The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America (44 page)

3
. Norcross,
History of the New York Swamp
, 124–25.
The New York Business Directory for 1840 and 1841
(New York, 1840), 55, confirms that Nathaniel Gilman was running Gilman, Smull & Company at 11 Ferry Street in Manhattan in 1840. The description of Nathaniel Gilman is from “Long Fight Presaged over Gilman Millions,”
NYT
, March 24, 1901. For background on the leather trade in New York, see Scoville,
Old Merchants of New York City
, 252–62, and Ellsworth, “Craft to National Industry in the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss.), 100–29.

4
.
Rode’s New York City Directory, 1851–52
, compiled in the spring of 1851, showed George F. Gilman with a hides business at 35 Spruce Street and his older brother, Nathaniel Gilman Jr., with a leather business at 72 Gold Street, which was also the location of Nathaniel Gilman & Son, leather dealers. The following year,
Rode’s
listed George’s hides business at 17 Ferry Street, just down the block from the leather business of his brother Winthrop W. Gilman at 7 Ferry Street, while the 35 Spruce Street location was occupied by Nathaniel Gilman Jr. and Nathaniel Gilman & Son. Winthrop was still at 7 Ferry, where he would remain for many years. Winthrop, born in 1808, had moved to Sullivan County, New York, in 1846, where he bought forests and built tanneries at a place that became known as Gilman’s Station. That area, in the town of Forestburgh, is said to have had thirty-nine tanneries producing 100,000 sides of leather annually in the 1850s. “A Millionaire’s Lonely Death,”
NYT
, December 8, 1885;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestburgh,_New_York
, accessed May 1, 2009.

Nathaniel senior also was known for lending money;
Trow’s New York City Directory
for 1856–57, 316, gives George Gilman’s business as “exchange,” suggesting that he may have collected debts for his father.

5
. The 1850 census has a leather dealer named Nathaniel Gillman, age thirty-five, born in Maine, living in Ward 2, Brooklyn, with his wife, two children, and three servants. On construction of the Gold Street building, see Norcross,
History of the New York Swamp
, 38; the 1857 William Perris map of New York, sheet 5, shows 98 Gold to be a frame building with a store attached. New York City tax records show that the two buildings on the site were replaced in 1858 with a five-story structure containing about seven thousand square feet of space; see
Record of Assessments, 4th Ward, 1858
, 26, and
1859
, 24, NYMA.
Trow’s
for 1859 lists George F. Gilman, hides, at 98 Gold Street and at 55 Frankfort Street, just around the corner. Many newspaper reports have the wrong date of death for Nathaniel Gilman, and some confuse him with his eldest son, also Nathaniel, who predeceased him.

6
.
Trow’s New York City Directory
for 1860–61, which was compiled prior to June 2, 1860, shows both a John S. Hartford and a George W. Gilman in “Teas” at 98 Gold Street.

7
. This version of George Hartford’s life appears in Whittemore,
Founders and Builders
, 209, which was probably checked with George H. Hartford. Avis H. Anderson,
A&P
, 9, states that George Hartford met Gilman in St. Louis and began working for him there; their common roots in central Maine would have provided a natural link. According to an alternative explanation of the Gilman-Hartford relationship, John S. Hartford is said to have known George Gilman from living in the same town in Maine and supposedly asked Gilman to allow him to store tea in the Gold Street warehouse and finance him to peddle tea across the country. John S. Hartford’s health then supposedly worsened, and George H. Hartford came from St. Louis to take over the tea wagon. “O.W.S. Biography—Initial Notes (1700 through 1874),” HFF. This story is not credible for a variety of reasons: the Hartfords and Gilman did not live in the same town in Maine; John Hartford is listed in a directory as an “agent” for Gilman’s leather business in St. Louis; and the brothers appear to have moved to New York around the same time. The 1850 census, Boston Ward 9, Suffolk, Massachusetts, roll M432_337, 192, image 39, shows a George W. Hartford, aged eighteen, and a John S. Hartford, fifteen, boarding in the house of Ignatius Sargent and his wife, Sarah. It is not certain that these are the correct Hartfords; George’s correct middle initial was
H
, not
W
, and both ages given are one year older than the brothers’ actual ages in June 1850. However, the age spread between the two is correct, both are listed as having been born in Maine, and neither appears in the 1850 census record for Maine, indicating that they were living in another state. John S. Hartford filed a passport application in Boston in January 1855, giving his age as nineteen and his birthplace as Maine. It is uncertain where he traveled.
Kennedy’s St. Louis Directory, 1859
confirms that Gilman had an office in St. Louis and that both Hartfords were working for him there in 1859 while living at 75 North Fifth Street.

8
. The Hartfords’ presence in Maine in June 1860 is confirmed in U.S. Bureau of the Census,
United States Federal Census, 1860, Augusta, Kennebec County, Maine
, M653_441, 121–22. Despite the lack of evidence that either Gilman or Hartford was selling tea or coffee in 1859, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, long since free from the Hartford family’s control, held fast to the story; in September 2008 it received a U.S. trademark for the slogan “America’s Coffee Provider Since 1859,” U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, registration number 3,522,886. Wilson’s
New York City Business Directory
for 1860 listed George F. Gilman as “Hide and Leather Dealer” and Gilman & Company as “Importers of Tea” at 98 Gold Street. Gilman is also shown as being in the leather business in an 1860 credit-agency book. See Roy J. Bullock, “The Early History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company,”
Harvard Business Review
11 (1933), 290.

