USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Sketches about Salem people > Part 19
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Where Richard had lived from the time of his marriage is not certain, but we know, as has been stated, that in that very year he bought the nucleus of the property that later became his, lying along the water from the head of where Union Wharf was eastward a few hundred feet and back toward Essex Street a hundred feet or so. For the next fifteen years he was adding to this property by buying out the interests of the Hasket and Pickman heirs in the adjoining property, till he must have had quite a strip. There was a dwelling house on the original property, and there I imagine he lived. Felt says 49 that the so-called Richard Derby house was built for Elias Hasket on his marriage, and as the two events occurred the same year, it seems probable, and that Richard continued in his regular house even after Elias Hasket moved to the house on Washington Street at the corner of Lynde, as in- dicated in the notes to the Derby land titles in the second part of this article.
Outside the city the great merchants showed the results of successful trade by the fact that they started to build country places. Judge Lynde built a fine house on Castle Hill, which, alas, and the hill on which it stood, have both disappeared. "King" Hooper, of Marblehead, built the Lindens in Danvers, which still stands as a tribute to good building, good archi- tecture, and good taste.
" Felt, Annals of Salem, I, 415.
4 Ibid.
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD DERBY
In 1759, Derby had bought the place on the Peabody and Danvers Road, known at that time as the Ives Farm, and had started to lay out that fine estate. Benjamin Pickman had his estate on Forest River, not far from Loring Avenue. Colonel William Browne was still building on Folly Hill the sumptuous Hall that gave the hill its name. It has always seemed to me that he was far less foolish than the men who criticized him.50
Captain Francis Goelet, who visited Salem in 1750, thus de- scribed his trip to Colonel Browne's estate:
About 3 a Clock we Sett out in his Coach for his Country Seat rideing trough a Pleasant Country and fine Rhoads we arived there at 4 a Clock the Situation is very Airy Being upon a Heigh Hill which Over Looks the Country all Round and affords a Pleasant Rural Prospect of a Fine Country with fine woods and Lawns with Brooks water running trough them you have also a Prospect of the Sea on one Part and On Another a Mountain 80 miles distant The House is Built in the Form of a Long Square, with Wings at each End and is about 80 Foot Long, in the middle is a Grand Hall Sur- rounded above by a Fine Gallery with Neat turned Bannester and the Cealing of the Hall Representing a Large doom Designed for an Assembly or Ball Room, the Gallery for the Mucisians &c. the Building has Four Doors Fronting the N. E. S. & W. Standing in the middle the Great Hall you have a Full View of the Country from the Four Dores; at the Ends of the Buildings is 2 upper and 2 lower Rooms with neat Stair Cases Leading to them, in One the Lower Rooms is his Library and Studdy well Stockd with a Noble Colec- tion of Books, the others are all unfurnish'd as yet Nor is the Build- ing yet Compleat - wants a Considerable workman Ship to Com- pleat it, so as the Design is. But Since the Loss of his first wife who was Governour Burnetts Daughter of New York by whome he has yet 2 Little Daughters Liveing, the Loss of her he took much to heart as he was doateingly fond of her Being a Charming Ladie when married.51
In Salem itself there were three churches of the Congrega- tional faith and one for the Church of England people, not to mention a Quaker meeting. The Salem Marine Society had already established itself and was compiling useful records of voyages and data about navigation. The Social Library, the predecessor through a long line of changes of the present
10 See Dow, Two Centuries of Travel in Essex County, Massachusetts, 75. 51 Ibid.
DERBY HOUSE Built on Derby Street in 1761 on the order of Richard Derby
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BY JAMES DUNCAN PHILLIPS
Salem Athenæum, was making a small collection of books available to a group of cultured and educated gentlemen. According to Captain Goelet, as mentioned above, Colonel William Browne had an extraordinary library of the best ancient and modern authors.52 The town could also boast of a book-shop kept by Samuel Orne.53 In 1768, Captain Derby persuaded Samuel Hall, an excellent printer, who had been the partner of the widow of John Franklin, brother of Ben- jamin, to remove to Salem and set up an office. He was a staunch patriot and presently started the Essex. Gazette, the first Salem newspaper.54 The Ship Tavern, run by the widow Pratt, had not yet been succeeded by Goodhue's Sun Tavern, which twenty years later was the most popular.55
Captain Goelet's full description of the town, written just after he had visited it, is so concise that it is worth quoting as a whole. He says:
Before proceed shall Give a Discription of Salem. Its a Small Sea Port Towne. Consists of abt 450 Houses, Several of which are neat Buildings, but all of wood, and Covers a Great Deal of Ground, being at a Conveniant Distance from Each Other, with fine Gardens back their Houses. the Town is Situated on a Neck of Land Nava- gable on either Side is abt 2} Miles in Lenght Including the Buildgs Back the Towne, has a main Street runs directly trough, One Curch 3 Presbiterian and One Quakers Meeting. The Situation is Very Prety &c.
