Elias Smith February 12 1906 Ordered To Be Printed PDF Download

Letter book containing copies of correspondence of merchant Elias Smith (1736-1820), of Montréal, Québec, dated 1799-1800. The volume includes letters to his eldest son and business partner, David Smith, in New York City, as well as merchants in Liverpool and London, England, concerning shipment of cargo and prices current. Elias Smith exported fish and imported rum, crockery, Irish linen, Russian sheeting, German scythes, and looking glasses. Other topics include a condemned American ship he possessed, the Catharine, and ensuring she was not reclaimed by her owners, and his grist mill at Hope Mills (now Port Hope), Ontario, where he manufactured flour that he sold in Canada. Elias Smith also referred to an English law that had been passed restricting the slave trade; and a citizens' petition he co-signed in April 1800 to the Assembly of Lower Canada requesting clarification of masters' rights after one of his slaves escaped. The volume contains some correspondence and copies of public notices from the 1830s and 1840s written by James Fox, the husband of Elias Smith's granddaughter, Catharine. Tipped in to the front of the book is a letter to Baker Library from the donor, E.A.S. Clarke, a descendant of Elias Smith.