Overview:

This collection consists of four volumes of collected and bound correspondence of merchants engaged in trade of commodities like spermaceti and whale oil, rum, and molasses in Boston, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island, dated from 1732 to 1790. The bulk of the letters are addressed to Newport merchants Aaron Lopez (1731-1782) and Christopher Champlin (1731-1805) from Boston merchants Henry Lloyd (1705-1795), John Powell, and others.

Scope and Contents: Copies of correspondence of Boston merchant Henry Lloyd relating to his business ventures and trade in the West Indies and England, dated 1765-1767. Lloyd imported, exported, and sold on commission an assortment of commodities, among them dry goods, oysters, rice, wheat, lumber, potash, whalebone and oil, mahogany, indigo, coffee, cocoa, sugar, molasses, grain, and kettles. Lloyd was also engaged in supplying the British army in Halifax, and there are a number of letters to the agent and...