This contrasts very sharply with his classic dictum on Marblehead, "It may in Short be Said its a Dirty Erregular Stinking Place."
His comment on the trade of Salem is as follows:
The Trade Consists Chiefly in the Cod Fishery, they have abt 60 or 70 Sail Schooners Employed in that Branch. Saw abt 30 Sail in the Harbr havg then abt 40 at Sea. They Cure all their Own Cod for Markett, Saw there a Vast Number Flakes Cureing, in the Har- bour Lay also two Topsail Vessels and three Sloops, on Examg into the Fishery find it a very adventags Branch.
Lest we be too proud of our later anti-slavery proclivities, it is well to remember that during the middle of the eighteenth
62 Dow, Two Centuries of Travel in Essex County, Massachusetts, 74.
53 Tapley, Salem Imprints, 171.
14 Essex Institute Historical Collections, VIII.
55 Tapley, Salem Imprints, 220.
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD DERBY
century there were always about eighty slaves owned in Salem, and that these were bought and sold and passed by will like other property, but there was certainly no general trading in slaves as merchandise for profit, at least in the city, whatever the ships may have done.
Salem was still a town very much by itself in 1760. It was off the main line of travel to the eastward, which ran from Lynn through Peabody and Danvers to Ipswich. There were no regular stages running anywhere, and if one wished to journey to Boston, he spent a couple of days about it in his own chaise over pretty rough roads. In 1761, "a large stage chair" began to run for the first time from Portsmouth to Boston through Salem. It was drawn by two horses and made the trip to Boston and return once a week. In 1766, a stage began to run from Salem to Boston, but the convey- ances to the eastward gave out because of an epidemic among the horses. But land transportation of a public character had at least begun and it steadily improved.
MR. DERBY'S LATER ACTIVITIES
By 1760, Mr. Derby must have been one of the leading citizens of Salem. All of his six children were growing up, and they must have been a source of pleasure to him, as all six de- veloped into energetic and useful members of the community. We have already seen that his eldest son Richard was a sea- captain of ability and skill. His loyalty to his father and his energy in the shipping industry added to his father's fortune and started his own. Mary, the second child, had already married Captain George Crowninshield in 1757, and he had allied himself to the family business organization as a com- mander of one of the ships. The next son, Elias Hasket, mar- ried Captain Crowninshield's sister Elizabeth in 1761, mak- ing a double family alliance. John, the third son, was a capa- ble shipmaster and did his part with the family shipping. He married Lydia, the daughter of Captain Jonathan Gard- ner. The daughter Martha alone married away from the mercantile tradition, for she married Dr. John Prince, but the youngest daughter Sarah came back to it by marrying Cap- tain John Gardner. Thus, Mr. Derby had in his own family four of the ablest sea-captains out of Salem, and he needed the
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BY JAMES DUNCAN PHILLIPS
assistance of one of his sons at home to attend to the mass of detail which went with the extensive trade and to share the responsibility. This was probably not necessary when the eldest son started out, as he took to the sea, and the place was filled when John came of age, so he went to sea also. It is not unnatural that Elias Hasket became a merchant at an earlier age than most of the Salem merchants who had to begin life at sea, but he thus had more time to consolidate his for- tune.
There are few men who have the help of five men of their own family of so much ability and energy in a single business as Richard Derby had, and it is not to be wondered at that the business succeeded. All the documents left indicate that Mr. Derby was a man of thoroughness and painstaking care- fulness. If, as has often been said, "Genius is merely the ca- pacity for taking pains," Mr. Derby was undoubtedly a man of genius.
