finally (in 1833) moved to the new Concord Bank building, which still stands on Main Street (the present 46/48 Main).
Nathan Brooks married Caroline Downes of Boston in 1819. She died in 1820, shortly after the birth of the couple’s daughter Caroline. In 1823, Brooks remarried. His second wife was Mary Merrick, daughter of Concord storekeeper Tilly Merrick. Having grown up in Concord, Tilly Merrick was involved in commerce in Amsterdam and in Charleston, South Carolina, before returning to his native town in the late 1790s, opening a general store, and marrying Sally Minot.
Nathan and Mary Brooks had two sons, George Merrick (1824-1893) and Charles Augustus (1832-1833). In 1840, Caroline Brooks married Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (a son of Samuel Hoar), who later served as Attorney General of the United States under Ulysses S. Grant. Following in his father's footsteps, George Merrick Brooks became a lawyer, a public official, and a probate judge.
The Brooks home stood at the intersection of Main Street and Sudbury Road, where the Concord Free Public Library is now located. It was moved to Hubbard Street in 1872, prior to the Library's construction.
Probate matters (particularly estate settlement) and the collection of debts comprised much of Nathan Brooks's legal work. In the practice of his profession, he was privy to confidential information about leading businessmen and pillars of the community. The estate records among the Nathan Brooks papers include bills, receipts, accounts, estate inventories, and other clear evidence of the standard of living and financial conduct of such Concordians as Deacon Reuben Brown, storekeepers Samuel Burr, Phineas How, William Parkman, and multifaceted entrepreneurs Daniel Shattuck (who kept store on Monument Square in what is now the Colonial Inn) and Abel Moore.
While Brooks was intimate with the affairs of the "haves" of Concord, he also exercised authority over the lives of the "have nots." For decades, he was a master in chancery, in which capacity he presided over cases of insolvency.
Brooks also held other offices at the county and state levels. He was a justice of the peace, a notary public, and an attorney of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He also played a role in some of the most important commercial enterprises in pre-Civil War Concord. He was secretary/treasurer of the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company, a director of the Concord Bank, and president of the Middlesex Institution for Savings. Moreover, he was involved in the finances of a number of 
other ventures. For example, in managing Daniel Shattuck’s affairs, Brooks conducted business relating to the Concord Mill Dam Company, a real estate development corporation (incorporated 1828) of which Shattuck was treasurer. The Abel Moore estate involved him in the affairs of the short-lived Concord Steam Mill Company (incorporated 1846).
Nathan Brooks was politically active. He served on the County Committee for the County of Middlesex, as a representative to the Massachusetts General Court, a state senator, and a member of the governor's council. A staunch Whig, in 1838/1839 he ran (unsuccessfully) to represent the Middlesex District in the United States Congress. In the 1840s, he was treasurer for the Whig celebrations held in Concord.
As a party, the Whigs opposed the expansion of slavery into free territory. Nathan Brooks's views on slavery were both consistent with his party's stance and quietly supportive of the abolitionism of his wife, Mary Merrick Brooks, who led the Concord Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society and was an associate and friend of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Although her husband's prominent public position prevented his overt involvement in illegally assisting runaway slaves, he discreetly supported her efforts.
Along with Samuel Hoar, Abiel Heywood, Josiah Davis, and William Whiting, Nathan Brooks was one of the original proprietors of the Concord Academy, a private school established in 1822 in the neighborhood of the Brooks home. His daughter Caroline and son George attended the Academy.
Nathan Brooks was a member of the Social Circle in Concord. He belonged to Concord’s ruling class. And yet, he was liked and respected by the humble as well as the affluent. By all accounts, he was a fair-minded man, patient, pleasantly sociable, even-tempered, with a sense of humor. He was a good neighbor as well as a good lawyer. He taught Sunday school at the First Parish, was toastmaster at the annual dinner of the Middlesex Agricultural Society, and provided in his office a hospitable place for both conversation and business.
Scope and content: Papers, 1666-1917, documenting the professional, business, and personal life of nineteenth-century Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks, his role within the Middlesex County legal system, and his place in the social, economic, and political life of town, county, and state. The collection sheds light on the financial and legal circumstances of Brooks’s clients, particularly the real estate and financial transactions of those for whom he was estate administrator or executor. The official, commercial, and financial life of Abel Moore is particularly well-represented. (Brooks was executor for the estate of Moore, who was Middlesex County deputy sheriff and deputy jailer and a successful real estate investor and dealer in standing and cut wood.) The business, finances, and involvements in South Carolina and Concord of merchant Tilly Merrick, Brooks’s father-in-law, are documented in great depth. Aspects of the lives, financial situations, and activities of members of the extended Brooks family (including Nathan Brooks’s brother Franklin) and of various Merrick and Minot in-laws (among them Tilly Merrick’s brother Augustus and son Augustus) are also documented. The papers include material generated by Brooks’s wife Mary Merrick Brooks, his daughter Caroline (later Mrs. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar), his son George, and George’s second wife, Mary A. Dillingham Brooks.
The papers Nathan Brooks left behind at his death paint a vivid and complex picture of the world occupied by the affluent of Concord (for example, Reuben Brown, Abel Moore, and Daniel Shattuck), those on the margins of economic life (members of the town’s black families—Garrison, Robbins, and Hutchinson—and Irish immigrants), those who endured financial reversal, and Transcendental authors Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott as well. They also reveal the transience of personal prosperity and the wide-spread prevalence of debt and insolvency during the span of Brooks’s career. Concord historian Ruth Robinson Wheeler, who preliminarily processed these papers, expressed disappointment that they contained little information about the social life of Concord or about Brooks’s personal life, but that assessment is not accurate. Both the professional and the personal components of the collection contain numerous documents that individually and collectively shed light on the details of nineteenth-century Concord social and economic history. Moreover, Brooks’s financial and personal papers provide enough information to support a full-length biography of him.
The best way to determine whether or where a particular personal name or corporate entity shows up in the collection is to use your browser’s “find in page” feature to search the entire finding aid.
The Nathan Brooks papers encompass a wide variety of material types, among them legal papers (including writs) and voluminous probate records; correspondence (business and personal); financial records (bills, receipts, accounts, and account books); deeds and property surveys; certificates of appointment and diplomas; volumes from the Brooks family library; and some few artifactual items.
The earliest dated items in the collection are transcribed copies of earlier documents. (The date spans for the collection as a whole and for its components are based upon the dates of the original documents rather than the date of transcription). Receipts throughout the collection are filed by the date payment was made rather than the date expense was incurred. Non-receipted accounts are filed by the latest date on the account. Deeds, when chronologically filed, are arranged by date witnessed rather than date recorded.
This is an extensive and content-rich collection. Although pains have been taken to provide a sufficient degree of organization and level of descriptive detail to facilitate the researcher’s work, there is no substitute for hands-on, folder-by-folder examination of those sections of the papers that may be relevant to a particular inquiry.
Provenance: The Nathan Brooks papers were, according to Ruth Robinson Wheeler, “neatly filed by years and kept on shelves in his [Nathan Brooks’s] office.” They were later stored in the attic of the home of his son George Merrick Brooks (the present 1 Sudbury Road, Concord).
Source of acquisition: Gift of Mary Brooks Buttrick (date of donation undetermined).
Notes and comments: These papers remained unprocessed in the Concord Free Public Library for many years after they were donated. They were preliminarily processed by Ruth Robinson Wheeler and two of her granddaughters in the 1970s. In 1995 and 1996, they were further processed and described in greater detail under a grant project funded by the NHPRC. Sheri Kelley was the processing archivist for the collection during that initiative. From August 2010 to March 2011, Leslie Wilson refined the organization, arrangement, and description of the papers (processing assistance was provided by Reed Anthony, Bette Aschaffenburg, and Robert C. Hall). Finding aid completed March 3, 2011.
Even though it has been worked and reworked, this is an imperfectly processed collection. Each time processing was undertaken, materials were moved and refiled, making it impossible to know how much of the original order survives. In some folders are found items with no apparent connection to the material surrounding them. But sequences of legal and other documents sometimes relate to one another without any explicit indication of their connection. In the absence of direct evidence that they belong elsewhere, it has seemed best to leave many such items where they are rather than to assume they are misfiled and move them. Moreover, even though many sequences of materials are filed by year, for the most part no attempt has been made to arrange the materials in the file for a particular year in strict day-by-day, month-by-month chronology.
Researchers must consult the finding aid and request specific files prior to accessing the collection and, in preparing citations, should use identifying data for a folder and its content as it appears in the container list (below).
A few items from the old Concord Free Public Library Letter File were transferred into the Nathan Brooks papers at the time of the 1995/1996 processing.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list directly, or click on one of the series titles immediately following for more detailed information about a particular series.
Series I. Estate papers, 1666-1864
Series II. Separate deeds and other property-related documents (plans, leases, agreements, etc.), 1786-1856
Series III. Papers and records related to legal and other offices held, 1769-1863
Series IV. Papers relating to legal practice, 1791-1861
Series V. Financial and business papers, 1796-1864
Series VI. Abel Moore papers, 1801-1857
Series VII. Tilly Merrick papers, 1780-1837
Series VIII. Merrick and Minot family papers, 1731-1858
Series IX. Nathan Brooks and Brooks family personal papers, 1777-1917
Series information:
Series I. Estate papers, 1666-1864:
Extent: 27 containers, plus material in two artifact containers and one oversized container.
Series description:
Papers, 1666-1864, for some 135 estates for which Nathan Brooks was executor or administrator. Some clusters of papers treated as estates undoubtedly reflect other types of legal involvement by Brooks than estate settlement—for example, the Bascom & Cole files and the papers of Daniel Shattuck, whom Nathan Brooks predeceased by some four years. Series includes many types of documents, among them: wills; estate inventories; accounts, bills, receipts, checks, and account books; lists of creditors; power of attorney documents; writs; depositions; insurance policies; property surveys; agreements; bonds; promissory notes; divorce papers; deeds; leases; certificates of title; warrants; letters patent; correspondence. The series is arranged alphabetically by last name of estate holder. For the most part, no attempt has been made to arrange materials within individual estates.
Series I encompasses estate papers for the following: John Adams; Joseph Adams; William Baldwin; Francis Barrett; Humphrey Barrett; Humphrey Barrett, Jr.; Rebecca Barrett; Samuel Barrett; Charles Bartlett; Mary H. Bartlett; Bascom & Cole (business partnership); Henry and Ezra Batchelder; John Bates; Henry Bates; Thomas Benjamin; Heartwell Bigelow; Israel Billing/Billings; Abel Bowman; Alice Bridge; John Brigham; Asa Brooks; Isaac Brooks; Job Brooks; Joshua Brooks; Sarah Brooks; Noah Brooks; Abel Brown; Joseph Brown; Mary Brown; Reuben Brown; William Brown; John Burr; Samuel Burr; John Buttrick; John Byrnes; Lemuel Curtis; Samuel Dakin; Jonathan Davis; Josiah Davis; Mary Davis; Joseph Dole; Mary Field; John Fitch; Comfort Foster; James Griffin; Elisha Hagar; Abraham Handley; Sarah Hardy; Ephraim Hartwell; Lydia Hartwell; Shadrack Haynes; Asa Hayward; Abiel Heywood; Jonas Heywood; Silas Holden; Jesse Hosmer; Elijah Hosmer; John Hosmer; Sally and Lydia Hosmer; Oliver Houghton; Phineas How; Ebenezer Hubbard; Rebecca Hubbard; Samuel Hunt; Isaac Hurd; Isaac Hurd, Jr.; Joseph Hurd; Nathaniel Hutchinson; Stephen Jarvis; James Jones; Joshua Jones; Aaron Keyes; Sarah Lane; Samuel Cordis Lee; Margaret Mahoney; Ephraim Meriam; John Meriam; Oliver Meriam; Charles Miles; Darius Miles; Reuben Miles; Abel Minot; Stephen Minot; Timothy Minot; Abigail Minot; William Minot; Wilson Moffatt/Moffett/Moffitt; Lazzerro/Lazzero/Lazero/Lazzarro/Lazarro/Lazaro/Lazarus/Lazare Montefiore; Luther Moore; Jonas Monroe; Peter Neft/Nief/Neef/Neff/Niff/Nefft; Nathan Nurse; Cyrus Nutting; Lydia Page; Mary H. Parker; William Parkman; Lurana/Lorana/Laurana Parks; Ephraim Potter; Lucy Potter; Asa Porter; John Prescott; Samuel P. Prescott; Timothy Prescott; Elizabeth Prince; Gaius Proctor; Sarah Randall; Chloe Richards; Mary F. Richards; Luther Robbins; Peter Robbins; Daniel Shattuck; Cyrus Smith; Daniel Smith; Eirene/Irene Smith; Sarah Snow; William Stearns; Joshua Stiles; John Stone; Cyrus Stow; Eleanor Swan; Joshua Swan; John L. Tuttle; Abiel H. Wheeler; Charles Wheeler; Phebe Wheeler (Miss and Mrs.); Peter Wheeler; Ephraim Whitcomb; Sarah Whitcomb; Stephen Williams; Martha Whiting; Elijah Wood; Ebenezer Woodward; Calvin Wright; Edward Wright; Hannah Wright; Sarah Wyman.
Documents relating to Henry David Thoreau and members of the Thoreau family are found in the following estates: Heartwell Bigelow; Reuben Brown; Samuel Burr; Phineas How; Timothy Minot; Peter Wheeler (see container list for more detail).
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series I.
Series II. Separate deeds and other property-related documents (plans, leases, agreements, etc.), 1786-1856:
Extent: 1 container.
Series description:
Series II was apparently created during the initial processing of the papers in the 1970s by separating deeds and related documents of interest from the estate, legal, and financial papers with which they were originally filed. During the processing of 1995 and 1996, some deeds were reintegrated with materials with which they clearly belonged. However, because it was not possible to do so with any confidence for most of the segregated deeds, the series has been retained.
The deeds and related documents in this series are filed in two sequences, one for property in Concord or property both in Concord and elsewhere, 1786-1856, one for property elsewhere in Massachusetts, 1788-1860 (the latter filed alphabetically by name of town). No effort has been made to arrange deeds (either alphabetically or chronologically) beyond the folder level.
The following names are among those represented in the Concord deeds and related documents: Adams; Alcott; Barrett; Bigelow; Blood; Bond; Bowers; Britton; Brooks; Brown; Burr; Buttrick; Clark; Cogswell; Davis; Farmer; Farrar; Flint; Garfield; Hardy; Hosmer; Hubbard; Hunt; Hurd; Jarvis; Jones; Keyes; Loring; Melven; Meriam; Middlesex Institution for Savings; Minot; Munroe; Prescott; Ripley; Shattuck; Smith; Staples; Temple; Watts; White; Wood; Wright.
The following other Massachusetts towns are represented in the deeds and property documents in this series: Acton; Bedford; Boston; Boxborough; Carlisle; Charlestown; Lexington; Lincoln; Littleton; Lowell; Natick; Sudbury; Shirley; Winchendon.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series II, or on one of the lines in the component listing below to access the container list for a specific portion of the series.
Series components:
For property in Concord or property both in Concord and elsewhere, 1786-1856
For property elsewhere in Massachusetts, 1788-1860
Series III. Papers and records related to legal and other offices held, 1769-1863:
Extent: 1+ container, plus material in one oversized container.
Series description:
Materials in this series relate to Nathan Brooks’s activities in various legal, local, and state offices and capacities: his work as a master in chancery (documents dated 1820-1855); as a justice of the peace (1819-1858); his interactions with the Middlesex County Commissioners (1835, 1839); work as an auditor (1828-1829); as notary public (1817-1863); as referee (1824-1854); as a regimental paymaster (1811-1816); his tenure as a member of the Massachusetts legislature (1825-1829) and as a state senator (1831, 1837); as an attorney of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1815); as a pension agent for Revolutionary service (1769-1844); as presidential and vice presidential elector (1832); as a public administrator (1839); his involvement with grand jury selection (1826); his activities on behalf of the Town of Concord (1820-1858), including the First Parish (municipally supported and administered until 1856) and its Trustees of the Congregational Ministerial Fund; the formation of a citizens’ committee (non-municipal) to prevent petty larcenies (1838); and the transfer of property from Tilly Merrick and William Parkman to William Whiting, Nathan Brooks, and Cyrus Stow as trustees for the maintenance of a public schoolhouse in Concord’s Center school district (1820).
Series III includes documents relating to the cases of Loring v. Bull, Cummings v. Wright, Blodgett v. Hunnewell, Winchester v. West Cambridge, and Hobart v. Fiske, and a protest by the Massachusetts General Hospital against the Charlestown Branch Rail Road’s cutting off access to wharves in Charlestown and disrupting the operation of the McClean Asylum. Among the Revolutionary pension files are documents relating to the claims of Concord, Lexington, Lincoln, and Sudbury men, among them Ephraim Brown, John Buttrick, Isaac Goodnow/Goodenow/Goodenough, Samuel Hartwell, Isaac Hurd (letters from Henry Flagg French among the Hurd materials), Samuel Jones, Daniel Weston, James Wright, and others.
Items in this series, particularly the material relating to the office of master in chancery, highlight the dire prospects—loss of property and, ultimately, jail—that debtors of the time faced.
Some of the material types represented in Series III: correspondence; writs; warrants; statements and depositions; interrogatories; notarial protests; orders for payment; recognizance documents; a master in chancery record book; a petition; and certificates of appointment.
Some items in Series III overlap with materials in Series IX relating to Nathan Brooks’s political activities.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series III, or on one of the lines in the component listing below to access the container list for a specific portion of the series.
Series components:
Master in Chancery, 1820-1855
Justice of the Peace, 1819-1858
Matters relating to County Commissioners, 1835, 1839
Auditor, 1828-1829
Notary public, 1817-1863
Referee, 1824-1854
Regimental paymaster (Third Regiment of Infantry, First Brigade, Third Division of Militia), 1811-1816
Massachusetts legislature, 1825-1829
Attorney of the Supreme Judicial Court (Massachusetts), 1815
Pension agent for Revolutionary service, 1769 (in transcription)-1844
Capacity/office undetermined, 1825-1840
Elector for offices of President and Vice-President of the United States, 1832
Grand Juror selection, 1826
Town of Concord business, 1820-1858
Massachusetts Senator, 1831, 1837
Public Administrator, 1839
Series IV. Papers relating to legal practice, 1791-1861:
Extent: 2+ containers, plus material in one oversized container.
Series description:
This series contains materials generated by Nathan Brooks’s legal practice. It includes cases in which Nathan Brooks was named as plaintiff (creditor), 1814-1857. There are files for Brooks as defense attorney (1818-1844) for clients Luther Davis, James Hapgood, Hepsibah Jones, Thomas Moore, George Spencer, and Amos Wellington et al. Records of Brooks’s work as attorney for the plaintiff (creditor), 1814-1844, are filed alphabetically by name of plaintiff, and represent numerous client names, among them: Lysander Bascom; Ephraim H. Bellows; Heartwell Bigelow; John Brigham; Hiram Brooks; Isaac Brooks; Timothy Brooks; Abishai Brown; Reuben Brown; Samuel Burr; Jonathan Buttrick; Tilly Buttrick; Luther Conant (v. Peter Hutchinson); Concord Bank; Lemuel Curtis; Davis (Josiah, Moses, Charles B.); John Hosmer; Phineas How; Ebenezer Hubbard; Isaac Hurd, Jr.; Peter Hutchinson; Joshua Jones; John P. Merriam (v. Trustees of Lexington Academy); Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company; Abel Moore; Gaius Proctor; Daniel Shattuck; Stow (Cyrus, Nathan); Thomas Wesson; Stephen Weston (v. Peter Hutchinson); William Whiting; Alpheus Witt (including an action v. Peter Hutchinson); Elijah Wood. Two folders of miscellaneous writs and other legal documents (1813-1857) relate to multiple cases (some involving debtors and creditors represented elsewhere in the Nathan Brooks papers) for which the nature of Brooks’s legal involvement is not explicit. In these two folders, some documents relate to cases in which Samuel Hoar was attorney, and one writ relates to a case involving Peter Hutchinson. (Much material in this series is similar and likely related to documents scattered throughout other series, Series I in particular.)
There are individual case files (1791-1861) involving the following: Belknap & Foster/Vermont Massachusetts Railroad (1845-1861); Alfred Brooks (1829); the Georgia Loan Office (1791-1857; including correspondence to and/or from Nathan Brooks, Samuel Hoar, Samuel C. Burr, Moses Prichard, Edward Everett, and others); Charles Herring (1844); Leppelman v. Leppelman (1852, 1858); Blodgett and Tirrell (1842-1843; Suffolk County); Hayden v. Hearn (1856-1857; Norfolk County); the apprentices of Nathaniel Munroe (1812-1821); and Isaac Barker (1835). There are also some miscellaneous legal papers documents and notes (1795-1858), among them a dower document relating to Jane Potter.
Document types represented in Series IV include: agreements; correspondence; statements; depositions; warrants; writs; financial records; notes.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series IV, or on one of the lines in the component listing below to access the container list for a specific portion of the series.
Series components:
Nathan Brooks as plaintiff (creditor), 1814-1857
Nathan Brooks as defense attorney, 1818-1844
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor (filed alphabetically by name of plaintiff), 1814-1844
Writs and other documents (Nathan Brooks connection unspecified), 1813-1857
Individual case files, 1791-1861
Series V. Financial and business papers, 1796-1864:
Extent: 14+ containers.
Series description:
This extensive series contains documentation of Nathan Brooks’s financial transactions on behalf of clients, in a business capacity, and also his personal income and expenditures. Documents include professional correspondence (1810-1864; arranged chronologically); bills, receipts, accounts, notes, orders for payment, etc., 1796-1863; account books, 1829-1863; records of the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company (of which Nathan Brooks was secretary/treasurer), 1827-1863; and records of the Boston, Lexington, and Concord Accommodation Stage (for which he collected on and paid debts), 1833-1839.
The professional correspondence in the series relates to Nathan Brooks’s practice of law and financial management on behalf of clients and others. Most of the letters are to Brooks. A few are drafts of letters by him, and a small number are to or from other parties.
The many correspondents in the subseries include: Josiah Adams; Arthur W. Austin; Jonas Balcom; Joseph Barrett; B. D. Bartlett; Ira Bartlett; Lysander L. Bascom; John D. Bates; Levi Bigelow; Lyman Bigelow; Charles Bowers; Elijah D. Brigham; Daniel Brooks; Franklin Brooks; Hiram Brooks; Isaac Brooks; John Brooks; Joshua Brooks; Samuel C. Burr; John Buttrick; Jabez Carley; H. M. Chamberlain; B. H. Cheever; Henry F. Cogswell; Josiah Cumings; Lemuel Curtis; Caleb Cushing; James R. Cushing; L. S. Cushing; Silas Cutter; John Dallinger; David Damon; Benjamin Davis; J. G. Davis; Thomas Dawes; John L. Dudley; Josiah P. Dudley; A. F. Dyar; George Farley; Dennis Fay; Isaac Fiske; George Folsom; Hannah Freeman;
Nathaniel Freeman; William Frothingham; Elisha Fuller; Henry M. Fuller; Timothy Fuller; John M. Gourgas; John H. Hallowell; Abraham Haskell; Charles Heard; Abraham Hilliard; Samuel Hoar; Thomas Hopkinson; Bela Hosmer; Josephine Hosmer; Joseph H. Howe; Ebenezer Hubbard; Hannah Hunstable; Francis Hunt; Francis Ingraham; Hepsibah Jones; Thomas Jones; Aaron Keyes; J. B. Kittredge; F. F. Lane; James LeBaron; Samuel Cordis Lee; S. S. Littlehale; T. B. Mackay; Samuel J. May; Royal McIntosh; Joshua Melven; Augustus Merrick; Francis J. Merrick; Henry Moore; Curtis Morse; James Munroe & Co.; William Munroe, Jr.; H. W. Muzzey; Joseph W. Newell; Samuel Newell; Warren Nixon; Daniel Parkman; Rebeckah Parks; E. B. Patch; John S. Patch; Asa Payson; Horatio N. Perkins; J. Perkins; Charles Prentice; Joshua Prescott; Timothy Prescott; William Prescott; Marshall Preston; Artemas Rogers; Daniel Smith; William Smith; D. S. Southmayd; Asahel Stearns; Lewis Strong; John P. Tarbell; George A. Thatcher; Joshua Thaxter; Benjamin Thompson; Joseph W. Tuttle; Samuel Tuttle, Jr.; Sarah Tuttle; Samuel B. Walcott; John Walton; Reuben Washburn; William Whiting, Jr.; Levi Whitman; Alpheus Witt.
Amos Bronson Alcott is mentioned in a June 6, 1851 letter (Box 28, Folder 9) from Samuel J. May to Nathan Brooks regarding the sale of the Alcott property and the investment of the proceeds.
Nathan Brooks’s legal and financial interventions on behalf of his brother Franklin Brooks and his brother-in-law Augustus Merrick make up a significant portion of this correspondence.
