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Account book, 1819-1827.
- Format:
- Book
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Houqua, 1769-1843.
- Perkins, Thomas Handasyd, 1764-1854.
- Levant (Sloop of war).
- North West Company.
- Banks and banking.
- Commerce.
- Commercial products.
- Finance.
- Freight and freightage.
- Insurance.
- Merchants.
- Opium.
- Prices.
- Shipping.
- Ships--Cargo.
- Silk.
- Silver.
- Tariff.
- Tea.
- China--Guangzhou.
- Massachusetts--Salem.
- New York (State)--New York.
- Genre:
- Account books
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource.
- Production:
- [Place of production not identified] : [producer not identified], 1819-1827.
- Summary:
- Merchant accounts for Perkins and Company. Inlaid with pages of a printed story entitled 'Cinderella'.
- Notes:
- AMDigital Reference: Ms. N-648 (tall)
- Collection: Thomas Handasyd Perkins Papers
- Thomas Handasyd Perkins was born in 1764 in Boston to grocery storeowner James Perkins and Elizabeth Peck. He had five sisters and two brothers, and grew up during the American Revolution.In 1779 Thomas worked in a store run by William Dall and then moved to the larger mercantile firm of W & J Shattuck. When he turned 21 he took possession of a legacy left to him by his grandfather, and used it to pay for passage from Boston to Cape Francis in St Domingo (now Cap-Haïtien in Haiti), where his elder brother James Perkins was already working as a commission agent for American merchants. In 1786 the brothers joined with a friend and founded their own commission firm, Perkins, Burling & Perkins, trading in slaves and various commodities.In 1788 Thomas married Sarah 'Sally' Elliot, daughter of a tobacconist in Boston. Thomas spent most of the first year of their marriage at Cape Francis, while Sally stayed in Boston. They had 11 children in all, four of whom died as infants. After the birth of their first child, Thomas returned to Boston and went into partnership with Sally's uncle James Magee, forming the mercantile company T H Perkins & James Magee. Thomas's younger brother Samuel went to Cape Francis to take over the business there.In 1785 China opened the port of Canton to foreigners, and in 1789 Thomas sailed there on the Astrea with a cargo of ginseng, wine and other products to exchange for tea and textiles. He later extended his route to incorporate the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest.Thomas and his brother James soon founded the highly successful company James and T H Perkins, a firm which would go through several incarnations, with various partners and figureheads (mainly from the Perkins, Forbes and Cabot families) before finally being merged with Russell and Company in 1831. The China Trade made Thomas, James, and the generations which followed them in the family business, millionaires.James died in 1822, but Thomas stayed on as semi-retired head of the firm, still contributing to the business while younger family members such as John Murray Forbes and John Perkins Cushing took on the bulk of the work. Thomas died in 1854, aged 89.
- Title from publisher's website.
- Description based on publisher metadata (viewed October 30, 2024).
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