It is difficult to get at the total amount of their transactions or just what they accomplished. Fish, molasses, and rum were undoubtedly the bulk of their transactions before the Revolution, but what they amounted to in dollars, or what percentage they made is not easy to determine, and I doubt if they had any way themselves of determining in advance their profit. I suspect that if a voyage could be completed as planned, with fair luck in markets when the ship arrived at destination, and without accident to the vessel, the profits were huge; that is, a cargo worth eight hundred dollars, after a year's trading in different ports might produce a return cargo worth eight thousand dollars, while the overhead charges for ship and crew would not exceed five hundred dollars. This is guesswork, however, and I doubt if Richard Derby himself, in 1763, could have told you just what he made on a voyage, or even what the outbound cargo cost or the inbound one sold for, although it was all invoiced and priced. If you get thirty- five hundred barrel staves for five barrels of rum made from a few hogsheads of molasses which were exchanged for a dozen quintals of codfish that were bought for some previous barrels of rum, who can tell what the barrel staves cost?
For instance, take this transaction from an attorney who had been trying to collect a bill:
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD DERBY
Halifax, Oct. 18, 1763.
This day I have received of Mr. John Blackbury's attorney £93-9-5 being the net proceeds of 8 pipes of wine sold by John Burbridge after deducting out £8-6-0 Freight and Storage of 13 pipes and commission on 2 pipes at Louisburg. I enclose to you amount William Smith's draft on Chas. W. Apthorp, Esq. for 468 Dollars 2/3 the balance.
I have charged you 2}% commission for receiving and remitting this money, which is a small consideration for the Trouble of going after it times innumerable however am glad I am able to get it for you at last & am very sorry you have been so long kept out of it but I could not obtain payment of it till now.
I shall at all times gladly render you any service for I am with respect
Yr most Hum servt Frank White 56
The question naturally arises, What did he get for eight of the thirteen pipes of wine which seem to have been there, re- gardless of the fact that he seems to have lost three of the other five?
Here is another transaction in fish and rum, and no one can tell what the fish cost or the rum brought, and this gentleman was evidently slow pay, for a little care was taken to check him up:
Gloucester, Dec. 15, 1768.
Capt. Derby Sir
You gave me incouragement that you could supply me about this time with 15 or 16 barrels of rum which if you could I shall have an opportunity to send for them ye beginning of ye week for which will pay you in ye spring to your satisfaction. I shall find you your balance next week or ye week after who am Sir
Your Humb. Servt. Nathaniel Allen
We do not know whether he got this lot, but he did get some the following year as per the following entry of December 20, 1769: 57
56 Derby Manuscripts at Essex Institute.
67 Manuscript Book of Rum Deliveries, July 6 to December 20, 1769.
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BY JAMES DUNCAN PHILLIPS
634 3/4 Gals @ 14/ Natl. Allen, Dr. to 20 Bbls. of N.E. Rum 14 Barrels @ 25 to be paid for in good Jamaica Fish in July 6 @ 27 next, at the last price, delivered in Salem free from any charge, if not paid for then to be paid cash or Jamaica Fish with interest until paid either of which said Derby shall choose.
There is a little book at the Essex Institute which shows the delivery of rum only between July 6 and December 20, 1769, and the amount delivered is astounding. The book is of thirty-two pages, and covers less than six months. I added an average page, which covers only five days, and ten hundred and sixty-eight gallons of rum were delivered to different people.
During these years a good deal of ready cash was being paid out also, according to the little receipt book previously mentioned. The month of December, 1758, shows outpay- ments of £189-15-0 plus $104, and the month of January, 1761, of £254-17-10. These payments, therefore, ran at the rate of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a year, and were evi- dently minor transactions, as the recipients frequently merely made their marks, though names like William Nichols, Dudley Woodbridge, and Henry Elkins appear also.
The reputation of the Derby house was extending abroad, and merchants who had once had their trade wanted more of it. There is, for instance, still a letter among the Derby manuscripts from a firm of merchants in Madeira, dated May 26, 1766, soliciting a cargo of fish and suggesting August or September as the best date for its arrival. Trade with New England had evidently fallen off, as they suggest an answer via New York or Philadelphia, or through their part- ners in Crown Court, Threadneedle Street, London. They enclosed a list of prices current, but that has disappeared. However, the attempt to drum up trade succeeded, for in February, 1771, they had occasion to refer the adjustment of a difference on the cargo of the schooner Patty to their agent in New York, and tendered their services for other ventures.58