Brooks’s personal and professional bills, receipts, accounts, etc., are interfiled. These materials are arranged chronologically by year, but no attempt has been made to order items within each folder. Unreceipted accounts are filed by the date of the most recent entry.
Creditors and/or debtors in the files of bills, receipts, accounts, notes, orders for payment, and other financial papers include: Chester Adams; James Adams; Amos Bronson Alcott; Phineas Allen; Allen & Atwill; American House (Boston); Herman Atwill; John Augustus; Amos Baker; Jacob Baker; James Baker; Nehemiah Ball; Edwin S. Barrett; Joel Barrett; Joseph Barrett; Sherman Barrett; Stephen Barrett; Dr. Josiah Bartlett; Lysander L. Bascom; Ephraim H. Bellows; George F. Bemis; Cyrus Benjamin; Francis E. Bigelow; Heartwell Bigelow; Bradley Blanchard; Seth Blanchard; Charles Bowers; William Bowers; Joel Britton; Alfred Brooks; Caroline Brooks; Franklin Brooks; George Brooks; Hiram Brooks; Isaac Brooks; Mary Merrick Brooks; Susan Brooks; James P. Brown; John Brown, Jr.; Joshua Brown; Reuben Brown; Ephraim W. Bull; Michael Burke (1859); Samuel Burr; Samuel C. Burr; David Buttrick; Tilly Buttrick; John Chandler; James Chapman; Citizens’ Mutual Insurance Co.; Daniel Clark; Asa C. Collier; Silas Conant; Concord Fire Society; Concord Mill Dam Co.; Hugh Coyle; Lemuel Curtis; Caleb Cushing; Isaac Cutter; Levi Dakin; Augusta Davis; Charles B. Davis; Josiah Davis; Moses Davis; Delano & Whitney; James Derby; Derby Brothers; William Dodge; Lorenzo Eaton; Jacob B. Farmer; Female College of Worcester; Fitchburg Rail Road Co.; John Flint; Nehemiah Flint; Daniel Garfield; John Garrison (1849; 1856; 1859; 1860; 1863); James Garty (1859); Asher Goodnow; John Goodnow; Jabez Gowing; Benjamin Hastings; Jonas Hastings; Abel B. Heywood; Abiel Heywood; Hilliard, Gray, & Co.; Hannah Hoar; Samuel Hoar; Silas Holden; Abel Hosmer; Edmund Hosmer; Isaac Hosmer; John Hosmer; Nathan Hosmer; Rufus Hosmer; Phineas How; Charles Hubbard; Cyrus Hubbard; Darius Hubbard; Hannah Hunstable; Daniel Hunt; Nehemiah Hunt; Thomas Ford Hunt; Mary Hurd; Addison Hutchinson; Levi S. Hutchinson; Peter Hutchinson (undated; 1831; 1834; 1835; 1839; 1843; 1845); James Jones; Martha Keith; John Keyes; John LeGross/LeGros/Legros; Emelius Leppelman; Paul Litchfield; Little, Brown & Co.; Mason & Brooks; Timothy Meek; Ephraim Merriam; Augustus Merrick; Francis J. Merrick; Tilly Merrick; Middlesex Hotel (Concord); Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company; Darius Miles; Marshall Miles; Abel Moore; George Moore; John B. Moore; James Munroe & Co.; Nathaniel Munroe; William Munroe; Heman Newton; Seth Norcross; George Parker; William Parkman; Adolphus Parmenter; Joseph T. Peters; Elias Phinney; Francis Potter; Luke Potter; Alvan Pratt; Minot Pratt; George L. Prescott; Timothy Prescott; Moses Prichard; Reynolds & Derby; Mary Rice (1846); R. N. Rice & Co.; Samuel Ripley (1840); Cyrus Robbins; John Robbins; Luke Robbins; Luther Robbins; Peter Robbins (1835; 1837); William Stevens Robinson; Russell, Odiorne, & Co.; Eliza Scott; Charles C. Shackford; Daniel Shattuck; William Shepherd; Joseph A. Smith; Julius M. Smith; Daniel S. Southmayd (1834); William Spaulding (of Carlisle); Albert Stacy; John Stacy; Samuel Staples; R. S. Stewart; Jedediah Stone; Cyrus Stow; Nathan Brooks Stow; Edward Stowell; Daniel Tarbell; William Tarbell; Henry David Thoreau (1838; 1839; 1845); John Thoreau (undated; 1827; 1831); John Thoreau, Jr. (1839; 1840); M. Thoreau (1839); Sophia E. Thoreau (1842); George W. Todd; Elisha Tolman; Trustees of the Congregational Ministerial Fund; Augustus Tuttle; Sarah Tuttle; Joel Viles; Walcott & Holden; Cyrus Warren; James Weir; Thomas D. Wesson; Daniel Wetherbee; Ephraim C. Wetherbee; Abiel H. Wheeler; William W. Wheildon; P. Whelan; John White; Anne M. Whiting; William Whiting; Luke Williams; Elijah Wood; Wood & Prescott; Anthony Wright.
A “Memo of Notes on A. B. Alcott” is filed in Box 34, Folder 16.
For researchers seeking papers relating to people and corporate entities not named above, determining whether a name appears in this portion of the collection requires a folder-by-folder examination of materials.
Bills and receipts for personal expenditures document Nathan Brooks’s life in incredible detail. Items throughout this subseries reveal, for example: the opening of the tomb for the interment of the first Mrs. Brooks in 1820; the purchase of cords of walnut wood to burn in Brooks’s office; payments to Anne M. Whiting for music instruction for Caroline Brooks (1834) and to Samuel Ripley for instruction for George Brooks (1840); costs for the establishment and operation of the Concord Academy; a contribution by Nathan Brooks to the American Colonization Society (1841); fines for his absence from Concord Fire Society meetings; his purchase of fruit trees via Seth Blanchard from the Shakers in Harvard (1846); and his management of the debts of his brother Franklin.
While there are numerous bills, receipts, and accounts for money owed by or to Abel Moore in this part of the Nathan Brooks papers, researchers interested in Moore’s activities should also consult the container list for materials in Series VI (Abel Moore papers).
Entries in Nathan Brooks’s personal account book (spanning the years 1836-1863) may be correlated with the bills and receipts in this series. An 1829 account book lists by name accounts associated with the business partnership of storekeepers Samuel Burr and Moses Prichard.
Records of the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company were maintained by Nathan Brooks as secretary/treasurer of the company for 37 years, from 1826. The company’s office was located in the Concord Bank building (the present 46-48 Main Street), in which Brooks also kept his law office. Insurance company records consist primarily of the act of incorporation, correspondence, policies, assessment slips, dividend statements, notices, reports, bills, and receipts, and relate to properties all over Middlesex County. The file of mixed records includes a significant number of letters from Levi Thaxter of Watertown and Josiah Cumings of Dunstable. There are four files of extended correspondence to Nathan Brooks segregated from the run of mixed records—from agents Chester Adams of South Natick, Aaron Keyes of Townsend, Horatio N. Perkins of Charlestown, and John Walton of Pepperell.
Records of the Boston, Lexington, and Concord Accommodation Stage reflect Nathan Brooks’s responsibility for collecting debts owed to and dispersing payments owed by the company, which was run by Jonathan Buttrick of Concord in partnership with Obediah Kendall. Buttrick died August 16, 1839, and Brooks was administrator of his estate. The company’s property was sold by William Shepherd. The records in these files consist of waybills, bills, receipts, and other financial documents. The waybills list passengers on individual trips from April through October of 1839; Ralph Waldo Emerson appears on some of them.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series V, or on one of the lines in the component listing below to access the container list for a specific portion of the series.
Series components:
Professional correspondence (arranged chronologically), 1810-1864
Bills, receipts, accounts, notes, orders for payment, etc., 1796-1863
Account books, 1829-1863
Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company records, 1827-1863
Mixed records, 1827-1863, plus undated
Extended correspondence, 1833-1842
Boston, Lexington, and Concord Accommodation Stage records, 1833-1839
Waybills, April-October 1839
Kendall and Buttrick financial records (bills, receipts, etc.), 1833-1839
Series VI. Abel Moore papers, 1801-1857:
Extent: 4+ containers, plus material in one oversized container.
Biography:
Abel Moore was a Middlesex County deputy sheriff (first appointed in 1812); deputy jailer at the Middlesex County jail in Concord, 1815-1843; a real estate investor; and—in partnerships with John Hosmer, Joel Britton, and others—a dealer in standing and cut wood. Moore was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts, in 1777. He lived in Sudbury, Stow, and Concord. He married Ruth Goodnow in 1801, moved to Stow about 1812, and to Concord in 1814. He lived in the present 343-355 Lexington Road and farmed extensively on his Concord property. Abel Moore was involved in the Middlesex Society of Husbandmen and Manufacturers, the Middlesex Institution for Savings, the Concord Mill Dam Company, and the Concord Steam Mill Company (incorporated in 1846 for the sale of shares in a sawmill behind Main Street, in the vicinity of the Concord depot). He was a member of the Social Circle in Concord. Abel Moore died in Concord on September 30, 1848. Nathan Brooks was executor of Abel Moore’s estate. John Brooks Moore took over the family farm at his father’s death.
Series description:
The Abel Moore papers in the Nathan Brooks collection document Moore’s official, commercial, and personal life. They include property-related documents (among them deeds, leases, contracts, several surveys by Cyrus Hubbard, and two woodlot surveys by Henry David Thoreau), 1805-1853, for real estate in Concord and the nearby towns of Acton, Carlisle, Lexington, Lincoln, and Sudbury and (foldered separately) for property in the mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts. (The Lowell documents also shed light on the property interests of Daniel Shattuck.) Moore’s financial papers (1803-1857) include: bills, receipts, accounts, notes, etc., 1803-1857; expenses for work on his Lexington Road home, 1835-1844; and a file of orders charged to the Concord firm of Bascom & Cole, 1828-1829. Among Moore’s business papers (1818-1854) are files reflecting his ventures in the wood business and his association with John Hosmer in this enterprise, 1827-1849; records
of the case of Barrett v. LeGross, 1845-1846, in which John Shepard Keyes represented John LeGross and the heirs of Timothy Prescott in a boundary line issue; records of the Concord Steam Mill Company (Moore was a shareholder); four printed notices (1846-1847) and a manuscript note from the Female Employment Office in Boston documenting Moore’s employment of immigrant Irish domestics (Mary Murphy, Ellen Haggerty, and Winnifred Rourke among them); business and legal correspondence, 1813-1848; and legal documents relating both to business and to offices held, 1818-1847. The Abel Moore papers also hold a small quantity of Moore family papers, 1830-1842, primarily financial, some of which relate to the attendance at Harvard of Abel Moore’s son George and a stay in Cuba by George’s brother Henry; Abel Moore’s estate papers, 1848-1856; and an undated recipe for cleaning and cooking tripe (prison fare?).
The bills, receipts, accounts, etc. among Moore’s financial papers reflect Abel Moore’s personal finances, his expenses as Middlesex County deputy sheriff (for serving writs, for example) and deputy jailer (for maintaining prisoners), and his business involvements, all interfiled. Materials are filed chronologically by year (no attempt has been made more precisely to order items within each file). Receipted items are filed by the date payment was received rather than the date the expense was incurred. Unreceipted accounts are filed by the most recent entry. In addition to true financial records, this section of the collection also includes some items documenting the measurement (extent rather than dollar value) of wood resources.
These financial materials show that Moore did well for himself and his family at least in part because he knew how to exploit the sources of cheap manpower available to him—local black laborers like John Garrison and Peter Hutchinson as well as Irish immigrants, male and female, some of whom could sign their name only by making a mark. In this, they reflect the economic and social stratification of Concord in detail and sometimes poignantly. Moreover, they make clear that in his official capacity as jailer, he strived for cost-efficiency by buying in bulk (particularly from Boston merchants) to supply prisoner needs. These files document the extensive business that Moore conducted with merchants on the Long Wharf in Boston and his reliance on the Fitchburg Railroad, which came through Concord in 1844, for shipping goods to and from the town.
Those who appear as creditors and/or debtors in these files include: John R. Adams; Phineas Allen; Herman Atwill; Amos Baker; James Baker; Loammi Baldwin; Nathan Barrett; Samuel Barrett; (for grist- and sawmill services); Susan Barrett; Nathan Barrett; Josiah Bartlett; Ephraim H. Bellows; Francis E. Bigelow; Charles Bowers; Joseph Breck & Co. (Boston; seeds); Joel Britton; Nathan Brooks; Reuben Brown; Nathan Burpee; Samuel Burr; Bailey Conant; (Town of) Concord; the Concord Mill Dam Company; the Concord Ornamental Tree Society; Concord Social Library; Hugh Coyle; Bridget Crane; Calvin C. Damon; Charles B. Davis; William Dodge; Lorenzo Eaton; Daniel C. Emerson; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Jacob B. Farmer; Elisha Farrar; the Fitchburg Rail Road (Railroad) Company; Edward Fitzgerald (spelled “Fetchgarall”); Peter Flood; Henry H. Fuller; John Garrison; J. D. & G. Goodnow; John Goodnow; Luther Goodnow; Francis R. Gourgas; Jabez Gowing; Colburn Hadlock; Jesse Hall & Sons; Thomas Hannon; Hastings & Dana (East Cambridge); William C. Hayward; Abiel Heywood; Lucy P. Heywood; William Heywood; Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar; Samuel Hoar; Edmund Hosmer; John Hosmer; Joseph Hosmer, Jr.; Lydia Hosmer; Nathan Hosmer; Rufus Hosmer; S. & L. Hosmer; Oliver Houghton; Phineas How; Cyrus Hubbard; Darius Hubbard; Humphrey Hunt; Nehemiah Hunt, Jr.; Thomas Ford Hunt; Benjamin Hutchinson; Levi Hutchinson; Peter Hutchinson; the Widow Hutchinson (Carlisle); Elnathan Jones; Barney Kelly; Obediah Kendall; John Keyes; John Shepard. Keyes; John LeGross; E. J. Leppelman; David Loring; Jesse Mayo; Charles Miles; Lazero Montefiore; Harriette Moore; John Brooks Moore; Nathan Munroe; William Munroe/Monroe; Ebenezer Nickerson (Boston); Arvidia Polland; Francis Potter; Alvan Pratt; Moses Prichard; Reynolds & Derby; Reuben N. Rice; Samuel Ripley; John Robbins; Stephen Robbins; Tilly Robbins; Ruggles, Nourse, & Mason (Boston; seeds); Daniel Shattuck; Lemuel Shattuck; William Shattuck; William Shepherd; the Society of Middlesex Husbandmen and Manufacturers; Daniel Southmayd; John Stacy; Cyrus Stow; Nathan B. Stow; Anna Sweeney; John Thoreau (Sr.); Elisha Tolman; James Weir; Daniel Wetherbee; Abiel H. Wheeler; Joseph Winsor (Boston); Anthony Wright; N. M. Wright.
The folder containing financial documents for 1847 (Box 43, Folder 5) includes an 1844-1847 account for purchases of pear and apple trees from Abel Moore by the “Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
Determining whether other names appear in this portion of the collection requires a folder-by-folder examination of materials.
Related receipts for payments to Nathan Brooks as attorney, business colleague, and executor of the estate of Abel Moore are found among Nathan Brooks’s financial papers, in Series V.
The papers generated by Moore’s wood business and his partnership with John Hosmer overlap with wood-related items in the general run of Abel Moore’s bills, receipts, and accounts. This section of the collection reflects Abel Moore’s and John Hosmer’s transactions with many contacts, among them: Herman Atwill; Jacob Baker; Samuel Barrett; Silas Flint; Luther Haven; Samuel Haynes; Jonas Heywood; Cyrus Hubbard (for surveying); Joseph Richardson; John Robbins; William Shepherd; Edmund Wheeler. These files include some records quantifying wood resources.
The Concord Steam Mill Company records include an account book containing Concord Steam Mill Company entries as well as some earlier entries made for unrelated expenses (from 1842 until the maintenance of company records; not taken into account in establishing date span of this section of the collection). Steam Mill Company records also include bonds, agreements, leases, and items relating to the sale of mill machinery on failure of the company. A Peter Hutchinson receipt is filed in Box 44, Folder 2, a receipted bill (on printed letterhead) from pail manufacturer R. Warner & Co. (when Warner’s business was located in Boston) in Box 44, Folder 3.
Both a will and an estate inventory are filed with Moore’s estate papers.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series VI, or on one of the lines in the component listing below to access the container list for a specific portion of the series.
Series components:
Property-related documents (deeds, leases, contracts, surveys, etc.), 1801-1853
For property primarily in Concord, Acton, Carlisle, Lexington, Lincoln, and Sudbury, 1801-1853
For property in Lowell, 1820-1852
Financial papers, 1803-1857
Bills, receipts, accounts, notes, etc., 1803-1857
Expenses for Moore’s house, 1835-1844
Orders to Bascom & Cole of Concord, 1828-1829
Business papers, 1813-1854
Papers related to wood business (primarily Abel Moore/John Hosmer partnership), 1827-1849
Barrett v. LeGross, 1845-1846
Concord Steam Mill Company records, 1845-1854
Notices from Female Employment Office (Boston), 1846-1847
Business and legal correspondence, 1813-1848
Legal documents (relating both to business and to offices held), 1818-1847
Moore family papers (primarily financial), 1830-1842
Abel Moore estate papers, 1848-1856
Recipe (undated)
Series VII. Tilly Merrick papers, 1780-1837:
Extent: 25 containers, plus material in two oversized boxes.
Biography:
Concord, Massachusetts, storekeeper Tilly Merrick was the son of Tilly Merrick (1729 or 1730-1768) and Mary Minot Merrick (later Mrs. Duncan Ingraham; died 1794, at the age of 64). Tilly and Mary Minot Merrick were married in 1752. They had four sons who survived to adulthood: Tilly (born 1755; died 1836); Stephen Wilder (born 1757; died 1843); Augustus (born 1759; died 1788); and John (born 1761; died 1797). (A first child named Tilly had been born to the couple in 1753, but died in infancy.) In 1772, the widowed Mary Merrick took prosperous Boston merchant, slaveholder, and Tory sympathizer Duncan Ingraham as her second husband. Her son Tilly graduated from Harvard College in 1773, and was in Concord on April 19, 1775.
Although he was born, raised, and died in Concord, the younger Tilly Merrick spent two decades of his life far away from the town. According to the brief biography by his grandson George M. Brooks in the Second Series of Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord (1888), during the Revolution Merrick was “connected with the embassy of John Adams to France and Holland, as an attaché, and was secretary while abroad, and in crossing the Atlantic was twice captured by the British.” In Amsterdam, Tilly Merrick was involved in the mercantile firm of Sigourney, Ingraham & Company (an enterprise in which his step-brother was a partner). Following the Revolution, Merrick moved to Charleston, South Carolina.
In South Carolina, Merrick formed a partnership with Isaac Course in the wholesale shipping firm of Merrick & Course. He was also involved in trade with his brother Augustus Merrick, who was established in Wilmington, North Carolina. After the dissolution of Merrick & Course in 1785, Tilly Merrick continued in business on his own. He dealt with commercial concerns in both Europe and America.
Tilly and Augustus Merrick adapted themselves fully to the Southern economy. They shipped tobacco, employed slave labor, to some extent brokered the sale of slaves, and owned and operated plantations. Augustus died young and unmarried in South Carolina. Tilly’s finances collapsed in the late 1790s. He returned to Concord and opened a general store, which represented a narrowing of his commercial horizons.
Tilly Merrick married Sarah (Sallie) Minot in 1798. They had four children: Francis John (born 1799; died 1871); Mary (born 1801; married Concord lawyer Nathan Brook 1823; died 1868); Sarah (born 1805; died 1806); Augustus (born 1810; died 1871).
Tilly Merrick was the executor of the estate of Dr. Timothy Minot, his father-in-law. He was a representative in the Massachusetts legislature, a shareholder in and the treasurer of the Union Turnpike Corporation, a petitioner for and proposed trustee of the never-realized Middlesex Female Academy, and a member of the Social Circle in Concord. He became a temperance advocate. His business in Concord failed to thrive and eventually declined. In the early 1820s, he sold his store and some of his inherited property to Phineas How.
Mary Merrick Brooks, Tilly’s daughter, embraced the antislavery cause somewhere around the time of her father’s death (1836).
Series description:
The Tilly Merrick papers, 1780-1837, consist of: account books, 1782-1825; correspondence (both letter books and loose correspondence), 1781-1836; financial papers (bills, receipts, accounts, etc.), 1780-1837; shipping records, 1780-1786; South Carolina business documents, 1785-1793; property documents, 1786-1836; legal documents, 1781-1822; Union Turnpike Corporation records, 1805-1814; records of the Middlesex Female Academy, 1806; and a travel journal containing entries for 1792 and 1794.
Account books, 1782-1825, relate to Tilly Merrick’s businesses from 1783 in Charleston, South Carolina (including dealings with brother Augustus in North Carolina and with Isaac Course in the partnership Merrick & Course), and Concord. In South Carolina, Merrick maintained business connections with Amsterdam contacts, which are also reflected in this series component. Many entries throughout the South Carolina volumes reflect the shipment of tobacco to Amsterdam and elsewhere.
Correspondence, 1781-1836, includes letter books (1781-1797) and loose correspondence (1781-1836). This series component includes original and copied letters, primarily commercial but also some personal (family) letters. Correspondence reflects Tilly Merrick’s life in Amsterdam, London (briefly), Charleston, and Concord. Merrick’s business associations with his brothers Augustus and John, Isaac Course (in the partnership Merrick & Course), Duncan Ingraham, Sigourney, Ingraham, & Company/ Sigourney & Company, and others are well-represented in the commercial correspondence as well as the account books and other financial materials. The letter books consist mainly of copied letters by Tilly Merrick, the loose correspondence largely of original and copied letters to him. Letter books include copies of invoices and accounts enclosed with original letters. Letters in the letter books overlap with original letters in the files of loose correspondence. Loose correspondence is arranged alphabetically by correspondent, and chronologically within the files for each correspondent.
Business correspondence represents business contacts in Amsterdam, Leyden, Bordeaux, London, Glasgow, South Carolina, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Kingston (Jamaica), and elsewhere.
Among the correspondents represented in the letter books: Samuel Allyne; Abraham Baldwin; Blanchard & Lowis; Nathan Blodget; Blyths & Oldham; Amos Bond; Nathan Bond; William L. Bradshaw; Patrick Brannon; Henry Bromfield; Jeremiah Brown/Browne; Jonathan Burch; David Bush; Caliph & Chuster; Carneau & Marlin; Champion & Dickason; Clicket & Co.; Samuel Conant; Joseph Cordis; Coudert & Brants; Isaac Course; Course, Jones, & Course; Samuel Coverly; Tench Coxe; Coxe & Frazier; Dennis Deberdt; Delalande & Fynje; John Delanoy; Elisha Doane; Cornelius Dupré/Du Pré/Dupree; Lewis Dupré; Lewis & Cornelius Dupré; John Eden; John Ellis & Co.; Ellis & Edwards; Samuel Emery/Emorry; G. André Ferrario; Kieran/Kiran Fitzpatrick; Timothy Fitch; William Foster/William Foster & Co.; Gabriel Furman; Nalbro’/Narlbro’ Frazier; Captain Benjamin Fuller; Frederick William Geyer; Nathan Gorham, Jr.; Daniel J. Green; James Greenleaf; William Greenleaf; John Hall; James Hamilton; Oliver Hart; John Harth; David Hillhouse; John Hodson & Son; Nicholas Hubbard; Sylvanus Hussey; Duncan Ingraham; Duncan Ingraham, Jr.; Francis Ingraham; James & Frank Ingraham; Joseph Ingraham; Nathaniel Ingraham; Francis January (Janvier); John January (Janvier); Michael Jay; Thomas Jenkins; Richard Jennys; Frederick William Jericho; Peter Johnston, Jr.; Elnathan Jones; Michael Joy; James Kavanagh; William Keeling; Samuel King; John Leach; N. Leavensworth; Ludlow & Goold; John Manger; Samson Marcus & Co.; William Martyn; Archibald McLaine; Augustus Merrick; John Merrick; Stephen Merrick; Merrick & Course; John Middleton; Isaac Moses, Samuel Myers, & Moses Myers/Samuel & Moses Myers; Captain Thomas Newbold; Samuel A. Otis; Samuel Parkman; Gerrit Pennink; Isaac Philips; John Porter; John Potts; John J. Pringle; John Procter (Proctor); Claudius Paul Raguett; Joseph Roby; Samuel Rogers; Rogers & Bromfield; John Rose; Cornelius Schenkhouse; Shore, McCannico, & Ritson; Shaler & Sebor; Samuel Smedley; Stuart & Atkinson; Sterry & Murray; John Stille & Co.; Rogers & Bromfield; Joseph G. Taylor; Pierre Texier; James Thayer; Thayer & Bartlett; Joshua Toomey; William Turpin; Tyler & Mumford; C. A. Uselino & Co.; Nicholas Jacob Van Haphorst; John Van Heukelom & Son; John Vardier; Wadsworth & Turpin; Francis Ward; Elkanah Watson; Benjamin Weld; John Whitesides; Jonas Wilder; Wilhem & Jan Willink; Marshall Robert Willkings; Edward Winslow; James Yancey; Yancey & A. Newman; Major Charles Young.
