Mercantile History

The mercantile history of Connecticut since the colonial period is best studied through economic and financial statistics published by gov­ernmental agencies and trade associations. There are also histories of some of the great department stores that might prove useful. Most histo­rians studying this topic also rely heavily on city directories. The large number of works on such artisans as tinsmiths, clockmakers, carriage makers, and leatherworkers in the early republic can also provide much useful information. Those works are not included in this bibliog­raphy at all. Some elements of the state’s mercantile history are dealt with under “Transportation,” “Industry and Commerce,” “Tobacco,” “Whal­ing and Sealing,” and “Public Finance.” Below we have listed a few items dealing with commerce which might be overlooked even by a diligent searcher and which do not fit into any other category.

Decker, Robert Owen. “The New London Merchants, 1645-1909: The Rise and Decline of a Connecticut Port.” Doctoral dissertation. University of Connec­ticut, 1970. The book Decker wrote based on this dissertation is listed else­where. The dissertation and the book both focus on the whaling industry, but trade and finance also play a large part.

Jones, A. D. The Illustrated Commercial, Mechanical, Professional and Statistical Gazateer and Business Book of Connecticut, for 1857-8. New Haven: J. T. Stafford, 1857. Check the index to locate annotation of this work.

Kline, Priscilla Carrington. “New Light on the Yankee Peddler.” New England Quarterly 11(March, 1939)1:80-98. There is a good literature on this princi­pally Connecticut phenomenon, such as J. R. Dolan’s The Yankee Peddlers of Early America (New York: Bramhall House, 1964) and Richardson Wright’s Hawkers and Walkers in Early America (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1927). This article consists of excerpts from fifty-seven letters of George Rensselaer of Bristol, a farmer, later a clock manufacturer, when he was a travelling agent for Connecticut merchants. Many nice, new insights. “The character of the Yankee peddler varied as widely as the assortment of goods he carried,” con­cludes Kline. (p. 98)

McKnight, Everett James. “Peter Morton—An Early American Merchant and Importer.” Connecticut Magazine 10(1906)2:350-58. Morton (1800-46), “one of the largest importers of china, glass and earthenware in this country,” oper­ated in Hartford about 1823-40. Drawn from Morton’s account books and advertisements in the Hartford Courant.