18 Derby Manuscripts at Essex Institute.
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD DERBY
TROUBLES BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
From 1760 on, the trouble over the collection of the Molas- ses Tax increased steadily. The merchants tried to escape it and the crown officers tried to enforce it. In 1761, the col- lector in Salem, one Corkle, applied to the Supreme Court for writs of assistance to help him collect these duties, and the merchants of Salem and Boston employed James Otis to try this celebrated case, which originated in Salem, it should be noted. Further tightening of the enforcement of these laws took place in 1763, and in 1766 libels amounting to ten thousand pounds were filed against Salem vessels that had not fully complied, and in 1767, the new duties on paper, tea, etc., were put in force. This increased the tension still more; more men avoided the taxes, and the unpopular informer be- gan to ply his trade, till one Thomas Row, for giving informa- tion, was tarred and feathered, carted up Essex Street, and chased out of town, much to the wrath of the crown officers.59 The Derbys were strong supporters of the association for the non-importation of goods on which the unpopular duties were to be levied, and letters are still extant in which they in- structed their captains not to purchase indigo and other com- modities interdicted by this voluntary agreement which they did not intend to break.60
By 1770, Richard Derby seems to have turned over the great responsibility of the business to Elias Hasket Derby on shore and to Richard and John, George Crowninshield, and John Gardner, who married the youngest daughter Sarah in 1769. If the girls were as fascinating as their father looks in the portrait by Henry Sargent,61 with his white wig and his spyglass in his hand, it is no wonder that the Derby interest absorbed the best captains in Salem; and it must always be borne in mind that these captains were far more than mere sailing masters and navigators. They were expected to sail the ship to her alleged destination. They could go elsewhere, and frequently did, if a captain they met at sea reported bad markets at the intended destination. They were in entire charge of the cargo, with power to sell at such places and
59 Felt, Annals of Salem, II, 260-63.
60 Peabody, Merchant Venturers of Old Salem, 40.
61 See frontispiece, Essex Institute Historical Collections, XLIV.
ELIAS HASKETT DERBY 1739- 1799
From a portrait by James Frothingham in the Peabody Museum, Salem
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BY JAMES DUNCAN PHILLIPS
prices as they saw fit. They were fighting men also, and had to know how to maneuver a ship in a fight and how to make the crew serve her guns. Finally, they had to know how to careen a ship, paint her and rig her with only the limited facilities of a tropical beach. In short, they had to be navi- gators, sailors, soldiers, leaders, merchants, bankers, traders, shipwrights and shipbuilders, and I find I have omitted the professions of doctors, surgeons, lawyers, and ministers which came in more often than you would suppose. For these sim- ple duties masters received, between 1760 and 1783, from two pounds, eight shillings, to three pounds, seven shillings, a month, while able seamen got two pounds, eight shillings, to two pounds, fourteen shillings. There was not so wide a dis- tinction between brains and brawn then, but that was be- cause seamen had brains, too, and also loyalty and earnest- ness in their work. It should, of course, be added that the captains usually had an interest in the cargo and got consid- erable profit from trading in their own ventures.
If you look at the benevolent picture of Richard Derby and then at that sharp, vigorous portrait of Elias Hasket Derby, you can imagine very easily how the weight of busi- ness slipped from one pair of shoulders to the other, and with pride and relief on the part of the older man that the fabric he had constructed was in such capable hands.
In March, 1770, a few days after the Boston Massacre, Mrs. Richard Derby died after thirty-five years of married life. She had lived to see her husband rise from a skipper to the most conspicuous merchant in his city, with an ample fortune at his command. All her sons and daughters were married and had gone to homes of their own, and Richard was therefore much alone at her death, but not for long. Eighteen months later, on October 16, 1771, he married Sarah Langley, widow of Dr. Ezekiel Hersey, of Hingham. She was a most estimable lady of wealth and culture, who after his death, twelve years later, returned to Hingham and founded Derby Academy in that town.
So Richard Derby devoted himself after 1770 largely to re- ceiving the honors which were his due for a long and indus- trious life. He was a member of the General Court in the years 1769-73, and of the Governor's Council in 1774, 1775,
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD DERBY
and 1776, when the province was breaking away from the mother country, 62 and his name occurs less frequently on the papers in the business. He was the stern patriot and hater of the personal government of George III that he had always been. He resented the Townshend Acts, including the Stamp Act, as much as any other citizen, and was vigorous in his opposition.