Determining where these names appear in the letter books, or what additional names are also found there, requires examination of each volume.
Correspondents represented in loose correspondence foldered by individual correspondent: Ebenezer Adams; Abraham Baldwin; Nathan Bond; Blanchard & Lowis; Henry Bromfield; P. Condy, James F. Condy; Daniel, John, and William Course; Isaac Course; Course, Jones, & Course; Coxe & Frazier (Tench Coxe and Nalbro’/Narlbro’ Frazier); Delalande & Fynje; John Delanoy; Cornelius Dupré (Du Pré, Dupree); John Ellis & Co./ Ellis & Edwards; Timothy Fitch; Kieran/Kiran Fitzpatrick; William Foster; John Frazier, Nalbro’/Narlbro’ Frazier; William Frederick Geyer, William Frederick Geyer, Jr.; William Greenleaf; John Hall; Christopher Hart; John Harth; Duncan Ingraham, Duncan Ingraham, Jr.; Francis Ingraham; Joseph Ingraham; Mary Minot Merrick Ingraham; Nathaniel Ingraham; Richard Jennys; Abraham Jones; Edward Jones; Elnathan Jones; Ephraim Jones; Michael Joy/Joy & Hopkins; Samuel Maverick; Augustus Merrick; John Merrick; Stephen W. Merrick; James Minot; Stephen Minot; Timothy Minot, Timothy M. Minot; Samuel & Moses Myers/estate of Samuel & Moses Myers; Samuel Parkman; William Parkman; John Procter/Proctor, Lydia Procter/Proctor; Ezra Ripley; Samuel Rogers/Rogers & Bromfield; Cornelis Schenkhouse; Nathaniel Shaler/Shaler & Sebor; Samuel Smedley; John Stille/John Stille & Co.; Jacques Thayer/James Thayer/Thayer & Sturgis; Williams Thayer, Williams Thayer, Jr.; Thayer, Bartlett & Co.; Pierre Texier; William Turpin; Thomas Wadsworth/Wadsworth & Turpin; Marshall Robert Willkings; Yancey & A. Newman.
Correspondents represented in the loose correspondence containing multiple correspondents, interfiled (Box 61, Folders 15-18 and Box 62, Folders 1-12), include: Nathan Adams; William Allibone; Jonathan Arnold; Thomas Austin; G. W. Bain; Isaac Bartlet; Samuel Bartlett; Joseph Barrell; Nathan Blodget; Blyths & Oldham; John Boies; Amos Bond; David Bowen; Patrick Brennan/Brannon; Francis Bremar; Peter Bremar; A. Brodie; Peter C. Brooks; Daniel Browne; Jeremiah Brown/Browne; Josiah Capen; Gardner Carpenter; John Codman; Elihu Coffin; B. T. Corvaisier; Carneau & Marlin; Champion & Dickason; William Cheever; John Clark; John Codman; John A. Coffin; Condell, Innes, & Co.; Samuel Colesworthy; John Copley; Samuel Coverly; Crawford, Stevenson & Co.; Thomas Dawes; Dennis Deberdt; Charles DeSurmont; Elisha Doane; John DuBois; Lewis & Cornelius DuPré (Du Pré, Dupree); John Eden; Josiah Eliot; Samuel Emery/Emorry; Thomas Farrar; G. André Ferrario; James Fowler; Gabriel Furman; Benjamin Fuller; Charles Gaillard; William Gibbons; Alexander Gillon; John Goodwin; Joseph & Joshua Grafton; William Griffin; Benjamin Guild; John Hallum; Thomas Hallum; John Hall; James Hamilton; Christopher Hart; Elizabeth Harth; David Hillhouse; Ebenezer Hills; Jay & Hopkins; Nicholas Hubbard; Sylvanus Hussey; Isaac Huger; Fisher, Hughes, & Co.; William Hunt; John Hunter; Frederick William Jericho; Horace Johnson; Joy & Hopkins; Samuel Kelly; Samuel King; John Kirk; Lanchon Frères & Co.; N. Leavensworth; John Lee; Samuel Leighton; J. T. Lewis; Robert Lewis; John Lloyd; Ludlow & Goold; Jean Luzac; Henry MacKaser; John Manger; James Martin; Alexander McDowell; Andrew McCredie; David McCredie & James Hamilton; John McCulloch; John McHardie; Archibald McLaine; John McPherson; Tilly Merrick, Jr. (of West Springfield, Massachusetts; a seeker of genealogical information, but not a close relative of Concord’s Tilly Merrick); John Middleton; Felix de Miklasewicz (?); John Miller; James Minot/Minott; John Minot/Minott; John Monson; Thomas Murley & Co.; John Murray; Thomas Newell; Alexander Newman; Thomas Nicholls; Francis Olivella; John Orrick; Samuel A. Otis; Oliver Peabody; Ebenezer Pemberton; Gerrit Pennink; Joseph Perkins; Isaac Philips; Thomas Porter/Porter & Ingraham; Jesse Potts; John J. Pringle; Claudius Paul Raguett; James Ravenagh; James Richards; Joseph Roby; Daniel D. Rogers; Elizabeth Rogers; John Rose; Elnathan Rosseter; Samson, Marcus & Co.; Daniel Sears; Ebenezer Seaver; William Sherburne; Charles Sigourney; James Simons; Samuel Slater/ S. Slater & Co.; Daniel Smith; Smith, Winholt & Co.; William Steele; Daniel Stevens; Sterry & Murray; Jane Stuart; Samuel Stuart/Stuart & Atkinson; Joseph Grove Taylor; John Thaxter; William Thompson; Robert Tillier & Co.; Joshua Toomer; Samuel R. Trevett; John Trotter; William Trotter & Co.; Tyler & Mumford; Jabez Upham; C. A. Usellino & Co.; John Van Heukelom & Son; Hendrick Van Peisen; John M. Verdier; Edward Walsh; Francis Ward; John Wasson; Benjamin Weld; Ammi White; Charles White; John T. Whitesides; Thomas Whiting; Jonas Wilder; Wilhem & Jan Willink; Marshall Robert Willkings; Thomas L. Winthrop; Thomas M. Woodbridge; Major Charles Young.
Filed in Box 62, Folder 4 (loose letters I-J): an August 30, 1785 letter from Francis January (Janvier) regarding the sale of a “Negro man Named Jonathan,” for whom January hopes Tilly Merrick will be able to get “the Highest Price,” and a March 8, 1785 letter from John January, who seeks Merrick’s assistance in disposing of a “Negro Girl . . . to the Best advantage.” (The girl in John January’s letter is described as a good field hand, a quick learner in household work; she has already had measles and smallpox, and lost an eye to smallpox when young.)
Financial papers, 1780-1837, relate to Tilly Merrick’s business income and expenses in South Carolina and Concord, and to personal expenditures, as well, (particularly from 1798, after his return to Concord). Among these materials are bills, accounts, receipts, notes, orders to pay, shipping invoices and receipts, memoranda, lists of disbursements, certificates documenting payment of duty on a chaise, and bills of exchange. Merrick’s financial papers are organized by year, with no attempt to apply a strict chronological arrangement within the folder(s) for any year. Receipts and accounts bearing multiple dates are organized by year of receipt of payment rather than year of transaction; unreceipted accounts are filed by the year of the latest entry. A list of the names of some of the debtors and creditors represented among Merrick’s financial papers follows, but it is partial, and no attempt has been made to provide the locations within the files of financial papers of documents relating to most merchants listed. Researchers seeking names other than those listed below will need to examine the collection to determine if their subjects of interest are represented. The collection must also be examined to determine the cities and towns—both American and European—where listed merchants operated.
The location of documents relating to a few merchants has systematically been noted in the container list for the series. View the container list (or use your browser’s “find in page” feature) to locate documents relating to Boston merchant Beza Tucker, the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first wife Ellen; Boston merchant Samuel May, grandfather of Abigail May Alcott—Mrs. Amos Bronson Alcott; Boston merchants Amos and Abbott Lawrence and Kirk Boott ; Concord merchant John White and his successors Hemenway & Shattuck and Daniel Shattuck & Co.; Ammi White (who is connected in Concord legend with hatcheting a wounded British soldier on April 19, 1775); and Concord merchants Burr & Prichard, Samuel Burr, and Phineas How (successor to Tilly Merrick’s Concord store). A few other names are also highlighted in the container list.
As with his account books and correspondence, Tilly Merrick’s financial papers offer evidence of his involvement with slavery while in South Carolina. Such evidence has been noted in the container list for his financial papers when observed during processing. A close reading of all documents in these areas of the collection may turn up additional related documentation.
Among the merchants, service providers, and others represented in Tilly Merrick’s financial papers from 1780 to 1798, when he established his store business in Concord: Allenby, Dawson & Co.; John Austin; Isaac Barker; Robert Barker; Ebenezer Barnard; Archibald Bleackly; Blyths & Oldham; Nathan Bond; Samuel Breck; Charles Browne; John Cahoon; William M. Caleb; John Coburn; William Cochran; Jacob Cohen; Cohen & Alexander; John Colburn; Isaac Course; John Course; John Course & Co.; William Cremer; David Cruger; N. Cudworth & Co.; Jonathan Curtis; Thomas Cushing; Johannes Dalt/Delt; Johannes de Jong; Elizabeth Dewar/Dewars/Dewey; Elisha Doane; John Du Bois; James Duncan; Ralph Dodsworth; Cornelius Du Pré; Lewis & Cornelius Du Pré; Edward Edwards; Alexander Erwin/Arvin; Jonathan Fay; Timothy Fitch; Henry Collins Flagg; William Foster & Co.; John Frazier; Gay & Hunneman; Frederick William Geyer; James Grady; Grass, Sebel, & Brazelman; Daniel Green; William Griffin; Charles Gruber; Thomas Hallum; Solomon Harby; Christopher Hart; John Harth; William Hayden & Co.; Robert Hazlehurst & Co.; Lucy Hecks; Eleazer Homer; Andrew Hughes; Duncan Ingraham; Duncan Ingraham, Jr.; Francis Ingraham; Joseph Ingraham; Ingraham & Bromfield; Archibald Jamison; Francis January; Horace Johnson; Peter Johnston; Elnathan Jones; Mary Jones; George Joy; Edward Kimberly; Mary Kimmel; Hamlet Knight; Stephen Lee; John B. Livingston & Co.; Stephen Lorentz; James/Jacques Lovell; Abraham Lyon; John Manger; John C. Martin/Martyn; James McConnell; Augustus Merrick; John Merrick; Stephen Wilder Merrick; Merrick & Course; George Moser; Isabella Mott; Joseph Myers; Newell & Bolton; North, Blake, & Vesey; D. Oliphant; Alexander Oliver; Johannes Outs; David Page; Thomas Page; Richard Palmer; Samuel Parkman; Joseph Perkins; A. Pickens & Co.; Lemuel Pope, Jr.; John Porter; John & Jabez Porter; Porter & Wadsworth; Primerose, Thomson & Co.; Claudius Paul Raguett; Rijsneider & Son; Johannes Rippons/Rippens; John Robinson; Joseph Roby; William Rouse; Scarbrough & Cooke; Cornelius Schenkhouse; Anna Maria Severn; Sigourney, Ingraham, & Bromfield; John Simpson; Thomas Singletary/Singeltary; John Singleton; Thomas Singleton; Samuel Smedley; John Smith; Samuel Stent; Sterry & Murray; Jan Stroek; John Taylor; Oliver Taylor; Thayer & Bartlett/Thayer, Bartlett & Co.; Dr. Ph. H. Themmens; Mathew Thornton; Joseph Tilden; John Todd; John Tool; Dr. A.[?] Turnbull; Mary Turpin; Jabez Upham; Peter Diep Vest; C. A. Uselino/Usellino & Co.; Wadsworth & Carter; Wadsworth & Turpin; Warren & Eustis; John Wasson; Wilkinson, Cooke, & Peppin; Robert Willkings; John Willson; Thomas M. Woodbridge; John Woodside.
Among the debtors, creditors, and other parties represented in Merrick’s financial papers from 1798 on: William Abrams, Jr.; Benjamin Adams; B. & C. Adams; Charles Adams; John Adams; Nathan Adams; Adams & Bradley; Aikens & Pinkerton; A. Allen; Joseph Allen; P. Allen; Allen & Barnard; Allen & Blanchard; Allen & Lamson; Allen & Peirce; David Allinson; James Allison; Andrew & Allen; Benjamin Andrews; William Andrews; N. Appleton; Samuel Appleton; S. & N. Appleton; Appleton & Barrett; Matthew Armsby; Armstrong & Parmenter; Joshua Aubin & Co.; James Austin; Jared Austin; John Austin; R. Austin; Thomas Austin; Austin & Thayer; Nathaniel Ayers; Abram Babcock; S. & C. Babcock; Samuel H. Babcock; Babcock & Bowman; Joseph Bacon; Josiah Bacon; Bacon & Grafton; David Bailey; Daniel Baker; John Baker; Baker & Larned; Josiah Baldwin; John Ballard, Jr.; J. & J. Ballard & Co.; William Ballard; Joseph Bancroft; Benjamin Bangs; E. P. & William Bangs; Joseph S. Barnard; Barnard & Bates; Samuel Barrett; William Barrett & Co.; William Barry; George Bartlett; J. Bartlett; H. Bartlett; Josiah Bartlett; N. H. Bartlett; Bartlett & Carter; Bartlett & Dennon; Joseph D. Bass; Timothy Batts; Joseph Baxter; Abel Barrett; Joshua Bean; Frederick Beck; Bellows & Cordis; Bellows, Cordis, & Jones/Bellows & Co.; Augustus Benard; Bender & Dana; Thomas Benjamin; John H. Benson & Co.; Benson, Abbot, & Briggs; Bettis & Peters; Heartwell Bigelow; Jotham Bigelow; Asa Biglow; Samuel Billings; Bixby & Vollentine (Valentine)/Bixby, Valentine & Co.; Seth Blanchard; Simon Blanchard; Blanchard & Ford; Bliss & White; Frederick Blood; Boardman & Farwell; John Boies; Nathaniel Bond; Bond & Lucas; Bond & Prentiss; E. Bonnemort; Francis Booth; Kirk Boott/Kirk Boott & Son; J. B. Borland; E. A. Bourne; Bourne & Williams; Bourne & Wood; John Bowen; Isaac Bowers; Nathaniel Bowers; P. Bowers; William Bowman; Ebenezer L. Boyd; Charles Bradbury; Frederick & Charles Bradbury; John Bradford; Bradford & Freeman; John W. Bradlee; Josiah Bradlee; Samuel Bradlee; S. & D. Bradlee; Thomas & John Bradlee; Samuel C. Bradshaw; Bradstreet & Story; Benjamin Braybrook; Brazer & Davis; E. & T. Breed; Mrs. Abigail Brewer; Thomas Brewer/Thomas Brewer & Co.; Brewer & Carter; William Briggs; John Bright; Samuel Bright; A. Brimmer; Daniel Brooks; A. S. G. Brown; Joseph Brown; Reuben Brown; Roger Brown; Samuel T. Brown; Zachariah Brown; Brown & Holbrook; Brown & Williams; Calvin Bruce; William Burroughs; Tilly Buttrick; Perez Bryant & Co.; J. Bumstead; Samuel Burr; Burr & Prichard; Frederick Cabot; Cabot & Lee; Enos Caleb; Benjamin Callender; James Callender & Son; John Callender; Joseph Callender/Joseph Callender & Son; Cambridge Turnpike Corporation; James Campbell; Thomas Capen; C. Carman; Ephraim Carr; John Carter; Thomas Carter; Henry Chapman; Jonathan Chapman; Chapman & Banister; William Clapp; A. H. Clark; Benjamin Clark; Elijah Clark; F. & S. Clark; James Clark, Jr.; John Clark; Robert Clark; Thomas Clark; Clark & Dean; Clark & Eustis; Gilbert Clarke; William Cleland; Benjamin Coates; Stephen Codman; James Cogswell; James Smith Colburn; Otis J. Colburn; Colburn & Gill; William Colman; George Connell/George Connell & Co.; Enoch Cook; Cook & Fairbanks; Cornelius Coolidge; William Coolidge/ William Coolidge & Co.; Coolidge & Baker; S. Cooper; John Cornish; Uriah Cotting; E. Cotton; Samuel Coverly; W. & E. Coverly; John Cox; J. Crane; Philip Crane; Edward Cremer & Co.; Cummings & Hilliard; Jonathan Curtis; Caleb Cushing (for the Middlesex Gazette); John Cushing & Co.; Isaac Cutler; Cutter, Hicks & Clark; Amos Dakin; Samuel Dakin; Dexter Dana; James G. Dana; William Dana; Joseph Danforth; E. & S. Davenport; Elijah Davenport & Beza Tucker; Thomas Davidson; Amos Davis; Benjamin Davis; Charles Davis; Charles B. Davis; Daniel Davis; Isaac Davis; J. & J. H. Davis; Jonas Davis; Jonathan Davis; Josiah Davis; Davis & Burditt; Davis & Whitman; Samson Dench; Thomas Dennie; Louis Devotion; Elizabeth Dewey; John H. Dexter; L. Newton Dexter; S. N. Dexter; Dexter & Dana; S. Dillaway, Jr.; William Dinsmore; Emmons Divoll; Joel Dix; Timothy Dodd; Milton Doggett; Asa Dow; Josiah Dow; Lydia Downes; Downes & Munroe; Jeremiah Draper; Lorenzo Draper; Samuel Draper; Draper & Johnson; Daniel Durell; Elnathan Duren; Duren & Bacon; David L. Eaton; David & John Eaton; Ebenezer Eaton; John Eaton, Jr.; Joseph Eaton & Co.; M. Eaton & Co.; Edgell & Adams; Richard Edwards; Oliver Eldredge; Simon Elliot/S. Elliot & Co.; David Ellis; Luther Ellis; John Erving; Joseph Eustis; William Eustis; Robert Evans; Samuel Fales; Stephen Fales; Fales & Keith; Jacob 
Farnsworth; John & Joseph Farwell; Joel Fay; Joseph Field; Nathaniel Fisher; Amos Fitch; Elijah Fitch; Jeremiah Fitch; John Fitch; Henry Flagg; Folsom & Rogerson; David Forsaith; Benjamin W. Foster; Eliza’ H. Foster; James H. Foster; Nathan Foster; Phineas Foster; S. H. Foster; Foster & Rice; John & Nathaniel Fowle; John Fox; N. Freeman & Son; Freeman & Baty; Ephraim French; A. Fuller & Co.; H. Furber; James Furber; Thomas Furber; Ganett & Parker; Jonathan Gardner; Samuel P. Gardner; William Gardner; R. W. Gerry/R. W. Gerry & Co.; George Gibbon; Calvin Gibbs; Gilman & Coffin; M. Gill; Lewis Glover & Co.; Joseph Goddard; Samuel Goff; William Goldthwait; John Gore; Samuel Gore; Gore & Harris; Whitney P. Gould; William Gould; J. D. Grafton; Moses Grant & Son; John Green; Timothy Green; Green & Cleverly; Green & Vose; David Greene & Son; S. R. Greene; J, Greenleaf; Grice & Adams; Gridley & Nolen; Henry Gunnison & Co.; John Hadley; B. K. Haggar; Eliphalet Hale; Samuel Hale; J. P. Hall; John Hall/John Hall & Co.; Latham Hall; William Hall; Hall & Lovering; Hall & Weld; Hall, Thacher & Co.; Benjamin Hammatt, Jr.; Hammat & Newell; Charles Hammond; C. & E. Hammond; Aaron Hardy; C. & R. D. Harris; Samuel Harris; Harrison & Hall; Hartwell & Brown; Haskell & Ramsey; Haskell & Whitney; Thomas Haskins; George Hastings; Calvin Haven; Haven, Williams & Co.; William Hawes; Ezekiel Hayden; Hayden & Farnsworth; Hayden & Meriam; James Haynes; Catharine (Katharine) Healey; M. Healey; Hemenway & Shattuck; William Heywood; Heywood & Hammond; Charles & Richard D. Harris; Ezra Hawkes; Jonathan Hildreth; Hilliard & Metcalf; A. Hinkley; John N. Hinkley; R. & J. N. Hinkley; R. & Joseph Hinkley; Samuel Hoar; Albert Hobart; Ebenezer Hobbs; N. Holbrook; Daniel Holden; Stephen Holden; Joseph Holman; Holmes & Chandler; Andrew Homer; Henry Homer; Homer & Homer; Samuel Hopkins; Abel Hosmer; Elijah Hosmer; Nathan Hosmer; Phineas How; Jonathan Howard; Abner Howe; Abraham F. Howe & Co.; J. & J. Howe; Moses Howe; Howe & Spear; Cyrus Hubbard; Thomas Hubbard; Joseph Hunt; Matthew M. Hunt; Hunt & Bull; Benjamin Hurd; Isaac Hurd; Doctors Isaac Hurd & Josiah Bartlett; Joseph Hurd; J. & W. Hurd; William Hurd; Thomas Huxford; Ezra Hyde; Thomas Jackson; W. H. Jackson; Jacobs & Barnard; Isaac Jaquith; Edward Jarvis; Francis Jarvis; Leonard Jarvis; Jarvis & Hammond; Jarvis & Stone; Jeffrey & Russell; Samuel H. Jenks; Jenks & Barnard; Jenks & Cutter; Isaac Jenney; William Jewett; James Johnson; J. Johnson & Jonathan Wheelock; Johnson & Marsh; Andrew Johonnet; David Jones; Ephraim Jones; Joshua Jones; Samuel Jones; Thomas K. Jones; William Jones; Jones & Foster; Jones & Rice; Moses S. Judkins; Keith & Halls; John Kendall; John Kennedy; John Kettell; Elisha King; King & Palmer; Christopher Kneeland; Susannah Kneeland; F. A. Knowles & E. Sanborn; Knowles & Hurd; Darius Ladd; Ladd & Lee; Israel Lakeman; J. & T. Lamb; Moses Lancaster; Lane & Lamson; E. Larkin; Larkin & Goodwin; John Larrabee; Abbott Lawrence; Amos Lawrence; Asa Lawrence; Joshua Lawrence; Thomas Lawrence; Leach & Blaney; Leach & Morrison; John Lepean; John Lee; J. W. Lillie; Francis Lincoln; Joseph Locke; Giles Lodge; Matthew Lodge; J. Longhurst; Longhurst & Porter; Andrew Lopaus; Erastus A. Lord; Joseph L. Lord; Lord & Farnsworth; Elijah Loring; Joseph Loring; Josiah Loring; Joseph Lovering/J. Lovering & Co.; William Lovering, Jr.; Lowder & Payson; Benjamin Lyon & Co.; Jason Lyon; M. Mackay & Co.; Timothy Mahony; Sidney Mandell; Isaac Mansfield; Henry Martin; E. Marsh; Josiah Marshall; Samuel Marsh; Marshall & Perrin; Marston & Johnson; P. May; Samuel May; William E. Mayhew; Aaron Maynard; Maynard & Lamb; Levi Melcher; Allan Melvill; Jacob Melvill; Francis J. Merrick; Charles Miller; John Miller & Co.; Jonathan Miller & Co.; Samuel R. Miller & Co.; Minchin & Welch; James Minot; Timothy Minot; Timothy M. Minot; John Minott; Stephen Minott; Augustus Moore; Moore & Somes; James Morrill; Morrill & Baker; Morrill & White; John Morrison; Eliakin Morse; Joseph Morse; Thomas & Edward Motley; Daniel Munroe (as sealer of weights and measures); Daniel & Nathaniel Munroe; Nathaniel Munroe; William Munroe; Munroe & Grosvenor; Munroe & Jones; Israel Munson; James Murphy; John Neal/John Neal & Co.; S. Neal; Samuel S. Newman; H. Newton; Asa Nichols; Perkins Nichols; Nichols & Kendall; Nichols & Poor; C. & H. Nolen; Seth Norcross; Elijah Nourse; Susan Nurse; Nathaniel Nutting; John Odin; F. & E. Odiorne; Thomas Oliver; William Olney; Amos Osborn; D. Osborn; John Osborn; Joseph Otis; Joseph & George A. Otis; Thomas Otis; Otis & Dwight; David Page, Jr.; Phineas Paine; Paine & Homes; George Palmer; Daniel Parker; Isaac Parker; John Parker; Jonas & Thomas Parker; Thomas & William Parker; Parker & Aiken; Parker & Appleton; Parker & Edgarton; Samuel Parkman; Samuel Parkman, Jr.; William Parkman; Parkman & Brigham; Payson & Holbrook; Andrew Peabody; Levi Peirce & Son; Peirce & Bush; Peirce & Washburn; Elisha Penniman; James Penniman; Joseph & Isaac Perkins; Perkins & Withington; Joseph T. Peters; Peters & Bigelow; Philbrook & Brown; P. Phillips; Phillips & Holden; B. & W. Pickman; Joshua Pico; H. A. Pinkerton; Amos Pollard; Allan Pollock; G. & N. Pollock; Thomas Pollock; Lemuel Pope, Jr.; Francis Potter; Jacob Potter; Samuel Potter; John Pratt; Pratt & Andrews; B. G. Prentiss; Abel Prescott; Abel H. Prescott; Ephraim Prescott; John L. Prescott; John L. & Willoughby Prescott; Mary Prescott; S. J. Prescott; Prescott & Cleveland; Henry Price; Moses Prichard & Co.; John Priest; Prince & Mackay; & Mackay; Peter MacKintosh, Jr.; Gaius Proctor; Henry Proctor; James Read; Hodges Reed; E. & W. Reynolds; Rich & Dickerman; Paul D. Richards; R. Richards; Asa Richardson; John Richardson; William Richardson/William Richardson & Son; Ripley & Freeman; John Ritchie; Ritchie & Eliot; Thomas Robertson & Co.; Thomas T. Robinson; J. S. & R. Roby; Joseph Roby; C. Rogers; Edward Rogers; Richard W. Rogers; Samuel Rogers; W. C. Rogers; William Rogers; George A. Rogerson; Robert Rogerson; Samuel Ruggles; Benjamin Russell (for the Columbian Centinel); Richard Salter, Jr.; Nathaniel Saltonstall, Jr.; Henry Sanderson; Sanderson & Fay; Samuel G. Sargent; Israel Sawyer; Sawyer & Wigglesworth; Saxton & Jackson; Saxton, Wainwright & Jackson; Miss S. Scribner; William Sewall & Co.; Sewall & Salisbury/Sewall, Salisbury & Co.; T. G. Seabury; T. Searle; Seward & Loring; Daniel Shattuck/Daniel Shattuck & Co.; R. Shaw; William Shepherd; A. Sigourney; Charles Sigourney; Simmons & Pigeon; Thomas Singleton; Samuel Slater; Matthew Sleght; Allen Smith; B. Smith; Elijah Smith; Isaac Smith; J. & L. Smith; William Smith/William Smith & Co.; Smith & Otis; Samuel Snelling; John Spaulding; Calvin Spear; E. W. Spofford; Phebe Sprague; Marshall Spring; William Stackpole; Stackpole & Wheeler; John Stacy; Samuel Stanford; Eli Starr; Benjamin Stearns; S. & C. Stearns; Joseph Stedman; Isaac Stevens; John Stevens; R. S. Stewart; Lovet Stimson; Augustus Story; William Story; Nathan Stow; Nathan & Cyrus Stow; Stows & Meriam; Sturgis & Parkman; John Sullivan; James Swan; Joshua Swan; John Swett; John Tappan; Lewis Tappan/L. Tappan & Co.; Tappan & Searle; Thomas Tarbell; Luther Tayntor; Benjamin Thaxter; Samuel & Minot Thayer; Seth Thayer; William Thayer; T. K. Thomas; Thomas & Robinson; Elisha Ticknor; Ticknor & Marsh; Bryant P. Tilden; William Tileston; Tisdale & Bacon; William Todd, Jr.; Elisha Tolman; R. P. Tolman; Tolman & Brewer; Torrey, Symmes & Co.; Trott & Blake; Trott & Bumstead; Samuel J. Tuck; Alanson Tucker; Alanson & Nathaniel Tucker; Beza Tucker; Beza & Nathaniel Tucker; Tucker & Thayer; W. & G. Tuckerman; Tuckerman, Rogers & Cushing; Ebenezer & Ephraim Tufts; Quincy Tufts; Emily Turner; Thomas Turner; Isaac Tyler; Nathaniel Valentine/Vollentine; Robert Vardell; Thomas & Abel Vinton; John Vose; Wainwright & Jackson; Wainwright & Park; Samuel Wait & Co.; Jotham Walton; Isaac B. Walker; B. C. & W. Ward; Groves Ware/James Groves Ware; Cyrus Warren; Isaac Warren; John Warren; Warren & Jones; Nathaniel Waterman; B. F. Waters; Weeks & Fifield; James Weir; William Weir; W. F. H. Weld; George Weller; Samuel Welles; M. & D. Wells; Jonas Welsh; Hiram Wentworth; David West; John West; West & Greenleaf; Edward Wetherbee; James Whalan; Peter Wheeler; Wheeler & Farley; Jonathan Wheelock; Ammi White; Benjamin F. White; Jeremiah White; John White; S. K. White; Samuel White; Solomon White; Augustus Whiting; Thomas Whiting; William Whiting; Davis Whitman; Josiah Whitney; P. S. Whitney; S. L. Whitney; Whitney & Gould; William Whittemore/William Whittemore & Co.; William Whitwell; B. & T. Wiggin; Timothy Wiggin & Co.; Wiggin & Barker; J. Wild; William Wild; Richard Wilkinson; George Williams & Co.; J. H. Williams; Samuel G. Williams; J. B. Winn; A. & C. Winslow; B. & C. Winslow; Benjamin Winslow/Benjamin Winslow & Co.; Charles Winslow; John Winslow/John Winslow & Co.; Elijah Withington; Stephen Wood; Edward Wright; James Wright; Jonathan Wright; Winslow Wright; Sylvester Wyman; Theodore Wyman; William Wyman; Archibald Young.
