Here is a list, from our host Matt Knutzen, of the collections that we visited at the New York Public Library this Wednesday.
Brown Brothers & Company records
1825-1889 \[bulk 1830s-1870s\]
Size: 176 ledger books, 115,557 captures
http://archives.nypl.org/mss/410
176 bound, oversized volumes from the archives of the New York-based Brown Brothers & Co. and Liverpool-based Brown, Shipley & Co., two companies run by brothers from one of the nineteenth century’s most powerful Anglo-American merchant families. These volumes, primarily handwritten accounting ledgers and journals (1825-1889), document the inner workings of a major merchant firm during the formative period of American history and global capitalism. This record of accounting work provides aggregate detail to broader narratives of the histories of merchant capitalism, cotton and textiles manufacturing, slavery, economic colonialism, transportation and communication technological advances, the Civil War, gold trade, and monetary exchange.
Emigrant Savings Bank records
Size: 60 ledger books, 6,610 captures
http://emigrantcity.nypl.org/#/data/download
The Emigrant Savings Bank was established in New York City in 1850 by the Irish Emigrant Society which was founded in 1841 for the protection of immigrants from Ireland. The bank offered a safe place to keep the immigrants' money and a way to send money home to destitute relatives. The society's officers also served as officers of the bank, and the society sent remittances overseas through the agency of the bank. The official business of the society, still extant although inactive, is conducted by the bank. Collection consists of selected records of the Emigrant Savings Bank, particularly records pertaining to the Irish Emigrant Society and data about the bank's depositors and borrowers. Irish Emigrant Society records, 1841-1933, include minutes of the board of trustees and finance committee, and an account ledger. Bank records contain information about deposit accounts, real estate, buildings, and investments. Society and bank records document the social history of Irish immigrants on either side of the Atlantic, with occasional references to German and French immigrants. Deposit accounts often contain detailed personal and genealogical information about individual depositors.
Moses Taylor paper
1793-1906 \[bulk 1835-1890\]
Size: 132 linear feet (326 boxes, 1166 v., 1 oversize folder)
http://archives.nypl.org/mss/2955
Moses Taylor (1806-1882) was a little-known but representative figure in the history of the mercantile and industrial development of the United States and Cuba in the nineteenth century. Taylor was a New York City merchant in the West Indies trade (chiefly Cuba), a long-time president of City Bank of New York, an entrepreneur and manager in the railroad and mining industries, a life-long Tammany supporter, an ambivalent War Democrat with personal and business ties to the South, and an important member of August Belmont's clique of Democratic businessmen. Bulk of the papers reflects Taylor's business career over five decades and is composed of correspondence and records, 1834-1889, of the trading house of Moses Taylor and the reorganized trading and investments firm of Moses Taylor & Company; personal papers, 1837-1880; papers of Taylor's estate, 1881-1900; papers, 1852-1882, relating to the estate of Taylor's father, Jacob Bloom Taylor; letters and papers, 1860s and 1870s, of Taylor's son, Henry A.C. Taylor, and other members of his family; correspondence and papers, 1830-1893, of Taylor's business partners, Percy Pyne (who was also his lieutenant and son-in-law) and Lawrence Turnure, and his closest associates in trade and industry, Henry Augustus Coit, Charles Heckscher and Philo Shelton; correspondence and records, 1830-1899, of the many industrial companies and public utilities in which Taylor and/or his family and estate had a financial interest; letters and papers, 1863-1888, relating to the Ten Years War of 1868-1878 in Cuba, during which Taylor's firm acted as agents for the independence movement; and records, 1793-1906, of other merchants.