FIRST ARMED RESISTANCE IN THE REVOLUTION
On February, 1775, occurred the first armed resistance to the British troops in America. Colonel Leslie was sent by General Gage with a regiment of British troops to Salem, to capture some cannon known to be stored there. The soldiers landed in Marblehead and marched the five miles to Salem. Marblehead's Committee of Public Safety, under Deacon Stephen Phillips, its chairman, sent warning post-haste; the churches closed at once (it was Sunday) and an excited but sullen crowd of citizens gathered in the street near the court- house, where Leslie had halted. Leslie was a cooler man than Pitcairn, but he demanded to know where the cannon were. Old Richard Derby stepped out to defy him.
"Find them if you can. They will never be surrendered," he said.
Samuel Porter, a young lawyer and a Loyalist who later lived in London, indicated the road to North Salem. Leslie marched on to the North Bridge, where the minute men had raised the draw and stood ready for eventualities on the farther bank. The situation was tense, but old Dr. Barnard, in his position of minister of the Gospel, at once assumed the rôle of peacemaker. Negotiations continued, honor was saved by lowering the bridge, and Leslie returned to Boston, having done nothing. If Leslie had used at North Bridge the historic words, "Disperse, ye rebels!" instead of yielding to the persuasions of Dr. Barnard, the first battle of the Revolu- tion would have laid a bloody trail from Salem North Bridge back to the boats in Marblehead, instead of from Concord to Charlestown, as it did two months later. It was the moderation of the British officer, not a difference in the spirit of the pro- vincial troops, that changed the situation. Here, therefore, " Hunt, Lives of American Merchants, II, 27.
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BY JAMES DUNCAN PHILLIPS
was the first organized armed resistance of the Revolution, and it was evidently not Richard Derby's fault that peace prevailed. Some of the guns belonged to him. Leslie was not turned back by gentle words. It was the companies of minute men with guns in their hands across the bridge that gave force to Dr. Barnard's arguments. The Danvers minute men, six of whom were killed in the retreat from Con- cord in April, came marching down to North Bridge just as Leslie turned back.
This incident probably strengthened the orders which Gage issued to the Concord expedition. It was not to his ad- vantage to parley while the province organized and armed itself. He would better have pushed the matter at Salem.
SALEM SENDS THE NEWS OF CONCORD AND LEXINGTON TO ENGLAND
But Salem also had its part to do in connection with the fight at Lexington and Concord. When the Provincial Con- gress met at Concord on Saturday, April 22, three days after the Lexington fight, a committee of eight, headed by Elbridge Gerry, of Marblehead, was appointed "to take depositions in perpetuam from which a full account of the transactions of the troops under General Gage in their route to and from Con- cord, etc. on Wednesday last may be collected to be sent to England by the first ship from Salem."
This was no inconsiderable task, but, as we know from the controversies over who started first in the Great War, the human mind attaches vast importance to the question of who starts a fight. On Tuesday afternoon a letter came from Salem urging the utmost haste,63 and was forwarded to the committee then at work in Lexington. It is not stated who wrote this letter, but the very next day it was "ordered, That the copies of the order of the Hon. Richard Derby, Esq. for fitting out his vessel for a Packet be taken and authenticated by the President pro tempore and Ordered that the Hon. Richard Derby, Esq.'s orders to the treasury be also authen- ticated by the President pro tempore." 64
" Force, American Archives, 4th Series, II, 767.
" Ibid., II, 769.
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD DERBY
On Thursday, April 27, the Committee of Public Safety 65 resolved "that Captain Derby be directed and he hereby is directed to make for Dublin or any good port in Ireland and from thence to cross to Scotland or England and hasten to London. This direction is so that he may escape all cruisers that may be in the chops of the channel to stop the communi- cating of the Provincial Intelligence to the agent."
John Derby, who sailed in the ship, was a son of our Richard, and the papers he carried are in the archives of the Provincial Congress in full 66 in the shape of a letter, accompanying a declaration supported by affidavits, to Benjamin Franklin, the colony agent in London, as evidently they did not know he was then on the water en route to America. After the usual compliments and a request to supply Captain Derby on the credit of the colony, the letter continues:
But we most ardently wish that the several papers herewith en- closed may be immediately printed and dispersed through every town in England and especially communicated to the Lord Mayor, aldermen and councilmen of the city of London that they may take such order thereon as they think proper and we are confident that your fidelity will make such improvement of them as shall convince all who are not determined to be in everlasting blindness, that it is the united efforts of both Englands that must save either. But that whatever price our brethren in the one may be pleased to put on their constitutional liberties, we are authorized to assure you that the inhabitants of the other with the greatest unanimity are inflexibly resolved to sell theirs only at the price of their lives.
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