The files of financial papers also include receipts for payment of taxes to local, state, and federal governments.
Shipping records, 1780-1786, consist of bills of lading, charter parties, a certificate of tonnage for the schooner Sally, a manifest for the ship Mercury, and a notice regarding a deserter from the Mercury. South Carolina business documents, 1785-1793, include financial and other documents relating to the partnership of Merrick & Course, two lists titled “List of Articles for American Trade,” and documentation of Asa Tourtellot’s exercising power of attorney for Tilly Merrick.
Property documents, 1786-1809, contain: a one-year lease (1786) by Tilly Merrick to his brother Augustus for 640 acres in South Carolina; Ephraim Wood plan of the Calf Pasture in Concord, belonging to Tilly Merrick, 1797, and 1etter, Francis J. Merrick to Nathan Brooks, February 18, 1836, regarding the disposition of this pasture; bond, Jonathan Torrey and others to Tilly Merrick, relating to property in Plainfield, Massachusetts, 1797; lease, Tilly Merrick to Ephraim Jones, 1798, for dwelling house and property in Concord; sale at auction to Tilly Merrick of house from the estate of Elizabeth Crosby (Jonas Lee, auctioneer), 1805, and receipt for payment for the preceding; lease of grist mill in “the Middle of . . . Concord near the Meeting House,” Tilly Merrick to John Trumbull, 1809; deed, Tilly Merrick to Samuel Hoar, for property in Concord, 1828; conveyance of property in Concord, Tilly Merrick to Phineas How, 1835; conveyance of property in Concord, Tilly Merrick to Phineas How and R. S. Stewart, 1836; property insurance policy (Middlesex Mutual Life Insurance Company) to Tilly Merrick, 1833, with 1836 note regarding transfer of same to Phineas How.
Legal documents, 1781-1822, include multiple power of attorney papers and Tilly Merrick’s retailer’s wine and spirit licenses, among other items. Union Turnpike Corporation records, 1805-1814, encompass certificates for Tilly Merrick’s shares in the corporation, receipts for payment of assessments on his shares, and his financial records as treasurer for the enterprise. Records of the Middlesex Female Academy, 1806, include a subscription list, a petition, and an act of incorporation. A manuscript travel journal contains entries (including expenses) for a round trip between South Carolina and Boston in 1792 and for travel in 1794.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series VII, or on one of the lines in the component listing below to access the container list for a specific portion of the series.
Series components:
Account books, 1782-1825
Correspondence, 1781-1836
Letter books, 1781-1797
Loose correspondence, 1781-1836
Financial papers (bills, receipts, accounts, etc.), 1780-1837
Shipping records, 1780-1786
South Carolina business documents, 1785-1793
Property documents, 1786-1836
Legal documents, 1781-1822
Union Turnpike Corporation records, 1805-1814
Records of the Middlesex Female Academy, 1806
Travel journal, 1792, 1794
Series VIII. Merrick and Minot family papers, 1731-1858:
Extent: 6 containers, plus material in one oversized container.
Family history/biography:
Dr. Timothy Minot (1726-1804) descended from an early Concord family. He was a physician and property owner in the town. He and his wife Mary (Martyn/Martin) Minot had seven children: Timothy Martyn/Martin, 1757-1837; Mary, born 1759, married Ammi White in 1788; Abigail, 1761-1830; Stephen, 1763-1821; Susannah, born 1765, married Col. John Parker in 1795; James, born 1767, died in Ohio; Sarah, born 1769, married Tilly Merrick (whose papers are contained in Series VII of this collection) in 1798; John, born 1771; and Beulah, born 1773, married Professor Ebenezer Adams in 1807. Concord’s first Tilly Merrick (1729 or 1730-1768) married Mary Minot—another Minot descendant—in 1752. (His son Tilly—the one represented in Series VII—was therefore associated with the Minot family both by parentage and by marriage.) He was the descendant of a Brookfield/West Springfield, Massachusetts, family and an owner of much Concord property. (His multiple birthdates are based on genealogical information provided in a letter by his son—see Box 62, Folder 6—and on information published in George Byron Merrick’s Genealogy of the Merrick—Mirick—Myrick Family of Massachusetts, 1636-1902). His widow married Duncan Ingraham in 1772. Their four surviving sons: Tilly (1755-1836); Stephen Wilder (1757-1843); Augustus (1759-1788); and John (1761-1797). Of these, only the younger Tilly married and had children. Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, Augustus Merrick was connected with his brother Tilly in business in Charleston, South Carolina. Both participated in plantation ownership and management, with all that those occupations entailed, slave-owning included. Augustus died in South Carolina, but Tilly returned to Concord, where he soon married Dr. Timothy Minot’s daughter Mary. Their children: Francis John, 1799-1871; Mary, 1801-1868, married Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks in 1823; Sarah, 1805-1806; and Augustus, 1810-1871. The younger Augustus (namesake of his father’s brother Augustus) never married. He is described in business papers, in Concord assessors’ records, and in the federal census as a manufacturer of “pocket-books,” meaning that he produced porte-monnaies (money purses), needlebooks, and other leather items. He did business with Franklin Brooks (brother of lawyer Nathan Brooks), who was a leather dealer in Boston. Born in Concord, Augustus Merrick lived away from the town from the mid-1830s through the 1840s. Mail was sent to him at Boston and Cambridgeport addresses. By the late 1840s, he was back in Concord. He appears in the Concord assessors’ records continuously from 1849 through 1859, when he evidently left town again. Augustus Merrick was something of a ne’er-do-well. His financial papers for the late 1830s and the 1840s show mounting debt and money owed him but not paid. He declared bankruptcy in 1848, at about the time he came back to Concord. For several years after his return, he continued working as a pocketbook maker. Assessors’ records show that he owned no real estate, but in the early 1850s had stock in trade, which disappears from his valuations from 1853 on. Prone to mismanaging money and worried about the state of his health, Augustus Merrick sought through mediums to evoke the spirits of his deceased parents in the 1850s. In a footnote in the 1904 Centenary Edition volume of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The Conduct of Life, Edward Emerson elaborated on the mid-nineteenth century invasion of Concord by spiritualism, commenting that its “chief exponent” was a “Mr. M------,” whom he described as “a humble maker of pocket-books in Concord.”
Series description:
Series holds Merrick and Minot family papers, 1731-1858. Merrick family papers consist of: documents, 1756-1766, relating to property in Concord and elsewhere held by Tilly Merrick, Sr. (1729 or 1730-1768); papers, 1768-1772, of Mary Minot Merrick Ingraham (Tilly, Sr.’s widow and Tilly, Jr.’s mother); materials, 1780-1790, relating to the business and life in South Carolina of the elder Augustus Merrick (including his ownership of slaves; see container list for more detail), consisting of correspondence, financial papers, estate papers, bills of lading, a power of attorney document, and property documents; papers, 1781-1804, of John Merrick, consisting of property documents, financial papers, estate papers, and Justice of the Peace records; papers, 1783-1797, of Stephen Wilder Merrick; a Merrick family account book, 1768-1793; papers, 1826-1858, of the younger Augustus Merrick, including correspondence, financial papers, insolvency document, spiritualism papers (letters via medium from his deceased parents and uncle), and ephemera. Minot family papers consist of: Dr. Timothy Minot estate papers, 1731-1826; Timothy M. (Martyn/Martin) Minot papers, 1799, 1805 (predominantly 1799); James Minot papers, 1805-1826; Stephen Minot papers, 1798-1824; Minot family property documents, 1736-1810. A single file of Minot and Merrick family manuscripts includes one item dated 1819 and three undated items.
The Mary Minot Merrick Ingraham papers reflect the Widow Merrick’s role as “administratrix” of her first husband’s estate (he died intestate), the estate papers of Dr. Timothy Minot Tilly Merrick’s role as executor of his father-in-law’s estate. Items in the Dr. Timothy and Stephen Minot materials overlap with material in Series I (Box 14, Folders 3-7, and Box 14a, Folders 1-4). Property documents among the papers of members of the two families relate to some significant Concord real estate, for example the Calf Pasture by the Concord River and the grist mill in the center of town. Ammi White, a son- in-law of Dr. Timothy Minot, appears in some documents relating to property transactions.
The correspondence (1782-1788) of Augustus Merrick the elder consists largely of letters to Merrick but includes a few by him. Most of the letters are business-generated; some are from or to family members. Augustus Merrick’s correspondence is arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent, and, within sequences of multiple letters from a single correspondent, by date. Among Merrick’s correspondents: Robert Bolton; John Bradley; William Bradshaw; James Briggs; Jeremiah Brown; David Bush & Co.; Nathan Bond; John Call; R. & M. (?) Campbell; William Codman; Jonathan Coffin; William Colman; Samuel Conant; James Foster Condy; Joseph Cordis; Daniel Course; John Course; Course, Jones & Course; John DuBois; Cornelius DuPré; Samuel Doty/Doty, Brown & Brisbane; James Elsinore; Keiran Fitzpatrick; John Frazier; Nalbro’/Narlbro’ Frazier; Caleb Gannet; William Geyer; Nathaniel Gorham; Benjamin Guerard; Oliver Hart, Jr.; Thomas Hewes; John Hitchburn; Eleazer Homer; John Hunter; Duncan Ingraham; Duncan Ingraham, Jr.; Mary Minot Merrick Ingraham; Nathaniel Ingraham; Edward Jones; Samuel Jones; Archibald Maclaine; Adam Marshall; William Martin; May & Hills; John Merrick; Tilly Merrick; Timothy Martyn/Martin Minot; James Moore; Cornelius Schenkhouse; William Sherburne; Samuel Smedley; Samuel Soley; George Walton; William Whittaker; Robert Willkings; James Plimer Wilson; Edward Winslow.
The financial papers (1781-1789)—bills, accounts, receipts, notes, orders to pay, shipping invoices, etc.—of the elder Augustus Merrick are arranged by year, with no attempt to impose strict chronological order upon items within the folders for each year. The latest date on a document (the date marked on a bill when payment was received rather than the date expense was incurred, or the last date recorded on an account containing multiple entries) has been used as the filing date. Both business and personal finances are represented. Augustus Merrick’s debtors and creditors include: James Allison; Mrs. Mary Anthony; Martha Barb (?); Nathan Bond; Robert Box; David Brinton; Michael Broadnick; Jeremiah Brown; David Bush & Co.; Childs, Harwell & McIver; Jonas Clark; William Codman; William Colman; Samuel Conant; David Cruger; Ralph Dodsworth; George Fardo; Thomas H. Forrest; John Frazier; John Gardner; John Glyn; John Goodwin; John Gourley; James Guillandeau; Thomas Hallum; John Harding; John Harris; Christopher Harth; William Huxham; Elnathan Jones; Jones & Smith; John Kelly; Andrew Kerr; John Lillie; Jonathan Loring; John Martin; May & Hills; William McClure; McDowell & Gordon; Evander McIver; Peter McMahon; Tilly Merrick; Merrick & Course; Merrick & Wightman; James Miller; Henry Myers/Moirs; Reuben Newman; North, Blake & Vesey; John Parker; Jabez Porter; Primrose & Thomson; Rawson & Hubbard; Francis Robertson; Jeremiah Robinson; Nathaniel Russell; John Ryan; Edward Selfridge; Alexander Shirras; Thomas Singletary; Thomas Singleton; Henry Smerdon/Smerden; Smith & Webb; Samuel Stent; William Strother; Thayer & Bartlett; John Todd; Mary Turpin; Joseph Volans; Wadsworth & Turpin; Henry Welsh; William Wightman; Robert Willkings; James Plimer Wilson; Edward Winslow.
The correspondence of the younger Augustus Merrick is arranged chronologically. Correspondents include: Albert Armington; Abraham Call; Royall Douglass; J. P. Dunlap; Asa Farnsworth; W. Fuller; Guild & Blackinton; Johnson, Thompson & Marsh; W. R. Leman; Tappan & Whittemore; Thayer & Johnson; William Van Wyck; and others. His financial papers (bills, accounts, receipts, notes, etc.) are arranged by year (no further arrangement by date within the folder or folders for each
year). Among the debtors and creditors named in these papers: Abbott & Chase; Atlantic Bank; Atlas Bank; H. D. Austin; Bannock & Fogg; J. Bateman; Joshua Bennett; Samuel Bigelow; Blackstone Bank; L. A. Bosford; City of Boston; Office of the Boston Courier; Joel Britton; Franklin Brooks; Isaac Brooks; Nathan Brooks; John Brown, Jr.; Ruth L. Bruce; Abel W. Burroughs; Abraham Call; William H. Calvour; Cambridge Bank; Mrs. Sarah Chamberlin; B. H. Chever/Cheever; Nathaniel Carter; Luther Cleaves; A. W. Coles; Coles & Howe; Commercial Bank; Town of Concord; Concord Bank; Coy, Boynton & Woodford; Abram A. Creech; Amos Cutter; Dallinger & Welch (many items relating to non-payment by same); Joseph A. Davis; Josiah Davis; Jeremiah Dean; Dean & Co.; Oliver Dennis; Bela Dexter; J. B. Dillard; Joseph L. Drew; Drew & Co.; Duncan & Jameson; E. E. Dyer; James Dyer; Edson, Davis & Harrington; James D. Emes; Addison Grant Fay (for “pencil rods”); Thomas G. Fay; W. C. & H. E. Felch; Felch & Melvin; William R. Fernald; Hiram E. Fetch; Fiske & Witt; W. H. Fogg; D. J. Foster & Co.; Franklin Bank; James French; L. M. Goldsmith; George William Gordon; Nathaniel Greene; Griggs, Liscom & Co.; Thomas Groom & Co.; Guild & Blackinton; Jesse Haley; John Hancock; Elijah Harris; Charles Haynes; H. Henicker/Hennicker; S. Crosby Hewitt; William Hill; William Holden; Zacheus Holmes; L. B. Horton & Co.; H. M. Hosmer; Hungarian Fund; Hurd & Taft; William Jackson; E. Jacobs; Johnson & Thompson; Henry Kersey; Duncan Lamson; Freeman Lane; Joseph Libby; Albert Litch; Mackintire, Lyford & Co.; William H. Mann; Mrs. S. Marshall; May & Moore; McKay & Co.; Francis J. Merrick; Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Co.; J. L. Moore & Co.; Samuel F. Morse & Co.; Neponset Bank; Andrew Newman; Samuel H. Newman; North Bank; Ordway, Prince & Co.; Charles Packer; C. M. Paine; Albert Palmer & Co.; Peveur & Reed; W. M. R. Phips; Harrison B. Pratt; Otis G. Randal; Randolph & Coy; H. D. Rice; George Rockwell; Mrs. E. Sawyer; Charles Saxton; Henry L. Shattuck; Shawmut Bank; Amariah Storrs; Tappan & Whittemore; B. W. Thayer & Co.; Third Christian Society; Elijah Valentine; James Valentine; Charles A. Walk; S. W. Walker; Watson & Brown; Wesson, Fisher & Lathrop; P. Whelan; C. H. White; William Whiting; S. B. Wilde; C. B. Wilkins; E. Willey; Henry Williams; William W. Wilson; Withington & Willson; Enos Woodbury; Jason H. Work. Many of these are Boston names.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series VIII, or on one of the lines in the component listing below to access the container list for a specific portion of the series.
Series components:
Tilly Merrick, Sr., papers, 1756-1766
Mary Minot Merrick Ingraham papers, 1768-1772
Augustus Merrick (the elder) papers, 1780-1790
Correspondence, 1782-1788
Financial papers (bills, accounts, receipts, notes, shipping invoices, etc.), 1781-1789
Estate papers, 1780, 1790
Bills of lading, 1786-1788
Power of attorney, 1785
Property documents, 1786-1787
John Merrick papers, 1781-1804
Property documents, 1781-1796
Financial papers, 1783-1804
Estate papers, 1797
Justice of the Peace records, 1790-1796
Stephen Wilder Merrick papers, 1783-1797
Merrick family account book, 1768-1793
Augustus Merrick (the younger) papers, 1826-1858
Correspondence, 1836-1858
Financial papers, 1826-1857
Insolvency document, 1848
Spiritualism papers, 1853-1854, plus undated
Ephemera, 1851,1853, plus undated
Dr. Timothy Minot estate papers, 1731-1826
Timothy M. (Martyn/Martin) Minot papers, 1799, 1805
James Minot papers, 1805-1826
Stephen Minot papers, 1798-1824
Minot family property documents, 1736-1810
Minot and Merrick family manuscripts, 1819, plus undated
Series IX. Nathan Brooks and Brooks family personal papers, 1777-1917:
Extent: 2 containers, plus material in one oversized container.
Family history/biography:
Joshua Brooks of Lincoln, Massachusetts, and Martha Barrett of Concord announced their intention to marry in 1779. Their children: Joshua (born 1780); Humphrey (1782); William (1783); Nathan (1785); Charles (1787); Patty (1789). Martha Brooks died in 1792. Joshua took as his second wife Sarah (Sally) Davis in 1793. Their children: Isaac (1794); Sarah (1796); Hiram (1801); George (1803); Almira (1805); Franklin (baptized 1809); Susan (baptized 1809). Educated at Harvard, trained in the law in Concord and admitted to the Middlesex Bar in 1813, Nathan Brooks lived and worked in Concord until his death in 1863. His home stood at the intersection of Main Street and Sudbury Road.
In 1819, Nathan Brooks married Caroline Downes of Boston. She died March 29, 1820, less than two weeks after the couple’s daughter Caroline was born. Three years later (July 3, 1823), Brooks married Mary Merrick, daughter of Concord storekeeper Tilly Merrick. Their sons George and Charles Augustus were born in 1824 and 1832, respectively. Charles died in 1833.
Mary Merrick Brooks (1801-1868) was a powerful Concord advocate for the abolition of slavery, a member of the Middlesex County Antislavery Society and the Concord Ladies’ Antislavery Society, an influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reform activism, and a fundraiser for and respected colleague of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. For the story of her involvement in the cause, see Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, To Set This World Right: The Antislavery Movement in Thoreau’s Concord (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2006).
Caroline Downes Brooks—Nathan Brooks’s daughter—was a girlhood companion of Henry Thoreau’s sister Sophia and, like the Thoreau children, one of Phineas Allen’s pupils at the Concord Academy. In the 1830s, she also attended school away from home, in Worcester and in Boston, where she was a student at George Barrell Emerson’s school. In 1840, she married Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (a son of Squire Samuel Hoar of Concord), who achieved prominence as a lawyer, judge, Massachusetts senator, Attorney General of the United States in the cabinet of Ulysses S. Grant, and a representative in the United States Congress. They lived on Main Street, in the neighborhood where both had been raised, and had seven children: Caroline (born 1842); Sarah Sherman (1844); Samuel (1845); Charles Emerson (1850); Clara Downes (1852); Elizabeth (1854); and Sherman (1860). Caroline Downes Brooks Hoar devoted her adult life to family and community life. She was involved in the Concord Female Charitable Society, the Women’s Parish Association of the First Parish in Concord (of which she was the first president), and as a Sunday school teacher at the First Parish.
Nathan and Mary Brooks’s son George was also educated at the Concord Academy (under the tutelage of Phineas Allen, William Whiting, Jr., C. C. Shackford, and John and Henry David Thoreau), and in Waltham by Samuel and Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley. He graduated from Harvard College in 1844, from Harvard Law School in 1847. He was admitted to the Middlesex Bar in 1847, and joined the Lowell, Massachusetts, firm of Hopkinson & Ames. He returned to Concord to open an office in the Concord Bank building. George Brooks was politically active as a Whig and, later, a Republican. In the late 1850s, he served as a member of the Massachusetts Legislature. In 1860, facing a crisis of health, he traveled to England and the Continent with George Frisbie Hoar—his brother-in-law E. R. Hoar’s brother, later a United States senator. Brooks was elected a representative to Congress in 1869, reelected in 1870. He became Middlesex County Judge of Probate in 1872, resigning his seat in Congress to take the position. He was chairman of the Concord selectmen, a Trustee of Town Donations, treasurer of the Concord Free Public Library Corporation, moderator of Concord town meeting, trustee/treasurer of the Hubbard Estate Improvement Company (a real estate venture) and the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Fund, a director of the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company, president of Middlesex Institution for Savings, and a member of the Social Circle in Concord. In 1850, George Brooks married Abba Maria Wood Prescott (daughter of Timothy and Maria King Prescott). She died in 1851. In 1865, he married Mary A. Dillingham. They had two daughters—Bessie, who was adopted, and Mary Dillingham (known as Madie, or Maidie), born in 1877. The George Brooks family lived in the house now numbered 1 Sudbury Road.
George Brooks’s daughter Mary married Stedman Buttrick in 1922. His widow Mary A. Brooks traveled abroad after her husband’s death. She died in 1924.
Series description:
Series contains Nathan Brooks and Brooks family personal papers, 1777-1917: Nathan Brooks personal papers, 1777-1862; Mary Merrick Brooks correspondence, 1819-1863; Franklin Brooks papers, 1854-1857; Caroline Downes Brooks (Hoar) papers, 1817, 1837; George Merrick Brooks papers, 1840-1893; Mary A. Dillingham Brooks papers, 1891-1917; Mary D. Brooks (Buttrick) papers, 1891, plus undated; volumes from the Brooks family library, 1815-1828 (publication dates; two inscriptions 1835).
Nathan Brooks’s personal papers include: correspondence, 1801-1862, consisting primarily of letters to Nathan Brooks with a few by him interfiled (letters filed in two sequences, one—mainly extended correspondence—arranged alphabetically by the names of correspondents and within the individual correspondent files by date, the other arranged entirely chronologically); materials, 1825-1844, generated by Brooks’s political activities (particularly his Whig involvements, among them his service as an organizer of and treasurer for July 4th Whig celebrations in Concord in 1840 and 1844); circulars and notices relating to alumni and Overseer activities at Harvard, 1836-1838; documents, 1823-1840, relating to Brooks’s guardianship of his daughter Caroline’s inheritance from her mother and his management of her shares in the New England Glass Company; property documents (leases and deeds for real estate in Concord and Lincoln and one woodlot survey quantifying pine and oak resources on Fairhaven Hill in Concord), 1824-1855; manuscript Brooks family genealogical listings (undated; containing birth, marriage, and death information from 1755 to 1831); miscellaneous manuscript items, 1777, plus undated, including a 1777 commissary certificate for Col. [Eleazer] Brooks, a beverage recipe, directions for potato planting, and “Description of Party that left Silver Ware . . . in Boston.”
Correspondents in the sequence of letters filed by name include Caroline Brooks (Nathan’s daughter); Charles, Franklin, Hiram, Humphrey, Isaac, Joshua, and William Brooks (brothers); Daniel Brooks (a friend and relative); George Brooks (son); Mary Merrick Brooks (Mrs. Nathan); William J. Brooks (nephew); John H. Hartwell (cousin); Martha Keith (“Dear Brother”); and E. F. Paige (college friend). Correspondents among letters arranged chronologically include: Chester Adams; Josiah Adams; Edward W. Andrews; B. D. Bartlett; Samuel Burnham; Phila Waters Burr; Ephraim Buttrick; James L. Child; Joshua Child; Caleb Cushing; Josiah Davis; S. H. Davis; Amelia M. Edwards; George Barrell Emerson; Ann T. Jones; George F. Farley; Amos Farnsworth; Nathaniel Freeman; B. Gannett; C. Grosvenor; L. P. Grosvenor; George Hall; Joseph Haven; Eliza Heywood; Abraham Hilliard; Timothy Hilliard; Nathaniel P. Hoar; Samuel Hoar; Lewis L. Libby; Levi Lincoln; Augustus Merrick; Francis J. Merrick; Caleb Moon; Sophia Munroe; George Newton; L. Peabody; Cyrus Peirce; C. D. G. Perry; Timothy Prescott; Ezra Ripley; Miss S. Ripley; Samuel Ripley; William Smith; William F. Stone; William H. Sumner; Solomon Thayer; C. A. Tuttle; Sarah Tuttle; E. A. Ware; F. W. Ware; A. C. Watson; Charles A. Wheeler; Jonas Wheeler; William J. Whipple; Nathaniel Whitman; Benjamin Willard; L. and J. (John) Wright. Letters from Mary Merrick Merrick Brooks to her husband include one (May 13, 1838) written from Philadelphia, where Mrs. Brooks was attending the Antislavery Convention of American Women. The general correspondence file includes letters from Samuel Hoar in Washington, February 17, 1836 (“Abolition keeps us quite warm here in this cold season”); from and to L. and J. Wright (Mr. and Mrs. John Wright) in Worcester regarding Caroline Brooks’s schooling; to Amos Farnsworth (October 25, 1837) from Nathan Brooks, who, as a candidate for a seat in the United States Congress, declines to spell out his opinions regarding the slavery question; from Samuel Ripley (November 28, 1839) about George Brooks’s schooling in Waltham; and from Amelia M. Edwards (June 4, 1846) regarding her position as organist at the First Parish.
Mary Merrick Brooks’s correspondence consists of a folder of letters to Maria Parker in Billerica (a cousin), 1819-1836, and a folder of letters, 1833-1863, from various correspondents, filed by date. Among the correspondents in the latter folder: letters from husband Nathan, stepdaughter Caroline, son George, brother Augustus, Hannah Grosvenor, and William Lloyd Garrison (July 30, 1863).
The Franklin Brooks papers, 1854-1857, relate to Franklin’s financial difficulties, and include letters, telegrams, and summonses to court. (This material overlaps with items in Series V reflecting Franklin’s debts and Nathan Brooks’s involvement in managing them.)
The Caroline Downes Brooks (Hoar) papers consist of three items—two certificates of merit for Caroline’s studies (1837) and a Downes family property document (1817).
The George Merrick Brooks papers contain: correspondence, 1860-1891, plus undated; Harvard College/University documents, 1840-1844, among them an account book for college expenses, printed information for parents and guardians, a letter requiring additional instruction in geometry for George, absence, omission, and tuition reports, a certificate, and George’s Harvard diploma; materials (power of attorney, passport, tickets, bills, and receipts) relating to George Brooks’s trip abroad in 1860; documents (correspondence, deeds, receipts, accounts, and a plan), 1872-1879, relating to George’s involvement in the Hubbard Estate Improvement Company; Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Fund material, 1873-1874, regarding embezzlement by Louis Surette from the fund; an undated document relating to the case of Jonathan B. Heald v. Abel L. Davis, in which George Brooks was attorney for the plaintiff; bills, accounts, receipts, bills of exchange, and other financial papers, 1853-1891; two deeds (both 1888) for Concord property on Brister’s Hill and near Walden Pond; and ephemera, [1858]-1893 (printed handbill, [1858], on which George Brooks is listed as a senate candidate from Middlesex District No. 4; subscription certificate for Abbott’s The History of the Civil War in America; Middlesex Agricultural Society award notice to J. Blood; two versions of a printed handbill bearing a memorial poem to George Brooks by Sherman Hoar).
George Brooks’s correspondence (consisting mainly of letters to him) is arranged in two sequences, a general file and a file for letters to Mr. and Mrs. Brooks and family while abroad in 1891, both arranged chronologically. Correspondents include: Mrs. Abigail May Alcott; Richard Barrett; Charles H. Bartlett; Mary Merrick Brooks (mother); Concord National Bank; Augustus P. Chamberlaine; Edward Carver Damon; John Fletcher; Henry Flagg French; J. Q. A. Griffin; George Heywood; Caroline Downes Brooks Hoar (sister); Charles Emerson Hoar (nephew); George Frisbie Hoar (brother of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Caroline’s husband); Samuel Hoar (nephew); William F. Hurd; Edward Jarvis; George Keyes; John Shepard Keyes; Messrs. Marden & Rowell; George B. Neal; N. G. Ordway; Grindall Reynolds; Reuben N. Rice; Henry Francis Smith; Moorfield Story; Charles Sumner; Louis A. Surette; Sophia E. Thoreau; Henry J. Walcott; Hapgood Wright. Some highlights from the sequence of general correspondence include: a letter (June 10, 1860) to George from John Shepard Keyes (with added note by Martha Prescott Keyes, describing events in Chicago at the 1860 Republican National Convention at which Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency; a letter (July 22, 1860) from Mrs. Brooks referring to a recent antislavery meeting at which Lewis Hayden was present and to the discussion at antislavery meetings of “Abe Lincoln’s character”; a letter (August 6, 1861) from Mrs. Brooks reminding her son not to forget “M. Thoreau’s will”; a letter (March 15, 1871) from Sophia Thoreau regarding her mother’s possible entitlement to a pension as the widow of a soldier in the War of 1812; two letters (February and March 1874) from Augustus P. Chamberlaine, referring to the proposed state prison in Concord and to Miss Alcott’s response to it, to the extension of the Middlesex Central Railroad line, the Hubbard Estate Improvement Company, and the David Scott portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson (then a recent gift to the new Concord Free Public Library); and a letter (May 16, 1875) from Mrs. Abigail May Alcott, asking for an abatement on railroad stock taxes. A number of letters in the general sequence are related to Brooks’s political life.
Mary A. Dillingham Brooks papers, 1891-1917, include a copy of the will of Sarah Frances Dillingham, correspondence, bills, and receipts. Mary D. Brooks (Buttrick) papers, 1891, plus undated, consist of two letters. Volumes from the Brooks family library, 1815-1828 (two inscriptions 1835) consist of a copy of a work by Rodolphus Dickenson that once belonged to George Brooks, Nathan Brooks’s two-volume set of Flavius Josephus, and his daughter Caroline’s six-volume set of Mirabeau.
This series includes some Brooks family items that were formerly part of the old Concord Free Public Library Letter File and were transferred into the Nathan Brooks papers in 1995 and 1996.
Click here to access the beginning of the container list for Series IX, or on one of the lines in the component listing below to access the container list for a specific portion of the series.
Series components:
Nathan Brooks personal papers, 1777-1862
Correspondence, 1801-1862
Political activities, 1825-1844
Harvard College/University documents, 1836-1838
Guardianship of assets of daughter Caroline Brooks, 1823-1840
Property documents, 1824-1855
Brooks family genealogy, undated
Miscellaneous manuscript items, 1777, plus undated
Mary Merrick Brooks correspondence, 1819-1863
Franklin Brooks papers, 1854-1857
Caroline Downes Brooks (Hoar) papers, 1817, 1837
George Merrick Brooks papers, 1840-1893
Correspondence, 1860-1891, plus undated
Harvard College/University documents, 1840-1844
Trip abroad, 1860
Hubbard Estate Improvement Company, 1872-1879
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Fund, 1873-1874
Legal work, undated
Financial papers, 1853-1891
Property documents, 1888
Ephemera, [1858]-1893
Mary A. Dillingham Brooks papers, 1891-1917
Mary D. Brooks (Buttrick) papers, 1891, plus undated
Volumes from the Brooks family library, 1815-1828 (publication dates; two inscriptions 1835)
CONTAINER LIST
SERIES I. ESTATE PAPERS, 1666-1864:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
Box 1, Folder 1:
John Adams, 1821-1833
Box 1, Folder 2:
Joseph Adams, 1799-1863
Box 1, Folder 3:
William Baldwin, 1806-1835
Box 1, Folder 4 and Box 1a, Folders 1-2:
Francis Barrett, 1788-1841
Box 1a, Folders 3-5:
Humphrey Barrett, 1815-1832
Box 1a, Folder 6:
Humphrey Barrett, Jr., 1673 (transcription), 1811-1820
Box 1a, Folder 7:
Rebecca Barrett, 1828-1839
Box 1a, Folders 8-9, and Box 2, Folders 1-2:
Samuel Barrett, 1800-1860
Box 2, Folder 3:
Charles Bartlett, 1842-1846
Box 2, Folder 4:
Mary H. Bartlett, 1846-1855
File includes lock of hair.
Box 2, Folders 5-6:
Bascom & Cole, 1826-1830
Box 2, Folder 7:
Henry and Ezra Batchelder, 1835-1842
Box 2, Folder 8:
John Bates, 1814-1833
Box 2, Folder 9:
Henry Bates, 1817-1860
Box 2, Folder 10:
Thomas Benjamin, 1823-1831
Box 2, Folder 11, Box 3, Folders 1-6, and Box 4, Folders 1-6:
Heartwell Bigelow, 1686 (transcription)-1864
Files include receipts to blacksmith Francis E. Bigelow, carriage maker William Whiting, Henry David Thoreau (for surveying), John Thoreau, Jr., for instruction, Franklin B. Sanborn for tuition, and N. H. Dillingham; also, a patent.
Box 5, Folders 1-2a:
Israel Billing/Billings, 1785-1860
Files include plan for land in Princeton, Mass., a document relating to Caleb Billings, and items relating to the Baker family of Lincoln, Mass.
See also listing for Box 5a, below
Box 5, Folder 3:
Abel Bowman, 1830
Box 5, Folders 4-5:
Alice Bridge, 1818-1839
Box 5, Folder 6:
John Brigham, 1824-1836
Box 5, Folder 7:
Asa Brooks, 1789-1799
Box 5, Folder 8:
Isaac Brooks, 1818-1835
Box 5, Folder 9:
Job Brooks, 1789-1799
Box 5a (artifact container):
Israel Billings pocketbook/wallet
See also listing for Box 5, Folders 1-2a, above
Box 6, Folders 1-1a:
Joshua Brooks, 1751-1832
Box 6, Folder 2:
Sarah Brooks, 1826-1859
Box 6, Folder 3:
Noah Brooks, 1810-1811
Box 6, Folder 4:
Abel Brown, 1823-1827
Box 6, Folders 5-6:
Joseph Brown, 1810-1825
Box 6, Folder 7:
Mary Brown, 1828-1830
Box 6, Folders 8-10, Box 6a, and Box 7, Folders 1-3:
Reuben Brown, 1717-1858
Box 6, Folder 8:
Correspondence, 1828-1851
Box 6, Folder 9:
Bills and receipts, 1717-1829
Box 6, Folder 10:
Bills and receipts, 1830-1839
Box 6a:
Account book, 1830-1854
Includes entries for transactions with Jack Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Maria Thoreau.
Box 7, Folder 1:
Bills and receipts, 1840-1849
Box 7, Folder 1a:
Bills and receipts, 1850-1854
Folder includes receipt for surveying by Henry David Thoreau and receipts to Francis E. Bigelow
and Edmund Hosmer.
Box 7, Folder 2:
Deeds, 1784-1852
Includes plan for Dutch House lot; also, plan by Cyrus Hubbard.
Box 7, Folder 3:
Estate papers, 1822-1858
Folder includes documents relating to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery property and letters from George
A. Thatcher to Nathan Brooks.
Box 7, Folder 4:
William Brown, 1815-1835
Box 7, Folder 4a:
John Burr, 1810-1830
Box 7, Folders 5-6 and Box 8, Folders 1-4:
Samuel Burr, 1810-1848
Box 8, Folder 3a includes John Thoreau pew deed and Box 8, Folder 4 a letter from George Holbrook regarding meeting house clock and bell.
Box 8, Folder 5:
John Buttrick, 1815-1830
File includes material relating to Buttrick’s position as Concord Town Collector and Treasurer; also, a list of proprietors of sheds at the meeting house.
Box 8, Folder 6 and Box 8a, Folders 1-9:
John Byrnes, 1821-1853
Box 8, Folder 6 includes letter from Edward Everett to Nathan Brooks.
Box 8a, Folder 10:
Lemuel Curtis, 1815-1823
Box 8a, Folder 11:
Samuel Dakin, 1792-1823
Box 9, Folders 1-3:
Jonathan Davis, 1814-1837
Box 9, Folders 4-7:
Josiah Davis, 1817-1848
Box 9, Folders 8-9:
Mary Davis, 1840-1852
Box 9, Folder 10:
Joseph Dole, 1798-1826
Box 9, Folder 11:
Mary Field, 1826-1832
Includes Jacob Baker woodlot material.
Box 10, Folder 1:
John Fitch, 1824-1851
Box 10, Folders 2-3:
Comfort Foster, 1829-1839
Box 10, Folder 2 includes request for payment for Peter Hutchinson’s killing a hog, etc.
Box 10, Folder 4:
James Griffen, 1847-1848
Box 10, Folder 4a:
Elisha Hagar, 1859
Box 10, Folder 5:
Abraham Handley, 1836-1853
Box 10, Folder 6:
Sarah Hardy, 1827-1836
Box 10, Folder 7:
Ephraim Hartwell, 1808-1829
Box 10, Folder 8:
Lydia Hartwell, 1838-1856
Box 10, Folder 8a:
Shadrack Haynes, 1856
Box 10, Folders 9-10:
Asa Hayward, 1818-1831
Files include material relating to Hayward’s position as Surveyor of Highways in Concord and to his donation toward the town clock.
Box 10, Folder 11:
Abiel Heywood, 1827-1846
Box 10, Folder 12:
Jonas Heywood, 1825-1833
Box 10, Folder 13:
Silas Holden, 1852-1854
Box 10, Folder 14:
Jesse Hosmer, 1819-1830
Box 10, Folder 15:
Elijah Hosmer, 1804-1828
Box 10, Folders 16-17 and Box 11, Folders 1-5:
John Hosmer, 1803-1864
Box 11, Folder 6:
Sally and Lydia Hosmer, 1839-1841
Box 11, Folder 7:
Oliver Houghton, 1855
Box 11, Folders 8-12:
Phineas How, 1831-1854
Box 11, Folder 10 includes two receipted accounts for purchases made by John Thoreau (father of Henry David Thoreau).
Box 11, Folder 13:
Ebenezer Hubbard, 1801-1809
Box 11, Folder 14:
Rebecca Hubbard, 1846-1856
Box 11, Folder 15:
Samuel Hunt, 1817-1823
Box 12, Folders 1-2:
Isaac Hurd, 1803-1847
Box 12, Folder 3:
Isaac Hurd, Jr., 1813-1828
Box 12, Folder 4:
Joseph Hurd, 1842-1858
Box 12, Folder 5:
Nathaniel Hutchinson, 1837
Box 12, Folder 6:
Stephen Jarvis, 1845-1853
Folder includes cure for rheumatism, Wright Tavern deed.
Box 12, Folder 7:
James Jones, 1821-1839
Box 12, Folders 8-11:
Joshua Jones, 1801-1821
Box 12, Folder 12:
Aaron Keyes, 1826-1844
Box 12, Folder 13:
Sarah Lane, 1841-1848
Box 13, Folders 1-2:
Samuel Cordis Lee, 1771-1838
Box 13, Folder 3:
Margaret Mahoney, 1856-1862
Box 13, Folder 4:
Ephraim Meriam, one undated document
Box 13, Folder 4a:
John Meriam, 1854-1855
Box 13, Folders 5-7:
Oliver Meriam, 1809-1824
Box 13, Folders 8-9:
Charles Miles, 1791-1831
Folder 9 includes receipt for payment to Mrs. Jane Dugan, 1827.
Box 13, Folder 10:
Darius Miles, 1848-1858
Box 14, Folder 1:
Reuben Miles, 1821-1845
Box 14, Folder 2:
Abel Minot, 1826
Box 14, Folders 3-7 and Box 14a, Folders 1-2:
Stephen Minot, 1764-1825
Deed for grist mill in center of Concord, Ammi and Mary Minot White to Stephen Minot, 1805, is included in Box 14a, Folder 2.
Note: Items among the Stephen Minot estate papers overlap with material in Series VI.
Box 14a, Folders 3-4:
Timothy Minot, 1666 (transcription)-1828
The earliest documents among these estate papers are early manuscript transcripts from the originals. Some items relate to controversy over the flowage of Concord’s Mill Brook. Files also include decree of divorce for Mrs. Thomazine E. Minot, items signed by Mary Minot White (Mrs. Ammi White), and 1805 survey of Minot property in Concord, showing home of “Mr. Thorough”—that is, John Thoreau, grandfather of Henry David Thoreau.
Note: Items among the Timothy Minot estate papers overlap with material in Series VI (Box 75, Folders 1-2).
Box 15, Folder 1:
Abigail Minot, 1807-1826
File includes account for services and goods rendered by Jacob Baker.
Box 15, Folder 2:
William Minot, 1823-1826
Box 15, Folder 3:
Wilson Moffatt/Moffett/Moffitt, 1847-1849
Box 15, Folder 4:
Lazzerro/Lazzero/Lazero/Lazzarro/Lazarro/Lazaro/Lazarus/Lazare Montefiore, 1807-1830
Montefiore was a confectioner.
Box 15, Folder 5:
Luther Moore, 1819-1822
Box 15, Folder 6:
Jonas Monroe, 1820-1822
Box 15, Folder 7:
Peter Neft/Nief/Neef/Neff/Niff/Nefft, 1820-1823
Box 15, Folder 8:
Nathan Nurse, 1805-1810
Box 15, Folders 9-10:
Cyrus Nutting, 1814-1834
Box 16, Folder 1:
Lydia Page, 1809-1836
Box 16, Folder 2:
Mary H. Parker, 1843
Box 16, Folder 3:
William Parkman, 1791-1844
Box 16, Folder 4:
Lurana/Lorana/Laurana Parks, 1787-1863
File includes 1792 receipt for smallpox inoculation.
Box 16, Folder 5:
Ephraim Potter, 1778-1815
Box 16, Folder 6:
Lucy Potter, 1854
Box 16, Folder 7:
Asa Porter, 1825-1827
Box 16, Folder 8:
John Prescott, 1806-1827
Box 16, Folder 9:
Samuel P. Prescott, 1808-1822
Box 16, Folder 10 and Box 17, Folders 1-1a:
Timothy Prescott, 1816-1850
Box 17, Folder 2:
Elizabeth Prince, 1736-1837
Earliest documents in file are transcriptions from originals. Some documents refer to James S. Colburn. File includes document with plan showing Colburn and Prince property in Boston.
Box 17, Folders 3-4:
Gaius Proctor, 1804-1838
Box 17, Folder 5:
Sarah Randall, 1806-1832
Box 17, Folder 6:
Chloe Richards, 1824-1827
Box 17, Folder 7:
Mary F. Richards, 1827-1831
Box 17, Folder 8:
Luther Robbins, 1838-1845
Box 17, Folder 9:
Peter Robbins, 1829-1852
File includes an obligation dated 1852, Peter Hutchinson to Peter Robbins, and Fatima Robbins right of dower document (quitclaim to Daniel Shattuck, June 2, 1852).
Box 17a, Folders 1-9 and Box 18, Folders 1-2:
Daniel Shattuck, 1802-1857
Box 17a, Folders 1, 1a, 2, and 3:
Business and financial papers, 1810-1857
Folder 1a includes account booklets, among them one for Peter Robbins.
Box 17a, Folder 4:
Whitney Mills, Lowell, and related documentation, 1832-1848
Box 17a, Folder 5:
John and Nehemiah Colby, Lexington, 1835-1845
Box 17a, Folder 6:
Concord Mill Dam Company records, 1836-1856
Box 17a, Folder 7:
Building Committee of the First Parish in Concord records, 1841-1845
Box 17a, Folders 8-9 and Box 18, Folder 1:
Deeds and other documents relating to real estate, 1802-1847
Box 18, Folders 1a-2:
“Lemuel Shattuck’s affairs,” 1824-1854
Box 18, Folder 3:
Cyrus Smith, 1829
Box 18, Folders 4-5:
Daniel Smith, 1792-1826
Files include manuscript survey, 1792.
Box 18, Folder 6:
Eirene/Irene Smith, 1848-1855
Box 18, Folder 7:
Sarah Snow, 1824-1828
Box 18, Folder 8:
William Stearns, 1845-1846
Box 18, Folders 9-14:
Joshua Stiles, 1819-1827
Box 19, Folder 1:
John Stone, 1792-1815
Folder includes documents signed by William Munroe, Sr., as executor of estate.
Box 19, Folder 2:
Cyrus Stow, 1829-1844
File includes letters patent and other material relating to thrashing machine invented by Samuel Allen, rights to which were sold to Abel Moore and Cyrus Stow.
Box 19, Folder 3:
Eleanor Swan, 1818-1830
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 1:
Eleanor Swan: “Plan of Mrs. Swan’s estate” (undated)
Box 19, Folder 4:
Joshua Swan, 1818-1827
Box 19, Folder 4a:
John L. Tuttle, 1813
Box 19, Folder 4b:
Abiel H. Wheeler, 1849
Box 19, Folder 5:
Charles Wheeler, 1842
Box 19, Folder 6:
Phebe Wheeler (Miss and Mrs.), 1810-1850
See also listing for Box 19a, below
Box 19, Folders 7-8:
Peter Wheeler, 1764-1823
Files include documentation of Thoreau family purchases (rental of horse and chaise and purchase of beef by John Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau’s father) and purchase by Rebecca Thoreau (HDT’s step-grandmother).
Box 19, Folder 9:
Ephraim Whitcomb, 1832-1849
Box 19, Folder 10:
Sarah Whitcomb, 1840-1852
Box 19, Folder 11:
Stephen Williams, 1817-1827
Box 19, Folder 12:
Martha Whiting, 1841-1842
Box 19, Folders 13-16 and Box 20, Folder 1:
Elijah Wood, 1819-1832
Box 19a (artifact container):
Phebe Wheeler pocketbook/wallet
See also listing for Box 19, Folder 6, above
Box 20, Folder 2:
Ebenezer Woodward, 1821
Box 20, Folder 3:
Calvin Wright, 1803-1830
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 1:
Calvin Wright: Survey by Cyrus Hubbard, 1818
Box 20, Folder 4:
Edward Wright, 1814-1827
File includes citizenship document.
Box 20, Folder 5:
Hannah Wright, 1827-1839
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 1:
Hannah Wright: Survey (undated)
Box 20, Folder 6:
Sarah Wyman, 1823-1841
Box 20, Folder 7:
Miscellaneous estate papers, 1798-1859
File contains individual items, some fragmentary, apparently separated from the undetermined estate papers with which they belong. These items include documents relating to Abigail Brown, Joseph D. Brown, Samuel Chandler, Robert D. Gilson, Otis Hayward, Lucy Hunt, Harriet Kidder, Stephen Payson; David Reed, Benjamin Simonds, Augustus Tuttle, Milton C. Walker, Daniel Wetherbee, James Wright, and others.
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SERIES II. SEPARATE DEEDS AND OTHER PROPERTY-RELATED DOCUMENTS (PLANS, LEASES, AGREEMENTS, ETC.), 1786-1856:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
For property in Concord or property both in Concord and elsewhere, 1786-1856:
Box 21, Folders 1-3:
Concord property, 1786-1856
Manuscript “Plan of A B Alcott’s Lot—1846” is filed in Box 21, Folder 1.
For property elsewhere in Massachusetts, 1788-1860:
Box 21, Folder 4:
Acton property, 1801-1853
Box 21, Folder 5:
Bedford property, 1824
Box 21, Folder 6:
Boston property, 1829
Box 21, Folder 7:
Boxborough property, 1837
Box 21, Folder 8:
Carlisle property, 1816-1841
Box 21, Folder 9:
Charlestown property, 1824
Box 21, Folder 10:
Lexington property, 1837-1846
Box 21, Folder 11:
Lincoln property, 1825-1860
Box 21, Folder 12:
Littleton property, 1817-1819
Box 21, Folder 12a:
Lowell property, 1833
Box 21, Folder 13:
Natick property, 1804-1805
Box 21, Folder 14:
Sudbury property, 1823-1832
Box 21, Folder 15:
Shirley property, 1819
Box 21, Folder 16:
Winchendon property, 1788, 1810
BOX 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL):
Items in Box 22 are listed throughout container list with related materials (in appropriate series and series components).
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SERIES III. PAPERS AND RECORDS RELATED TO LEGAL AND OTHER OFFICES HELD, 1769-1863:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
Master in Chancery, 1820-1855:
Box 23, Folders 1-5:
Documents, 1820-1855
Box 23, Folder 6:
Record book, 1838-1847
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 2:
Appointments, 1827, 1831, 1835, 1844
Justice of the Peace, 1819-1858:
Box 23, Folder 7:
Writs and other documents (including one relating to Peter Hutchinson), 1819-1842
Box 23, Folder 8:
Recognizance, 1833-1847
Box 23, Folder 9:
Interrogatories and related documents, 1825-1853
Box 23, Folder 10:
Other documents, 1820-1858
Box 23, Folder 11:
Loring v. Bull, 1850
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 3:
Appointments, 1820, 1827, 1828, 1829, 1836, 1843, 1850, 1857
Matters relating to County Commissioners, 1835, 1839:
Box 23, Folder 11a:
Letters and petition, 1835, 1839
File includes petition by the Massachusetts General Hospital protesting the Charlestown Branch Rail Road’s cutting off access to wharves in Charlestown and otherwise disrupting operation of the McLean Asylum.
Box 23, Folder 12:
Documents relating to Cummings v. Wright, 1828-1829
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 4:
Appointments, 1821, 1828, 1835, 1842, 1849, 1856, 1863
Box 23, Folder 13:
Appointments and other documents, 1817-1838
Note: There is an 1860 receipt for Nathan Brooks’s notarial embossing seal (embossed with the seal) with Brooks’s financial papers, in Box 36, Folder 2.
Box 23, Folder 14:
Documents relating primarily to Blodgett v. Hunnewell and Winchester v. West Cambridge, 1824-1854
Regimental paymaster (Third Regiment of Infantry, First Brigade, Third Division of Militia), 1811-1816:
Box 23, Folder 15:
Orders, 1812-1816; acceptance of resignation, 1817
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 5:
Appointment, 1811
Massachusetts legislature, 1825-1829:
Box 23, Folder 16:
Correspondence, 1825-1829
Attorney of the Supreme Judicial Court (Massachusetts), 1815:
Box 23, Folder 17:
Admission document, 1815
Pension agent for Revolutionary service, 1769 (in transcription)-1844:
Box 23, Folder 18:
Documents and correspondence, 1769 (in transcription)-1844
Capacity/office undetermined, 1825-1840:
Box 23, Folder 19:
Documents relating to a variety of cases in which Nathan Brooks’s role is undetermined, 1825-1840
Includes a number of documents relating to Hobart v. Fiske.
Elector for offices of President and Vice-President of the United States, 1832:
Box 23a, Folder 1:
Correspondence, 1832
Box 23a, Folder 1a:
Printed writ, 1826
Town of Concord business, 1820-1858:
Box 23a, Folders 2-4:
Materials, 1823-1858, including Trustees of the Congregational Ministerial Fund records and other material relating to the First Parish in Concord (response by Joseph Field to an invitation to the installation of the Rev. Grindall Reynolds, 1858), orders for payment of town expenses, protest by town to proposed removal of Middlesex County courts to Lowell, agreement between Francis Jarvis and John Keyes/Daniel Shattuck regarding property transfer to accommodate road between yellow building and green store and relocation of gun house (1836), and formation of citizens’ committee (non-municipal) to prevent petty larcenies (1838). Many documents dated 1841 and 1842 were signed by Timothy Prescott as Town Treasurer. Files also include two deeds (Tilly Merrick to William Whiting, Nathan Brooks, and Cyrus Stow, 1820; William Parkman to Whiting, Brooks, and Stow, 1820) transferring property to be held in trusteeship for maintenance of a public school in Concord’s Center school district.
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 6:
Deed, Henry Wright to Trustees of the Congregational Ministerial Fund, 1827
Massachusetts Senator, 1831, 1837:
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIALS), Folder 6:
Appointments, 1831, 1837
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIALS), Folder 6:
Appointment, 1839
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SERIES IV. PAPERS RELATING TO LEGAL PRACTICE, 1791-1861:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
Nathan Brooks as plaintiff (creditor), 1814-1857:
Box 23a, Folder 5:
Documents relating to multiple cases, 1814-1857
File includes one writ against Peter Hutchinson.
Nathan Brooks as defense attorney, 1818-1844:
Box 23a, Folder 6:
Nathan Brooks as defense attorney for Luther Davis, 1818-1827
Box 23a, Folder 7:
Nathan Brooks as defense attorney for James Hapgood, 1818-1825
Box 23a, Folder 8:
Nathan Brooks as defense attorney for Hepsibah Jones, 1820-1834
Box 23a, Folder 9:
Nathan Brooks as defense attorney for Thomas Moore, 1838
Box 23a, Folder 10:
Nathan Brooks as defense attorney for George Spencer, 1823-1829
Box 23a, Folder 11:
Nathan Brooks as defense attorney for Amos Wellington et al., 1844
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor (filed alphabetically by name of plaintiff), 1814-1844:
Box 24, Folder 1:
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor (A-B)
Box 24, Folder 2:
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor (B-D)
Box 24, Folder 3:
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor Davis (Josiah, Moses, Charles B.)
Box 24, Folder 4:
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor (E-H)
Box 24, Folder 5:
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor (J-M)
Box 24, Folder 6:
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor (N-S)
Box 24, Folder 7:
Nathan Brooks as attorney for plaintiff/creditor (T-W)
Writs and other documents (Nathan Brooks connection unspecified), 1813-1857:
Box 24, Folders 8-9:
Writs and other legal documents for multiple cases (Nathan Brooks connection unspecified), 1813-1857
Individual case files, 1791-1861:
Box 24, Folder 10:
Belknap & Foster/Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad, 1845-1861
Box 24, Folder 11:
Isaac Barker petition for partition of property, 1835
Box 25, Folder 1:
Alfred Brooks, 1829
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIALS), Folder 7:
Alfred Brooks real estate survey (uncaptioned and undated)
Box 25, Folders 2-4:
Georgia Loan Office, 1791-1857
Box 25, Folder 2:
1791-1824
Box 25, Folder 3:
1825-1836
Box 25, Folder 4:
1837-1857, plus undated
Box 25, Folder 5:
Writs against Charles Herring, 1844
Box 25, Folder 6:
Leppelman v. Leppelman, 1852, 1858
Box 25, Folder 6a:
Blodgett and Tirrell (Suffolk County), 1842-1843
Box 25, Folder 7:
Hayden v. Hearn (Norfolk County), 1856-1857
Box 25, Folder 7a:
Documents relating to Nathaniel Munroe’s apprentices, 1812-1821
Box 25, Folder 7b:
Petition to Governor for pardon of Amos Prescott and his release from prison in Charlestown (undated)
Box 25, Folders 8-9:
Miscellaneous legal documents and notes, 1795-1858
Files include dower document, Jane Potter, 1815 (Folder 9).
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SERIES V. FINANCIAL AND BUSINESS PAPERS, 1796-1864:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
Professional correspondence (arranged chronologically), 1810-1864:
Box 26, Folder 1:
Undated; 1810-1816
Box 26, Folder 2:
1817-1818
Box 26, Folder 3:
1819
Box 26, Folder 4:
1820
Box 26, Folder 5:
1821
Box 26, Folder 6:
1822
Box 26, Folder 7:
1823-1824
Box 26, Folder 8:
1825-1826
Box 26, Folder 9:
1827
Box 26, Folder 10:
1828
Box 26, Folder 11:
1829
Box 26, Folder 12:
1830-April 1833
Box 26, Folder 13:
May-December 1833
Box 26, Folder 14:
April-September 1834
Box 27, Folders 1-2:
October-December 1834
Box 27, Folder 3:
1835-May 1836
Box 27, Folder 4:
June-December 1836
Box 27, Folders 5-6:
1837
Box 27, Folders 7-8:
1838
Box 27, Folders 9-11:
1839
Box 27, Folders 12-13:
1840
Box 27, Folder 14:
January-March 1841
Box 28, Folders 1-2:
April-December 1841
Box 28, Folder 3:
1842
Box 28, Folder 4:
1843-June 1844
Box 28, Folder 5:
July-December 1844
Box 28, Folder 6:
1845
Box 28, Folder 7:
1846
Box 28, Folder 8:
1847-1848
Box 28, Folder 9:
1849-1855
File includes a letter (New York, June 6, 1851) from Samuel J. May to Nathan Brooks. May suggests that “Mr Alcott’s place at Concord had better be sold, and the proceeds invested in some good stock that will yield him and his family a greater income than they now receive,” and asks Nathan Brooks to assist in the sale of the house.
Box 28, Folder 10:
1856-1864
Bills, receipts, accounts, notes, orders for payment, etc., 1796-1863:
Box 29, Folder 1:
Undated
Box 29, Folder 2:
1796-1813
Box 29, Folder 3:
1814
Box 29, Folder 4:
A. Biglow, 1814-1831
Box 29, Folder 5:
1815
Box 29, Folder 6:
1816
Box 29, Folders 7-8:
1817
Box 29, Folders 9-10:
1818-1819
Box 29, Folders 11-13:
1819
Box 29, Folder 14:
1820
Box 30, Folders 1-2:
1821
Box 30, Folders 3-5:
1822
Box 30, Folders 6-7:
1823
Box 30, Folders 8-10:
1824
Box 30, Folders 11-13:
1825
Box 31, Folders 1-3:
1826
Box 31, Folders 4-5:
1827
Box 31, Folders 6-7:
1828
Box 31, Folders 8-9:
1829
Box 31, Folders 10-11:
1830
Box 32, Folders 1-3:
1831
Box 32, Folders 4-5:
1832
Box 32, Folders 6-7:
1833
Box 32, Folders 8-10:
1834
Box 33, Folders 1-3:
1835
Box 33, Folders 4-6:
1836
Box 33, Folders 7-9:
1837
Box 33, Folders 10-11:
1838
Box 33, Folder 12:
1839
Box 33, Folder 13:
1840
Box 33, Folder 14:
1841
Box 34, Folders 1-2:
1842
Box 34, Folder 3:
1843
Box 34, Folder 4:
1844
Box 34, Folder 5:
1845
Box 34, Folder 6:
1846
Box 34, Folder 7:
1847
File includes “Rents received of Sundry Tenants, occupants of Mr. Nathl. [sic] Brooks House, Gorham Street.” Note at end of this document: “Feb’y 6, 1847 This account settled, this date, errors excepted—Charles M. Short.”
Box 34, Folders 8-9:
1848
Box 34, Folder 9a:
Franklin Brooks, 1848
Box 34, Folder 10:
1849
Box 34, Folder 11:
Franklin Brooks, 1849
Box 34, Folders 12-13:
1850
Box 34, Folders 14-15:
1851
Box 34, Folders 16-17:
1852
Folder 16 includes “Memo of Notes on A. B. Alcott.”
Box 35, Folder 1:
1853
Box 35, Folders 2-3:
1854
Box 35, Folders 4-5:
1855
Box 35, Folder 6:
1856
Box 35, Folder 7:
1857
Box 35, Folders 8-9:
1858
Box 35, Folders 10-11:
1859
Box 36, Folders 1-2:
1860
Box 36, Folders 3-4:
1861
Box 36, Folder 5:
1862
Box 36, Folder 6:
1863
Box 36, Folder 7:
Listing by name of accounts associated with business partnership of Samuel Burr and Moses Prichard, December 15, 1829 (sewn in paper wrapper; accompanied by loose sheets)
Box 37:
Personal account book, 1836-1863 (entries chronological; bound)
Note: Volume underwent conservation treatment at Northeast Document Conservation Center, Andover, Mass., 1977.
Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company records, 1827-1863:
Mixed records, 1827-1863, plus undated:
Box 38, Folder 1:
Undated; 1826-1832
Box 38, Folder 2:
1833
Box 38, Folder 3:
1834-1835
Box 38, Folder 4:
1836
Box 38, Folder 5:
1837
Box 38, Folder 6:
1838
Box 38, Folder 7:
1839
File includes letters relating to policy of Jonas Wyeth of Cambridge.
Box 38, Folder 8:
1840
Box 38, Folder 9:
1841
Folder includes power of attorney, John H. Hartwell of Augusta, Maine, to Nathan Brooks,
January 30, 1841, to permit transfer of interest on insurance policy for property in Lincoln,
Massachusetts, to A. H. Pierce, to whom Hartwell has sold the property.
Box 38, Folders 10-11:
1842
Box 38, Folder 12:
1843-1844
Box 38, Folder 13:
1846-1863
Folder includes obligation, Nathan Brooks (principal), George Merrick Brooks, Stedman
Buttrick, and John S. Keyes to the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company, June 13,
1853, in the sum of $1,000.
Extended correspondence, 1833-1842:
Box 39, Folders 1-2:
Chester Adams, 1833-1840
Box 39, Folder 3:
Aaron Keyes, 1833-1842
Box 39, Folder 4:
Horatio N. Perkins, 1834-1842
Box 39, Folder 5:
John Walton, 1834-1842
Boston, Lexington, and Concord Accommodation Stage records, 1833-1839:
Waybills, April-October 1839:
Box 39, Folder 6:
April 1839
Box 39, Folder 7:
May 1839
Box 39, Folder 8:
June 1839
Box 39, Folder 9:
July 1839
Box 39, Folder 10:
August 1839
Box 40, Folder 1:
September-October 1839
Kendall and Buttrick financial records (bills, receipts, etc.), 1833-1839:
Box 40, Folders 2-3:
Financial records, 1833-1839
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SERIES VI. ABEL MOORE PAPERS, 1801-1857:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
Property-related documents (deeds, leases, contracts, surveys, etc.), 1801-1853:
Deeds are filed by date witnessed, not date recorded.
For property primarily in Concord, Acton, Carlisle, Lexington, Lincoln, and Sudbury, 1801-1853:
Box 40, Folder 3a:
1801 (in transcription)-1829, plus undated
File includes undated “Plan of Saw Mill wood lot.”
This and the next file include several surveys by Cyrus Hubbard.
Box 40, Folder 4:
1830-1839
Box 40, Folder 5:
1840-1853
For property in Lowell, 1820-1852:
Box 40, Folder 6:
Deeds and documents, 1820-1852
File includes documents relating to property interests of Daniel Shattuck as well as of Abel
Moore.
Box 40a (OVERSIZED MATERIALS, UNFOLDERED):
Two undated Henry David Thoreau woodlot surveys (one captioned “Plan of Lots sold on
Heywood Lot”), plus receipted bill for surveying from Thoreau to Nathan Brooks as
executor of Abel Moore’s estate,January 22, 1851.
Bills, receipts, accounts, notes, etc., 1803-1857:
Box 41, Folder 1:
1803-1814
Box 41, Folder 2:
1815-1817
Folder includes a bill from Loammi Baldwin to Abel Moore.
Box 41, Folder 3:
1818-1819
Box 41, Folder 4:
1820
Box 41, Folder 5:
1821
Box 41, Folder 6:
1822
Box 41, Folder 7:
1823
Box 41, Folder 8:
1824
Box 41, Folder 9:
1825
File includes receipt for instruction of Caroline Brooks by Harriet (Harriette) Moore
(paymentmade by Nathan Brooks), and bill for shoes from the Widow Hutchinson
of Carlisle.
Box 41, Folder 10:
1826
Folder includes bill from Alvan Pratt for the purchase of a gun by Abel Moore.
Box 41, Folder 11:
1827
Box 41, Folder 12:
1828
Materials include document listing expenses in the case of Moore v. Barrett.
Box 41, Folder 13:
1829
Box 42, Folder 1:
1830
Box 42, Folder 2:
1831
Box 42, Folder 3:
1832
Box 42, Folder 4:
1833
File includes bill from Miss Moore to Phineas Allen for the loan of a piano; also, and an
itemizedaccount from John Thoreau (Sr.) to Abel Moore, with an entry for four pencil boxes.
Box 42, Folder 5:
1834
Box 42, Folder 6:
1835
Box 42, Folder 7:
1836
Box 42, Folder 8:
1837
Folder includes Concord Ornamental Tree Society bill for eight sycamores.
Box 42, Folder 9:
1838
Box 42, Folder 10:
1839
Box 42, Folder 11:
1840
Materials include bill for purchases at “Tippecanoe auction.”
Box 42, Folder 12:
1841
File includes bill from Samuel Hoar for advice concerning a black child in prison.
Box 42, Folder 13:
1842
Box 42, Folder 14:
1843
Materials in this, the previous, and the following files document Abel Moore’s use of
immigrant Irish labor.
Folder includes several bills for services by John Garrison.
Box 43, Folder 1:
1844
File includes receipted agreement with Barney Kelly, who agrees to work “without murmur”
for Abel Moore for one month, at any job Moore may provide.
Box 43, Folder 2:
1845
Box 43, Folder 3-4:
1846
Folders includes Peter Hutchinson bill.
Box 43, Folder 5:
1847
Folder includes account of purchases of pear and apple trees (1844-1847) from Abel Moore
by“Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
Box 43, Folder 6:
1848 (including bills to the estate of Abel Moore, who died September 30, 1848)
File includes account from John Stacy for Concord Social Library expenses.
Box 43, Folder 7:
1849 (bills to Abel Moore’s estate)
Box 43, Folder 8:
1850 (bills to Abel Moore’s estate)
Box 43, Folder 9:
1851-1857 (bills to Abel Moore’s estate)
Box 43, Folder 10:
Undated items
Expenses for Moore’s house, 1835-1844:
Box 43, Folder 11:
Bills, receipts, etc. for expenditures on Abel Moore’s house (the present 343-355 Lexington
Road), 1835-1844.
Orders to Bascom & Cole of Concord, 1828-1829:
Box 43, Folder 12:
Orders placed with the Concord firm of Bascom & Cole, 1828-1829. (The orders were
charged.)
Papers related to wood business (primarily Abel Moore/John Hosmer partnership), 1827-1849:
Box 44, Folder 1:
Bills, receipts, accounts, etc., 1827-1849.
Barrett v. LeGross, 1845-1846:
Box 44, Folder 1a:
Legal papers relating to a case in which John Shepard Keyes was attorney for John LeGross
and the heirs of Timothy Prescott in a boundary line dispute, 1845-1846
Concord Steam Mill Company records, 1845-1854:
Box 44, Folders 2-3:
Records, 1845-1854
Notices from Female Employment Office (Boston), 1846-1847:
Box 44, Folder 4:
Four notices and an accompanying manuscript note, 1846-1847
Business and legal correspondence, 1813-1848:
Box 44, Folder 5:
Letters, 1813-1848
Legal documents (relating both to business and to offices held), 1818-1847:
Box 44, Folder 6:
Documents, 1818-1847, plus undated
Moore family papers (primarily financial), 1830-1842:
Box 44, Folder 7:
Papers, 1830-1842
Abel Moore estate papers, 1848-1856:
Box 44, Folders 8-9:
Probate and financial papers, including will of Abel Moore and estate inventory, 1848-1856
Box 44, Folder 10:
Recipe for cleaning and cooking tripe (undated)
Back to Series VI narrative description
Back to Series VI container list
Back to series descriptions
Top
SERIES VII. TILLY MERRICK PAPERS, 1780-1837:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
Box 45, Folder 1:
1783-1784 (unbound), South Carolina (Charleston) and North Carolina (Wilmington)
Box 45, Folder 2:
1783-1784 (in paper wrapper), South Carolina
Box 45, Folder 3:
1783-1784 (unbound), South Carolina
Box 45 (unfoldered):
1782-1786 (bound), South Carolina
Includes manuscript pages headed “A vocabulary of words not in common use.”
Box 46 (unfoldered):
1783-1787 (bound), South Carolina
Includes entries for “Negro hire.”
Most of volume consists of blank (unused) pages.
Box 47, Folder 1:
1784 (unbound), South Carolina
Ledger containing account names.
1784-1785 (unbound), South Carolina
Box 47, Folder 2:
1784-1785 (in paper wrapper), South Carolina
“Waste book.”
Includes entry (first page) beginning “This day came Mr. Harth’s Negro . . .”
Also includes entries for “Negro cloth” (see September 22, 1784 and December 8, 1784).
Box 47, Folder 3:
1784-1787 (soft leather cover), South Carolina
Includes entries for shipping tobacco to Amsterdam, and for shipping of “Negro shoes.”
The list of “book debts” on the final page includes an entry for “Horse, Negro fellow.”
Box 48 (unfoldered):
1783-1786 (bound), South Carolina
Includes entry, May 7, 1785, for “Negro Man . . . Wages paid.”
Box 48 (foldered):
1787-1791 (in paper wrapper), South Carolina
Box 49 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL; unfoldered):
1785-1786 (rebound in cloth), South Carolina
Most of volume is unused (blank).
Box 50 (foldered):
1799-1804 (unbound), Concord
Box 51 (unfoldered):
1805-1813 (bound), Concord
Opening pages contain copied letters (1790-1798) from Tilly Merrick to Jabez Upham, James Richards,
Duncan Ingraham, Samuel Maverick, and S. W. Merrick regarding estate of John Merrick.
See Box 57, Folder 5 for additional Concord account information, 1808-1810.
Box 51 (foldered):
Loose account book leaf containing entries for 1808, marked with payments into 1809
Box 52, Folder 1:
1815-1809 (bound), Concord
A recycled John Merrick account book (pages used by John Merrick cut out).
Box 52, Folder 2:
1809-1817 (bound), Concord
Box 53, Folder 1:
Undated ledger (“No. 4”; in paper wrapper), Concord
Box 53, Folder 2:
Undated ledger (unbound), Concord
Box 53, Folder 3:
1810-1811 (in paper wrapper), Concord
“Blotter No. 3.”
Inside of back of wrapper used by Mary Merrick (later Mrs. Nathan Brooks) for writing practice.
Box 53, Folder 4:
1811-1816 (unbound), Concord
Box 53, Folder 5:
1821-1825 (in paper wrapper), Concord
One page used by George M. Brooks for writing practice.
Box 54, Folder 1:
1781-1783 (unbound), Amsterdam
Box 54, Folder 2:
1783 (in heavy paper wrapper), South Carolina
Opening pages were used to record expenses against the estate of Dr. Timothy Minott
(Minot), Concord,1804-1808, and against the estate of Ebenezer Hubbard, 1807-1809.
Another section of this letter book records accounts, 1783-1784, South Carolina, and 1826,
Concord one entry for items bought of Augustus Merrick, Tilly’s son, by Isaac Percy).
Inscribed on inside of back of wrapper: “Augustus Merrick’s / Book Concord / 1828.”
Some of this volume is unused (blank).
Box 54, Folder 3:
1782-1784 (bound), South Carolina (Charleston) and North Carolina (Wilmington)
Volume contains copied letters by Augustus Merrick.
Another section of the volume (starting upside down from the end of the volume) includes
Merrick & Course & Augustus Merrick account information, 1783-1784.
Box 55 (unfoldered):
1783-1784 (bound), Amsterdam, London, Charleston
“Negro cloth” is found among the entries.
Box 55 (unfoldered):
1784 (in soft leather cover), Charleston
Several pages of accounts (“Memo of Sundry Merchse. . .,” undated) occupy opening pages.
Box 56, Folder 1:
1784-1785 (unbound), Charleston
Box 56, Folder 2:
1784-February 1785 (in paper wrapper), Charleston
Box 56, Folder 3:
June-December 1785 (in paper wrapper), Charleston
Volume includes copy of September 14, 1785 letter from Tilly Merrick to Francis January
(Janvier) in New Castle, Pennsylvania, regarding Merrick’s receipt of a “Negro man Jonathan
from Capt. Strong.” Merrick writes that he hasmade “immediate sale at vendue” and encloses
“the sale at auction.” He notes that “This Negro is certainly worth more than the sum obtain’d,
but the Risque of Negroes running away brought from your quarter is always considered full
50p% with the purchaser,” and adds “Should you send any more and can give assurances of
their qualifications & fidelity a good price for ready money can be obtain’d.”
Also includes December 2, 1785 letter from Tilly Merrick to Francis January to accompany
the above-described September 14, 1785 letter when sent to January via Captain Strong.
Box 57, Folder 1:
1785 (in paper wrapper), Charleston
Volume includes March 27, 1785 letter from Tilly Merrick to John January (Janvier) in
Philadelphia. Merrick writes,“I am happy to find on application to Capt. Strong that he has
dispos’d of the wench and to a very good price.”
Box 57, Folder 2:
1785-1786 (unbound), Charleston
Box 57, Folder 3:
1786-1787 (unbound), Charleston
One loose sheet included with letter book.
Volume includes documents relating to the estate of Tilly Merrick, Sr.
Box 57, Folder 4:
1786 (unbound), Charleston
Box 57, Folder 5:
1787-1797 (unbound), Charleston
Volume also used as Concord account book, 1808-1810 (not considered in establishing
the date span of the letter books).
Loose correspondence (original and copied letters), 1781-1836:
Foldered by individual correspondent:
Box 58, Folder 1:
Ebenezer Adams (Hanover, New Hampshire), 1810-1825
Box 58, Folder 2:
Abraham Baldwin (Augusta, Georgia), 1784-1785
Box 58, Folders 3-7:
Nathan Bond (primarily Boston), 1781-1799
Box 58, Folder 3:
1781-1782
Box 58, Folder 4:
1783-1784
Box 58, Folder 5:
1785-1789
Box 58, Folder 6:
1790-1795
Box 58, Folder 7:
1796-1799
Box 58, Folders 8-9:
Blanchard & Lowis (London), 1781-1784
Box 58, Folder 8:
1781, 1783
Box 58, Folder 9:
1784
Box 58, Folder 10:
Henry Bromfield (Paris, Bordeaux, London, Amsterdam, Boston), 1782-1785
See also Box 61, Folder 3.
Box 58, Folder 11:
P. Condy; James F. Condy (Boston), 1782-1786
Box 58, Folder 12:
Daniel, John, and William Course (Philadelphia, Savannah), 1783-1786
Box 58, Folders 13-15, and Box 59, Folders 1-2:
Isaac Course (London, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Savannah, Charleston), 1782-1820
Box 58, Folder 13:
1782-1783
Box 58, Folder 14:
1784
Box 58, Folder 15:
1785
Box 59, Folder 1:
1786
Box 59, Folder 2:
1787-1820
Box 59, Folder 2a:
Course, Jones, & Course (Savannah), 1786
Box 59, Folder 3:
Coxe & Frazier (Tench Coxe, Nalbro’/Narlbro’ Frazier; Philadelphia), 1783-1785
See also Box 59, Folder 11.
Box 59, Folder 4:
Delalande & Fynje (Amsterdam), 1784-1785
Box 59, Folder 5:
John Delanoy (Amsterdam), 1784-1786
Box 59, Folder 6:
Cornelius Dupré (Du Pré, Dupree; Wilmington, Mars Bluff, Little River, and elsewhere),
1783-1789
Box 59, Folder 7:
John Ellis & Co./Ellis & Edwards (London), 1784-1786
Box 59, Folder 8:
Timothy Fitch (Boston), 1784-1786
Box 59, Folder 9:
Kieran/Kiran Fitzpatrick (Savannah), 1786
Box 59, Folder 10:
William Foster (Boston), 1785-1788
Box 59, Folder 11:
John Frazier; Nalbro’/Narlbro’ Frazier (primarily Philadelphia), 1783-1788
See also Box 59, Folder 3.
Box 59, Folder 12:
Frederick William Geyer; Frederick William Geyer, Jr. (primarily Boston), 1782-1788
Box 59, Folder 13:
William Greenleaf (Boston), 1781-1783
Box 59, Folder 14:
John Hall (Charleston, Honey Creek, Placentia, Savannah), 1786-1788
Box 59, Folder 15:
Christopher Hart (Charleston), 1791-1796
Box 59, Folder 16:
John Harth (Charleston), 1792, 1807
Box 59a, Folders 1-4:
Duncan Ingraham; Duncan Ingraham, Jr. (Boston, Concord, Amsterdam, London,
Philadelphia, Hudson, Poughkeepsie, Medford), 1781-1797
Box 59a, Folder 1:
1781-1783
Box 59a, Folder 2:
1784-1785
Box 59a, Folder 3:
1786-1787
Box 59a, Folder 4:
1788-1797
Box 60, Folder 1:
Francis Ingraham (Charleston, Philadelphia, Concord, and elsewhere), 1785-1819
Box 60, Folder 2:
Joseph Ingraham (Philadelphia, aboard ship Mercury, Manchester), 1784-1786
Box 60, Folder 3:
Mary Ingraham (Mary Minot Merrick Ingraham, Tilly Merrick’s mother; Concord),
1782-1788
Box 60, Folder 4:
Nathaniel Ingraham (Boston, Watertown, Bergen, Paramaribo, Philadelphia,
Charleston), 1781-1811
Box 60, Folder 5:
Richard Jennys (Beaufort, Savannah), 1784-1785
Box 60, Folder 6:
Abraham Jones (Savannah), 1785 (one letter)
Box 60, Folder 6a:
Edward Jones (Wilmington), 1792 (one letter)
Box 60, Folder 6b:
Elnathan Jones (Boston, Concord), 1787
Box 60, Folder 6c:
Ephraim Jones (Watertown), 1787 (one letter)
Box 60, Folder 7:
Michael Joy/Joy & Hopkins (London, Philadelphia), 1784-1787
Box 60, Folders 8-9:
Samuel Maverick (primarily Charleston), 1798-1813
Box 60, Folder 8:
1798-1803
Box 60, Folder 9:
1804-1813
Box 60, Folders 10-11:
Augustus Merrick (Concord, Charleston, Wilmington, Boston, Camden, Long Bluff),
1781-1788
Box 60, Folder 10:
1781-1784
Box 60, Folder 11:
1785-1789
Box 60, Folders 12-13:
John Merrick (Concord, Cambridge, Boston, Hispaniola Aux Cayes, Bridgewater, and
elsewhere), 1781-1797
Box 60, Folder 12:
1781-1783
Box 60, Folder 13:
1784-1797
Box 60, Folder 14:
Stephen W. Merrick (Boston, Alexandria, Baltimore, Portland), 1782-1797
Box 60, Folder 15:
James Minot (Burlington, Concord, and elsewhere), 1805-1820
File includes a power of attorney document.
Box 60, Folder 16:
Stephen Minot (Skaneateles), 1809-1810
Box 60, Folder 17:
Timothy Minot; Timothy M. Minot (Concord, Boston), 1783-1826
Box 60, Folder 18:
Samuel & Moses Myers; estate of Samuel & Moses Myers (primarily Amsterdam),
1784-1785
Box 60, Folder 19:
Samuel Parkman (Boston), 1781-1797
Box 60, Folder 20:
William Parkman (Concord), letter damaged; corner with date torn off (one letter)
Box 61, Folder 1:
John Procter/Proctor; Lydia Procter/Proctor (Boston, Concord), 1786-1789
Box 61, Folder 2:
Ezra Ripley (Concord), 1787, 1797
Box 61, Folder 3:
Samuel Rogers/Rogers& Bromfield (London), 1783-1785
See also Box 58, Folder 10.
Box 61, Folder 4:
Cornelius Schenkhouse (Amsterdam), 1784-1798
Box 61, Folder 5:
Nathaniel Shaler/Shaler & Sebor (New York), 1784-1785
Box 61, Folder 6:
Samuel Smedley (Charleston Bar, Philadelphia, Fairfield, New London, New York),
1784-1785
Box 61, Folder 7:
John Stille/John Stille & Co. (Philadelphia), 1785
Box 61, Folder 8:
Jacques Thayer/James Thayer/Thayer & Sturgis (Charleston), 1792-1796
Box 61, Folder 9:
Williams Thayer; Williams Thayer, Jr. (primarily Providence), 1796-1819
Box 61, Folder 9a:
Thayer, Bartlett & Co., 1789-1791
Box 61, Folder 10:
Pierre Texier (Bordeaux), 1785
Box 61, Folder 11:
William Turpin (primarily Charleston), 1787-1802
See also following folder.
Box 61, Folder 12:
Thomas Wadsworth/Wadsworth & Turpin (Bush River, Milton, Belleville), 1785-1797.
File includes a December 18, 1785 letter in which Wadsworth writes that he has given his
bond for “2 likely slaves” and that he hopes Tilly Merrick will do him “the favor to
buy them for me.”
See also previous folder.
Box 61, Folder 13:
Marshall Robert Willkings (Wilmington), 1784
Box 61, Folder 14:
Yancey & A. Newman (Beaufort), 1784
Multiple correspondents, interfiled:
Box 61, Folders 15-16:
A-B, 1782-1836
Box 61, Folder 17:
C, 1782-1822
Box 61, Folder 18:
D-E, 1783-1786
Box 62, Folder 1:
F, 1784-1806
Box 62, Folders 2-3:
G-H, 1782-1798
Box 62, Folder 4:
I-J, 1784-1811
Box 62, Folders 5-6:
K-M, 1782-1825
Box 62, Folder 6 includes a July 1815 letter from Tilly Merrick, Jr., of West Springfield,
Massachusetts (not a close relative of Concord’s Tilly Merrick), seeking genealogical
information. The letter was answered on November 30, 1816; the response is filed
immediately following the inquiry.
Box 62, Folder 7:
N-P, 1783-1806
Box 62, Folder 8:
R, 1781-1820
Box 62, Folder 9:
S, 1783-1801
Box 62, Folder 10:
T, 1782-1794
Box 62, Folders 11-12:
U-W, 1782-1825
Box 62, Folder 13:
Correspondent unidentified, undated
Financial papers (bills, receipts, accounts, etc.), 1780-1837:
Box 63, Folder 1:
1780
Box 63, Folder 2:
1781
Box 63, Folders 3-4:
1782
Box 63, Folders 5-6:
1783
Box 63, Folders 7-10:
1784
Box 63, Folders 11-13:
1785
In Box 63, Folder 13: “Sales at Vendue on Acct. of Francis January, P. L. Campbell,” in which is listed the sale on September 8 of “A Negro Man Jonan.”; also, “Disbursements for Schooner Sally,” with entry for “Negro hire” (April 1).
Box 63, Folders 14-15:
1786
Files include a receipt (February 28) for the sale of a long boat by David Cruger to Merrick & Course, and a January 20, 1786 account of Tilly Merrick’s transactions with Joseph Ingraham, among the entries “To 6 days work 3 Negroes.”
Box 63, Folder 16:
1787
Box 63, Folder 17:
1788
Folder includes receipt for taxes for 1788 (“Received from Mr Merrick . . . in part of his taxes for the year 1788 [signed] John Willson”), with listings for real estate and “3 Negroes.”
Box 63, Folder 18:
1789
Folder includes account, Alexander Erwin/Arvin with Tilly Merrick, for delivery to Merrick’s plantation on Eighteen Mile Creek of several items (“small Box of Merchandize, one Keg & one Jug of Rum, & one Negro Boy nam’d Adam”).
Box 63, Folder 19:
1790
Box 63, Folder 20:
1791
File includes receipt for purchase by Levi Pierce/Pearce from John Willson of “3 Negroes and 2901 acres on 18 Mile Creek and Brushy Creek.”
Box 63, Folder 21:
1792
Box 63, Folder 22:
1793
Box 63, Folder 23:
1794
Box 63, Folder 24:
1796
Box 63, Folder 25:
1797
Box 63, Folder 26:
1798
Merrick’s expenses as a Concord merchant are reflected from this folder on.
File includes certificate of Tilly Merrick’s payment of duty on a chaise, and receipts for payments to Boston merchant Samuel May (grandfather of Abigail May Alcott—Mrs. Amos Bronson Alcott), to Concord storekeeper John White, and to Ammi White of Concord..
Box 64, Folders 1-4:
1799
Folders include receipts for payments to John White and Ammi White (one to John White receipted on White’s behalf by John Kettell).
Box 64, Folders 5-8:
1800
Files include receipt for purchases from John White, receipts for purchases from Boston merchant Beza Tucker (father of Emerson’s first wife Ellen), from the partnership of Beza and Nathaniel Tucker, and for services provided by Ammi White.
Box 64, Folders 9-13:
1801
Files include bills for purchases from John White, from Boston merchant Samuel May, and from Beza Tucker.
Box 64, Folders 14-17:
1802
Files include receipts for payments to John White (one receipted by John Kettell; one for “Tomb Stone” and “yr part Mr Ripley [sic] Tomb”), to Ammi White, to John Minott (Boston) for eight-day clock, and to Samuel May.
Box 65, Folders 1-5:
1803
Files include receipts for payments to John White, Samuel May, Beza Tucker/ Beza & Nathaniel Tucker, and Timothy M. Minot.
Box 65, Folders 6-10:
1804
Folders include receipts for purchases from John White, Beza & Nathaniel Tucker, and Samuel May.
Box 65, Folders 11-14:
1805
Files include receipts for purchases from Samuel May, Beza Tucker, and Beza & Nathaniel Tucker.
Box 65, Folders 15-18:
1806
Files include receipts for purchases from Beza & Nathaniel Tucker, James Minot, and John White (one John White receipt, dated September 26, 1806, signed for White by his then clerk John Thoreau, father of Henry David Thoreau).
Box 66, Folders 1-5:
1807
Folders include receipts for purchases from Beza & Nathaniel Tucker, John White, and Samuel May.
Box 66, Folders 6-9:
1808
Folders include receipts for purchases from Beza & Nathaniel Tucker and from Samuel May, and an account with Nathaniel Davis with Tilly Merrick as executor to the estate of Ebenezer Hubbard.
Box 66, Folders 10-14:
1809
Files include receipts for purchases from Nathaniel Munroe (clock maker, Concord), Samuel May, Beza Tucker, and Beza & Nathaniel Tucker.
Box 66, Folders 15-17, and Box 67, Folders 1-3:
1810
Folders include receipts for payments to Samuel May, Beza & Nathaniel Tucker, and Miss S. Scribner (for tuition at “Independent School, Concord”).
Box 67, Folders 4-8:
1811
Files includes receipts for purchases from Amos & Abbott Lawrence and from Kirk Boott.
Box 67, Folders 9-13:
1812
Files include receipts for payments to James Smith Colburn, Hilliard & Metcalf (for “2000 copies address to the citizens of Middlesex County”), Nathaniel Munroe, Amos Lawrence, Ammi White, Phebe Sprague (for instructing Tilly Merrick’s daughter Mary), and Beza & Nathaniel Tucker.
Box 67, Folders 14-15 and Box 68, Folders 1-3:
1813
Folders include receipts to Thomas Kettell (for seat in gallery pew), Phebe Sprague (for instructing Mary Merrick), Concord partnership Hemenway & Shattuck (successors to John White), and Beza & Nathaniel Tucker.
Box 68, Folders 4-8:
1814
Files include receipts for payments to John White, Hemenway & Shattuck, Phebe Sprague (for Mary’s tuition), and Beza & Nathaniel Tucker, and certificate of Tilly Merrick's payment of duty on a chaise.
Box 68, Folders 9-13:
1815
Folders include receipt for purchases from Kirk Boott/Kirk Boott & Son, Hemenway & Shattuck, and Beza & Nathaniel Tucker.
Box 68, Folders 14-15:
1816
Files include receipts for payments to Burr & Prichard (a Concord partnership), Mary Prescott (for instructing a son of Tilly Merrick), Joseph T. Peters (for “advertising Turnpike notice”), Daniel Shattuck, and certificate of Tilly Merrick’s payment of duty on a chaise.
Box 68, Folders 16-17:
1817
Files include receipt for payments to Daniel Shattuck and certificate of Tilly Merrick’s payment of duty on a chaise.
Box 69, Folder 1:
1818
Includes receipt for payment to Daniel Shattuck & Co.
Box 69, Folder 2:
1819
Includes receipts for purchases from Samuel Burr and from Daniel Shattuck & Co.
Box 69, Folder 3:
1820
Includes receipts for purchases from Samuel Burr and from Daniel Shattuck & Co.
Box 69, Folder 4:
1821
Includes receipted bill for services by Samuel Hoar on behalf of Tilly Merrick in the case in equity C. Gore et al. v. Daniel D. Rogers et al., and receipts for purchases from Daniel Shattuck & Co. and from Samuel Burr.
Box 69, Folder 5:
1822
Includes Concord Academy tuition bill for Tilly Merrick’s son Augustus and receipts for purchases from Daniel Shattuck & Co.
Box 69, Folder 6:
1823
Includes receipts for Concord Academy tuition for Augustus Merrick and for purchases from Samuel Burr and from Daniel Shattuck & Co.
Box 69, Folder 7:
1824
Includes receipts for purchases from Concord storekeeper Phineas How (Tilly Merrick’s successor) and for Concord Academy tuition for Augustus Merrick.
Box 69, Folder 8:
1825
Includes receipts for payment to Samuel Burr and for Concord Academy tuition for Augustus Merrick.
Box 69, Folder 9:
1826
Includes receipts for payments to Samuel Burr and Josiah Davis and for painting lessons for Augustus Merrick.
Box 69, Folder 10:
1827
Box 69, Folder 11:
1828
Includes promissory note, Tilly Merrick to Samuel Hoar, and receipt for payment to Daniel Shattuck & Co.
Box 69, Folder 12:
1829
Includes promissory note, Tilly Merrick to his son Francis J. Merrick, and receipt for payment to Daniel Shattuck & Co.
Box 69, Folder 13:
1830
Includes receipt for payment to Daniel Shattuck & Co.
Box 69, Folder 14:
1831
Box 69, Folder 15:
1832
Box 69, Folder 16:
1833
Includes promissory note to and receipted account with Phineas How, and promissory notes, Tilly Merrick to Nathan Brooks and to Francis J. Merrick.
Box 69, Folder 17:
1834
Includes promissory note, Tilly Merrick to Nathan Brooks.
Box 69, Folder 18:
1835
Includes promissory note, Tilly Merrick to Nathan Brooks, and a document regarding promissory note to Augustus Merrick.
Box 69, Folder 19:
1836
Includes promissory notes, Tilly Merrick to Augustus Merrick, to Francis J. Merrick, and to Nathan Brooks, and receipted account with Phineas How.
Box 69, Folder 20:
1836-1837
Bills and a list of claims against Tilly Merrick’s estate, and a document regarding promissory notes.
Box 69, Folder 20a:
Tilly Merrick receipt book (bound), 1797-1827
Written on front paste-down endpaper: “John Merrick 1788.”
Pages 1-3 in Latin.
Earliest entries (from page 5 on) relate to the estate of John Merrick, for which Tilly Merrick served as executor.
Box 69, Folder 21:
Date uncertain (difficult to decipher), 180—-181—?
Includes receipt for payment to John White.
Box 69, Folders 22-25:
Undated
Files include document “To Debit of Plantation on 18 Mile Creek . . . Sent by David Hamilton to Care of Thomas Hallum,” on which appears one entry for “2 Negroes.” Also includes an itemized account titled “John Minott’s Bill for a Chaise” and receipts for payments to Amos Lawrence, Samuel May, Beza & Nathaniel Tucker, and Daniel Shattuck.
Box 69, Folders 26-27:
Bills of lading, 1781-1785
Box 69, Folder 28:
Certificate of tonnage for schooner Sally, 1780; charter parties, 1784-1786; manifest, ship Mercury, undated; manuscript notice regarding deserter from ship Mercury, undated.
South Carolina business documents, 1785-1793:
Box 69, Folder 29:
Documents relating to partnership of Merrick & Course: “A List of Debts due by Merrick & Course,” undated, including entry for “Good [Goods?] Negroes & Other Property”; document relating to dissolution of partnership, 1785; document relating to the transfer of rights in a bond.
Box 69, Folder 30:
Two lists titled: “List of Articles for American Trade,” undated.
Box 69, Folder 31:
Documents, 1791-1793, relating to Asa Tourtellot’s exercising power of attorney for Tilly Merrick.
Property documents, 1786-1836:
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 8:
Lease for one year, Tilly Merrick to Augustus Merrick, 640 acres of land in South Carolina, 1786.
Box 69, Folder 32:
Ephraim Wood plan of the Calf Pasture in Concord, belonging to Tilly Merrick, 1797, and 1etter, Francis J. Merrick to Nathan Brooks, February 18, 1836, regarding the disposition of this pasture; bond, Jonathan Torrey and others to Tilly Merrick, relating to property in Plainfield, Massachusetts, 1797; lease, Tilly Merrick to Ephraim Jones, 1798, for dwelling house and property in Concord; sale at auction to Tilly Merrick of house from the estate of Elizabeth Crosby (Jonas Lee, auctioneer), 1805; receipt for payment for the preceding, 1805; lease of grist mill in “the Middle of . . . Concord near the Meeting House,” Tilly Merrick to John Trumbull, 1809; deed, Tilly Merrick to Samuel Hoar, for property in Concord, 1828; conveyance of property, Tilly Merrick to Phineas How, 1835; conveyance of property, Tilly Merrick to Phineas How and R. S. Stewart, 1836; Tilly Merrick’s insurance policy (Middlesex Mutual Life Insurance Company), 1833, with 1836 note regarding transfer of policy to Phineas How.
Box 69, Folder 33:
Power of attorney, Tilly Merrick to Augustus Merrick, 1781; power of attorney, Francis Ingraham to Tilly Merrick, 1785; power of attorney, Duncan Ingraham to Tilly Merrick, 1786; power of attorney, John Proctor to Tilly Merrick, 1787; power of attorney, Sarah Merrick, Abigail Minot, and Beulah Minot to Tilly Merrick, 1805; for transactions relating to the real estate of their father, Dr. Timothy Minot, summons and writ (Israel Sawyer), 1808; Tilly Merrick’s retailer’s wine and spirit licenses, 1813, 1815, 1816, 1817; receipt for payment by Daniel D. Rogers as trustee for Daniel Greenleaf and Thomas Dawes (paid “by virtue of a Decree of the Supreme Judicial Court—March term A.D. 1822 in the County of Suffolk,” 1822; note regarding a legal action, undated.
Union Turnpike Corporation records, 1805-1814:
Box 69, Folder 34:
Certificates for Tilly Merrick’s shares (numbered 206-215) in the Union Turnpike Corporation, 1805; receipts for payment by Merrick of the assessments on his shares, 1805-1814; treasurer’s records for the corporation, 1806-1813.
Records of the Middlesex Female Academy (an unrealized project) 1806:
Box 69, Folder 35:
Records, including subscription list, petition, act of incorporation, and other documents, 1806.
Box 69, Folder 36:
Manuscript travel journal (“Journal of a Tour by Land to Boston fro. Charleston So. Carolina, Jany. 5, 1792”) containing entries (including expenses) for a round trip between South Carolina and Boston in 1792 and for travel in 1794.
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SERIES VIII. MERRICK AND MINOT FAMILY PAPERS, 1731-1858:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
Tilly Merrick, Sr., papers, 1756-1766:
Box 70, Folder 1:
Property documents (deeds and plan) for real estate in Concord and elsewhere, 1756-1766
1764 plan identifies Concord parcels by name, including “Great Calf Pasture” and “Little Calf Pasture.”
Mary Minot Merrick Ingraham papers, 1768-1772:
Box 70, Folder 1a:
Request from Oliver Wood that Mrs. Merrick send a gallon of rum via Abijah Wheeler, March 12, 1770; Mary Merrick’s account as widow and “administratrix” of the estate of Tilly Merrick [Sr.], “deceased intestate,” 1768 (allowed 1772); promissory note, Joseph Crosby to Mary Merrick, November 20, 1772.
Augustus Merrick (the elder) papers, 1780-1790:
Box 70, Folder 1b:
B, 1782-1786
Box 70, Folder 2:
Nathan Bond, 1785-1788
Box 70, Folder 3:
C, 1783-1788
Box 70, Folder 4:
Course (Daniel Course; John Course; Course, Jones & Course), 1785-1788
Box 70, Folder 5:
D-E, 1783-1788
Box 70, Folder 6:
F-J, 1783-1788
Box 70, Folder 7:
Frazier, 1787-1788
Box 70, Folder 8:
Ingraham (Duncan; Duncan, Jr.; Joseph; Mary; Nathaniel), 1784-1788
Box 70, Folder 9:
M, 1785-1788
Box 70, Folder 10:
Merrick and Minot (John Merrick; Tilly Merrick; Timothy Martyn/Martin Minot), 1784-1788
Box 70, Folder 11:
S, 1784-1787
Box 70, Folder 12:
W, 1783-1784
Box 71, Folder 1:
Robert Willkings, 1784-1788
Box 71, Folder 2:
James Plimer Wilson, 1786-1788
Includes memorandum from Wilson, May 6, 1786, regarding purchase of Negroes for Wilson
by Augustus Merrick; some letters from Wilson refer to “Negro cloth.”
Box 71, Folder 2a:
Correspondent unnamed (two items, both undated)
Financial papers (bills, accounts, receipts, notes, shipping invoices, etc.), 1781-1789:
Box 71, Folder 3:
1781-1785
Box 71, Folders 4-5:
1786
Box 71, Folder 6:
1787
Folder includes receipt for bond from Augustus Merrick to Thomas Hallum “to give good
and sufficient Titles in fee simple” for property on Twenty Six Mile Creek in South Carolina;
“also, bill of sale to Augustus Merrick for A Negroe Man Slave named Ceasar [sic].”
Box 71, Folder 7:
1788-1789
File includes receipt for sale of “a Negroe Man nam’d Joe.”
Box 71, Folder 7a:
Receipt book, 1782-1787
Box 71, Folder 7b:
Undated
Box 71, Folder 7c:
Estate documents: two copies of will, 1780, and estate inventory/appraisal, 1790
Box 71, Folder 8:
Bills of lading, 1786-1788
Box 71, Folder 9:
Power of attorney, James Foster Condy to Augustus Merrick, 1785
Property documents, 1786-1787:
Box 71, Folder 10:
Certificate (with plan) for Augustus Merrick, for a tract of land on Carrels Branch waters
of Reedy River in South Carolina, surveyed for Abraham Hill, January 13, 1787; “Memo.
of twelve Tracts of Land” [in South Carolina] (undated).
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIAL), Folder 8:
Land grant, South Carolina to Augustus Merrick, for 300 acres on Carrel Branch waters
of the Reedy River, February 5, 1787; lease for one year, Benjamin Waller to Augustus
Merrick, for 640 acres of land in South Carolina, 1786; lease for one year, Ephraim Mitchell
(Surveyor General, South Carolina) to Augustus Merrick, for 640 acres of land in South
Carolina, 1787.
John Merrick papers, 1781-1804:
Property documents, 1781-1796:
Box 72, Folder 1:
Deeds, leases, financial documents, and other materials, 1781-1796, relating to John Merrick’s
real estate in Brookfield, Charlestown, Concord, Cumington, and Sturbridge, Massachusetts
(including pew no. 44 in the meeting house in Concord).
File includes Thomas Hale plan of farm in Brookfield, September 20, 1781.
Box 72, Folder 2:
Receipts, notes, accounts, etc., 1783-1804
The date 1804 represents the date of receipt of payment on a 1793 bill.
Box 72, Folder 3:
Estate papers, 1797, including will and inventory of wearing apparel
Justice of the Peace records, 1790-1796:
Box 72, Folder 4:
“Records of Recognizances for the payment of Debts, 1790” (printed forms sewn in paper
cover, some with manuscript additions and signature of John Merrick as a justice of the peace,
the forms filled out dating between 1790 and 1796); many of the forms in the volume remain
unused.
Stephen Wilder Merrick papers, 1783-1797:
Box 72, Folder 5:
Financial and property-related documents, 1783-1797, including material relating to the estate of Tilly Merrick, Sr. (father of Tilly, Jr., Augustus, John, and Stephen) and to the bequest to Stephen via John’s will.
Merrick family account book, 1768-1793:
Box 72, Folder 6:
Account book, 1768-1793, including entries from 1768 relating to Merrick store business in Concord, to the estates of Tilly Merrick, Sr. and of his son Augustus, and to the finances of and estate transactions by Tilly, Jr., Augustus, John, and Stephen.
Augustus Merrick (the younger) papers, 1826-1858:
Box 73, Folder 1:
1836-1851
Box 73, Folder 2:
1852-1858, plus undated
Box 73, Folder 3:
1826-1836
Box 73, Folder 4:
1837
Box 73, Folders 5-5a:
1838
Box 73, Folder 6:
1839
Box 73, Folder 7:
1840-1845
Box 73, Folder 8:
1846-1849
Box 73, Folder 9:
1850
Box 73, Folder 10:
1851
Box 73, Folders 11-12:
1852
Box 73, Folder 11 includes Hungarian Fund demand note for one dollar.
Box 74, Folders 1-2:
1853
Box 74, Folder 3:
1854
Box 74, Folder 4:
1855-1857
Box 74, Folder 5:
Undated
Box 74, Folders 6-7:
Dallinger & Welch, 1835-1846
Material relates to non-payment of debts to Augustus Merrick by Dallinger & Welch.
Folder includes a deposition, as well as bills, accounts, etc.
Box 74, Folder 8:
Augustus Merrick insolvency document, 1848
Spiritualism papers, 1853-1854, plus undated:
Box 74, Folder 9:
Folder includes business card for “Rapping and Test Medium” (Hudson Street, Boston),
letters via medium to Augustus Merrick from his deceased parents and Uncle John, notes,
and two clippings on spiritualism.
Most items undated.
Ephemera, 1851, 1853, plus undated:
Box 74, Folder 10:
Includes Complete Instructions for the Prosecution of a New, Beautiful and Lucrative
Art. The Inlaying of Mother of Pearl in Tables, Work-Boxes, Writing-Desks, Trays,
Letter-Salvers, Chess-Boards, &c. three-page printed flyer, Henry S. Freeman, 1851);
printed Fitchburg Rail Road ticket (between Boston and Concord), July 1-September 30,
Concord),1853, made out to Augustus Merrick; handbill advertisement for “Dr. Bryant’s
Chemical Catarrh Snuff,” Natick, Mass. (undated); two tickets for “Brown’s Dioptric Views,”
Amory Concord), Hall (undated); ticket to “Grand Parlor and Gallery Stereoscope,” Boston
(undated); printed label, metallic gold ink on ivory paper, (undated); engraved business card,
A. Jenkins, money and real estate broker, Boston image of globe, telescope, books, and pen,
no text (undated); metallic powder wrapped in newspaper (possibly for use in embossing
leather products; undated); small pencil with manuscript note about pencils (the two probably
unrelated); business card (undated) for Ambrose W. Coles (“copper-plate and gold
printer,” Boston).
Dr. Timothy Minot estate papers, 1731-1826:
Box 75, Folders 1-2:
Estate papers, 1731-1826, among them: 1731 and 1761 documents relating to grist mill in the center of Concord
belonging to schoolmaster Timothy Minot (father of Dr. Timothy Minot), and deed to the mill, Stephen Minot to Ammi White, John Parker, Timothy M. Minot, James Minot, Abigail Minot, and Beulah Minot, 1805; will of Dr. Timothy Minot, 1771 (copy, 1804); power of attorney documents, Susanna Parker to John Parker and Mary White to Ammi White, for transactions relating to the estate of their father Dr. Timothy Minot, 1805; plans of Dr. Timothy Minot’s real estate in Concord (undated) and Charlestown (1805; by Ephraim Wood); document (1826) relating to payment to Thomazine E. Minot (her dower) from sale of property from Dr. Timothy Minot’s estate.
Note: Items among the Timothy Minot estate papers overlap with material in Series I (Box 14, Folders 3-7 and Box 14a, Folders 1-4).
Timothy M. (Martyn/Martin) Minot papers, 1799, 1805:
Box 75, Folder 3:
Financial papers (bills, accounts, receipts, etc.) dated 1799, relating to transactions primarily with Boston merchants, and power of attorney, Hannah Minot to Timothy M. Minot, 1805. Among the names represented in the financial papers: Allen & Tucker; Thomas Andrews; William Andrews; A. W. Banter; Benjamin Barnes; Bolton & Grove; J. Boyle; William Clap; Benjamin Coates; Bellows & Cordis; Boston Glass Manufactory; Brazier & Davis; Ebenezer & John Breed; Brewer & Carter; Amos Choate; Louis Devotion; Edwards & Norwood; Fales & Keith; Benjamin W. Foster; William Frobisher; Edward Graham; Gridley & Nolen; Benjamin Hastings; Samuel Hewes; John S. Lillie; Samuel May; H. E. Odiorne; Otis & Colburn; Daniel Parker; Samuel Richards; N. B. Richardson; John Ritchie; Richard Salter, Jr.; Robert G. Shaw; Samuel Torrey; Edward Tuckerman, Jr.; Ebenezer & Ephraim Tufts; Nathaniel Waterman; John West; Davis Whitman.
James Minot papers, 1805-1826:
Box 75, Folder 4:
File includes: financial papers (among them documents relating to the estate of Dr. Timothy Minot); power of attorney, Elizabeth Minot to James Minot, 1805; power of attorney, James Minot to Tilly Merrick, 1809; legal documents relating to James Minot’s debts in New York State; and deed, James Minot to Timothy M. Minot, for property in Concord, 1825.
Stephen Minot papers, 1798-1824:
Box 75, Folder 5:
Papers consisting of: leases, Tilly Merrick to Stephen Minot, for house and shop in Concord, 1798, and Asa Brooks et al. for the Town of Concord to Stephen Minot, for a small piece of land, 1803; deed, Stephen White to Mary White et al., for grist mill in center of Concord (formerly the property of Dr. Timothy Minot), 1809; two letters, 1816 and 1817, Ammi White to Stephen Minot, regarding money received from James Minot; two Stephen Minot estate items (one an inventory).
Note: Items among the Stephen Minot papers overlap with material in Series I (Box 14, Folders 3-7 and Box 14a, Folders 1-4).
Minot family property documents, 1736-1810:
Box 75, Folder 6:
Deed (quitclaim), James Minot to Timothy Minot, for property in Concord, 1736; deed, Elizabeth Rogers (widow of James Minot) and James Barrett to Tilly Merrick, for pasture land in Concord, 1763; petition to Court of General Sessions regarding mill dam owned by Timothy Minot in center of Concord, 1744; deed, Timothy Minot to his son Dr. Timothy Minot, for property in Charlestown, 1766; agreement, Enoch Greenleaf, Francis Faulkner, Duncan Ingraham, and Ephraim Wood (a committee chosen to arrange construction in Concord of a jail for Middlesex County) with Dr. Timothy Minot, regarding right of way, 1790; lease, Tilly Merrick to Stephen Minot, for property in Concord, 1802 (2 copies); deed, Ammi White et al. to Tilly Merrick, for property in Concord, 1806; deed (quitclaim), Ammi White, Tilly Merrick, et al., to Stephen Minot, for grist mill in center of Concord, 1809 (recorded 1810).
Minot and Merrick family manuscripts, 1819, plus undated:
Box 75, Folder 7:
Loose sheet of writing practice, John Minot, 1819; unsigned, undated letter to “Mr. Moralist,” marked “For the Gazette”; undated manuscript notebook, written from one end in Latin, from the other in English (beginning “This great question which has so much of late agitated seems to depend principly [sic] on the degree of authority vested in the Supreme Congress of the United States”); undated manuscript notebook containing sections headed “Of Triangles,” “Geometrical Problems,” “Plain Trigonometry,” “Plain Sailing,” “Mercators [sic] Sailing,” “Parallel Sailing,” and “Middle Latitude Sailing” (dates 1816, 1817, 1818, and 1819 appear on later additions and insertions unrelated to manuscript, but are discounted in the description of this component of the collection).
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SERIES IX. NATHAN BROOKS AND BROOKS FAMILY PERSONAL PAPERS, 1777-1917:
For a narrative description of series contents, click here.
Nathan Brooks personal papers, 1777-1862:
Filed by correspondent:
Box 76, Folder 1:
Caroline Brooks, 1833-1837
Box 76, Folder 2:
Charles Brooks, 1811-1841
Box 76, Folder 3:
Daniel Brooks, 1803-1814
Box 76, Folders 4-5:
Franklin Brooks, 1837-1862
Box 76, Folder 5a:
George Brooks, 1841-1858
Box 76, Folder 6:
Hiram Brooks, 1837-1857
Box 76, Folder 6a:
Humphrey Brooks, 1808-1809
Box 76, Folder 6b:
Isaac Brooks, 1838
Box 76, Folder 7:
Joshua Brooks, 1811-1822
Letters are largely about business and financial matters.
Box 76, Folder 7a:
Mary Merrick Brooks, 1833, 1838, plus undated
Mrs. Brooks addresses her husband as “Ma chère Hus,” “My Dearest Hussey,” and
“Dearest Husband.” File includes one letter written from Philadelphia on May 13, 1838.
Mrs. Brooks, who was in that city with her step-daughter Caroline to attend the Antislavery
Convention of American Women, refers to her planned attendance at a speech at
Pennsylvania Hall, which was destroyed by rioters four days later.
Box 76, Folder 8:
William Brooks, 1811-1847
Box 76, Folder 8a:
William J. Brooks, 1832
Box 76, Folder 9:
John H. Hartwell, 1805-1823
Box 76, Folder 10:
Martha Keith, 1810-1841
Box 76, Folders 11-12:
E. F. Paige, 1811-1814
Correspondence filed by date (multiple correspondents):
Box 76, Folder 13:
Undated; 1801-1810
Box 76, Folder 14:
1811-1818
Box 76, Folder 15:
1820-1838
File includes letter from Samuel Hoar in Washington, February 17, 1836 (“Abolition keeps
us quite warm here in this cold season”). Also, letters from and to L. and J. Wright (Mr. and
Mrs. John Wright) in Worcester regarding Caroline Brooks’s schooling; a letter from Samuel
Ripley; and a letter to Amos Farnsworth (October 25, 1837) from Nathan Brooks, who, as
a candidate for a seat in the United States Congress, declines to spell out his opinions
regarding the slavery question.
Box 76, Folder 16:
1839-1858
Folder includes letter from Samuel Ripley about George Brooks’s schooling in Waltham,
and one from Amelia M. Edwards regarding her position as organist at the First Parish.
Political activities, 1825-1844:
Box 76, Folder 17:
Papers include letter (March 4, 1825) from Joseph H. Prince regarding Nathan Brooks’s
election as “Chairman of the County Committee for the County of Middlesex” and items
relating to his subsequent service on this committee; an engraved announcement of the
Whig celebration in Cambridge, November 1837; an engraved letter (June 10, 1840)
regarding the forthcoming Whig State Convention in Worcester; two letters (from Linus
Child and George Ashman; both dated June 15, 1840) regarding the July 4, 1840 Whig
celebration in Concord; bills and receipts kept by Brooks as treasurer of this celebration.
Some items in this folder overlap with materials in Series III.
Harvard College/University documents, 1836-1838:
Box 76, Folder 17a:
1836 circular announcing alumni dinner and two 1838 notices of meetings of the Overseers
of Harvard College
Guardianship of assets of daughter Caroline Brooks, 1823-1840:
Box 76, Folder 17b:
Documents, 1823-1840, relating to Nathan Brooks’s guardianship of his daughter
Caroline’s inheritance from her mother, Caroline Downes Brooks, and his management
of her shares in the New England Glass Company
Property documents, 1824-1855:
Box 76, Folder 17c:
Leases, deeds, etc., for property in Concord and Lincoln, 1824-1855
Box 76, Folder 17d:
“Bill of the Survey of a lot of wood for N. Brooks Esq. on Fairhaven Hill March 1828”
(quantification of oak and pine resources; Daniel Shattuck, surveyor)
Brooks family genealogy, undated:
Box 76, Folder 17e:
Two genealogical listings, containing birth, marriage, and death information from 1755 to 1831
Miscellaneous manuscript items, 1777, plus undated:
Box 76, Folder 17f:
Manuscript items (one dated 1777, the remainder undated) perhaps from Nathan Brooks’s
personal papers or Brooks family papers. It is possible that these items belong with material
elsewhere in the Nathan Brooks Papers, but there is insufficient context to determine where
they might be more accurately placed. The folder includes a commissary certificate for
Col. [Eleazer] Brooks, 1777; a beverage recipe with cider, milk, and brandy among the
ingredients; directions for the planting of potatoes; “Description of Party that left
Silver Ware . . . in Boston.
Mary Merrick Brooks correspondence, 1819-1863:
Box 76, Folder 18:
Letters to Maria Parker (cousin), 1819-1836
Box 76, Folder 19:
Letters from various correspondents, 1833-1863
File includes letters from husband Nathan (who addresses his wife as “My dear Mitten” in one letter), stepdaughter Caroline, son George, brother Augustus, and Hannah Grosvenor; also includes a letter (July 30, 1863) from William Lloyd Garrison, thanking Mrs. Brooks for her donation for “the colored suffering poor,” regretting the use of wine by a mutual acquaintance, and sharing her concern over the state of Mr. Brooks’s health.
Franklin Brooks papers, 1854-1857:
Box 76, Folder 20:
Papers, 1854-1857, relating to Franklin Brooks’s financial difficulties, including letters from James Shepherd in New York, telegrams from Harlow Roys, and summonses to appear in the Suffolk Superior Court.
Much material relating to Franklin Brooks’s finances (and Nathan Brooks’s assistance with them) is scattered through Series V.
Caroline Downes Brooks (Hoar) papers, 1817, 1837:
Box 77, Folder 1:
Two certificates of merit (in French) for studies, 1837
Box 77, Folder 1a:
Downes family property document (George Downes, Calais, Maine), 1817
George Merrick Brooks papers, 1840-1893:
Correspondence, 1860-1891, plus undated:
Box 77, Folders 2-3:
Correspondence (multiple correspondents), 1860-1891, plus undated
Notable items in the two folders include: a June 10, 1860 letter to George from John Shepard Keyes (with added note by Martha Prescott Keyes), describing events in Chicago at the 1860 Republican National Convention at which Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency; a
July 22, 1860 letter from Mrs. Brooks referring to a recent antislavery meeting at which
Lewis Hayden was present and to the discussion at antislavery meetings of “Abe Lincoln’s
character”; an August 6, 1861 letter from Mrs. Brooks reminding her son not to forget “M.
Thoreau’s will”; a letter from Sophia Thoreau, March 15, 1871, regarding her mother’s
possible entitlement to a pension as the widow of a soldier in the War of 1812; two letters
from Augustus P. Chamberlaine (February and March 1874) referring to the proposed state
prison in Concord (and to Miss Alcott’s response to it), to the extension of the Middlesex
Central Railroad line, the Hubbard Estate Improvement Company, and the David Scott
portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson presented to the new Concord Free Public Library; a
May 16, 1875 letter from Mrs. Abigail May Alcott, asking for an abatement on railroad stock
taxes; and letters from Edward Carver Damon, Henry Flagg French, Caroline Downes
Brooks Hoar, Charles Emerson Hoar, and Hapgood Wright.
Box 77, Folder 3a:
Letters to George Brooks and family while abroad, 1891
Harvard College/University documents, 1840-1844:
Box 77, Folder 4:
Harvard-related materials, 1840-1844, among them: an account book for George Brooks’s
college expenses, 1840-1843; printed information for parents and guardians of accepted
students; an 1841 letter requiring additional instruction in geometry for George; absence,
omission, and tuition reports; a printed notice (1843) to parents and guardians regarding
elective studies; and a certificate for George Brooks’s completion of requirements in the
Department of Greek (1844).
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIALS), Folder 9:
Baccalaureate diploma, 1844
Box 77, Folder 4a:
Power of attorney, George Brooks to Nathan Brooks, April 13, 1860 (allowing his father
to manage his affairs while he is away) and directive (June 30, 1860) to the treasurer of
the Fitchburg Rail Road Company to pay dividends to Nathan Brooks
Box 77, Folder 5:
Passport, 1860
Box 77, Folder 6:
Tickets, bills, receipts, etc., 1860
Hubbard Estate Improvement Company, 1872-1879:
Box 77, Folder 7:
Documents, 1872-1879, including correspondence, deeds, receipts, and accounts
Box 22 (OVERSIZED MATERIALS), Folder 9:
Undated printed plan by Albert E. Wood of Hubbard Estate Improvement Company
lots to be sold for the construction of houses (two copies, one including names of
property purchasers added in manuscript)
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Fund, 1873-1874:
Box 77, Folder 8:
Material, 1873-1874, relating to embezzlement by Louis A. Surette from the Sleepy
Hollow Cemetery Fund File includes two letters (1873) from Surette to William Munroe
(a trustee of the fund).
Box 77, Folder 9:
Document relating to the case of Jonathan B. Heald v. Abel L. Davis (George Brooks,
attorney for the plaintiff)
Multiple manuscript copies of a single item.
Box 77, Folder 10:
Bills, receipts, accounts, bills of exchange, etc., 1853-1891
Box 77, Folder 10a:
Two deeds (both 1888), one for property on Brister’s Hill in Concord (including reference
to 1857 plan by Henry David Thoreau), one for property near Walden Pond
Box 77, Folder 11:
Printed handbill [1858], headed “American Republican Ticket” (George Brooks listed
as a senate candidate from Middlesex District No. 4); undated subscription certificate
(on card stock) for Abbott’s The History of the Civil War in America (published in
2 volumes, 1863 and 1866); award notice (on card stock), Middlesex Agricultural Society,
to J. Blood, for “Best 4 Yr. Old Colt”; memorial poem to George Brooks (printed handbill
in two sizes; two copies of each) by Sherman Hoar, 1893.
Mary A. Dillingham Brooks papers, 1891-1917:
Box 77, Folder 12:
Copy of will of Sarah Frances Dillingham, 1899 (envelope in which sent postmarked July 30, 1900)
Box 77, Folder 13-14:
Correspondence, 1891-1899, plus undated
Box 77, Folder 15:
Bills and receipts, 1896-1917 (one for schooling of Mary D. Brooks, several for expenses abroad, one for work on “Cottage”), plus a business card for the American Family Home in Paris
Mary D. Brooks (Buttrick) papers, 1891, plus undated:
Box 77, Folder 16:
Two letters (one dated 1891, one undated)
Volumes from the Brooks family library, 1815-1828 (publication dates; two inscriptions 1835):
Shelved unboxed:
Dickenson, Rodolphus. Compendium of the Religious Doctrines, Religious and Moral Precepts, Historical and Descriptive Beauties of the Bible; with a Separate Moral Selection from the Apocrypha: Being a Transcript of the Received Text: Intended for the use of Families and Schools. Second edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged (Greenfield, Massachusetts: Published by the Compiler, 1815). Inscribed on title page: “G. M. Brooks.”
Josephus, Flavius. The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus; Translated by William Whiston . . . Containing Five Books of the Antiquities of the Jews. To Which Are Prefixed Three Dissertations (Bridgeport: M. Sherman, 1828). 6 volumes. Inscribed on title page of each volume: “N. Brooks.”
Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riquetti. Chefs-d’Oeuvre Oratoires de Mirabeau . . . Seconde Édition, Revue et Augmentée (Paris: Collin de Plancy et Compagnie, 1823). 2 volumes. Inscribed faintly in pencil on half title of Vol. 1 and front lining leaf of Vol. 2: “Caroline D. Brooks / March 11th 1835.”
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c2011 Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Mass.
Not to be reproduced in any form without permission of the Curator of Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library.
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Mounted 16th March 2011. rcwh.