9
. Gilman had sufficient wealth and income to be liable for the wartime income excise tax imposed in 1863. The carriages, watches, and piano, along with an income of $4,959, appear on the 1866 tax report, series M603, roll 82, frame 507, NARA-NY. On the increasing separation between firm owners and workers, see Wilentz,
Chants Democratic
, and Beckert,
The Monied Metropolis.

10
. Albion,
Rise of New York Port
, 189, 203, 401.
JOC
, February 4, 1859, as one example, carried seven advertisements from hide dealers, although Gilman & Company appears not to have advertised in the newspaper either before or after it began to sell tea. While packet ships had made the trip from China in less than three months since around 1840, the clippers were typically larger and could carry much more cargo. John H. Morrison,
History of New York Ship Yards
(New York, 1909), contains detailed information on many of the American-built clippers. On the new fashion for tea, see, among other articles, “Tea,”
Atlantic Monthly
, February 1858, 446; “Tea Culture in the United States,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
, November 1859, 762; “Tea for the Ladies, and Where It Comes From,”
Godey’s Lady’s Book
, May 1860, 301; “Tea-Growing in India,”
NYT
, March 23, 1862.

11
. Bullock, “Early History,” 290, and “History of the Chain Grocery Store” (Ph.D. diss.), 18–21; Albion,
Rise of New York Port
, 187, 283–84; Carhart, “New York Produce Exchange,” 214. A tea chest did not have a standard weight, and could contain anywhere from 80 to 110 pounds of tea, depending upon the origin; “half-chest” was a euphemism for a small chest, which typically held more than half the weight of a full chest. Coffee and tea auctions were held several times a week at merchants’ rooms in lower Manhattan around 1860; on February 2, 1859, for example, L. M. Hoffman & Company, auctioneer, sold 150 packages of undamaged teas arriving on the vessels
Argonaut
,
Horace
, and
Eagle Wing
, and 5,000 packets and bags of Java coffee damaged on the voyage. The auction was conducted at its premises in Hanover Square;
JOC
, February 2, 1859. Albion,
Rise of New York Port
, 283, states that coffee was auctioned at the New York Produce Exchange in the 1850s, but this could not have been true, as the exchange was organized only in 1860 and opened its building in 1861; exchange records for the 1860s make no mention of tea or coffee being traded there.

12
.
NYT
, April 23, 1858, reported poor prices at an auction sale of tea and said that the announcement of a coffee auction the following day had depressed private coffee trading. The weekly
United States Economist
, November 12, 1853, 69, said many tea merchants “have closed their places of business until such time as there is any chance when they can dispose of their goods at a paying price.” Although some of the price and quantity information was obtained from public auctions, the vast majority concerned private sales and was derived from sources that were rarely disclosed. Quotation is from D. Stoddard, Boston, to Solomon Townsend, New York, October 9, 1847, in Townsend Family Papers, box 4, N-YHS.

13
. On conditions in the Swamp during this period, see Norcross,
History of the New York Swamp
, 126; and Ezra R. Pulling, M.D., “Report of the Fourth Sanitary Inspection District,” in
Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York upon the Sanitary Condition of the City
, 2nd ed. (New York, 1866). The Gold Street location appears in
Trow’s New York City Directory, 1860–1861
, 326, the Front Street location in
Trow’s New York City Directory, 1861–1862
, 323. The 1861 date for the establishment of the Great American Tea Company was used in the company’s advertising not long after; see, for example, the notice in
New York Teacher and American Educational Monthly
5 (January 1868), back cover. The New York
Record of Assessments, 1st Ward
, shows that a Jno. Lecount, variously identified as Jona Lecount, purchased 129 Front Street in 1860 and owned it for years thereafter.

14
. Albion,
Rise of New York Port
, 266;
New York Produce Exchange, As It Was and As It Is
(New York, 1959), n.p. The ledgers of Brown Brothers & Company, one of New York’s leading financial firms during this period, offer scattered clues as to how the business functioned. On April 9, 1866, Brown Brothers disposed of damaged coffee from the ship
Maria
for the account of M. G. Crenshaw & Company, a merchant; only $5,845.29 of the total sale price of $8,212.59 ended up in the Crenshaw account. Brown Brothers & Company Records, vol. 74, 495, NYPL. Addresses of Sturges and Scrymser firms are in
Shipping and Commercial List
, January 21, 1860.

15
. Minute Book, 1–4, 33, and New York Commercial Association Membership List, 1861–63, New York Produce Exchange Papers, N-YHS. Other Produce Exchange records, such as the Complaint Book and the Visitor’s Book, offer no evidence that Gilman or anyone connected with his firm was involved with the exchange in any way through at least 1873. The Produce Exchange dealt only in physical commodities during this period; exchange trading in futures contracts had yet to develop.

16
. “News from Washington,”
NYT
, December 24, 1861; E. M. Brunn, “The New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
155 (1931), 110; Wakeman,
Lower Wall Street
, 94; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Statistical Abstract of the United States
(Washington, D.C., 1878), 129.

17
. Later in the 1860s, Great American’s advertisements stated that the company was “Established 1861.” See, for example,
New York Teacher and American Educational Monthly
5 (January 1868), back cover. Without exception, the merchants belonging to the New York Produce Exchange during the 1860s operated under the names of their owners or partners, and even the city’s largest retail merchants, such as A. T. Stewart & Company and R. H. Macy & Company, were called after their owners. The Great American stores operating in May 1863 were at 73 Catherine Street, in the Fourth Ward; 314 Second Street and 372 Grand Street, on the Lower East Side; 545 Eighth Avenue at Thirty-ninth Street; and 45 Vesey Street, a couple of doors down from the new headquarters.
New York Herald
, May 30, 1863. None of these premises was owned by Gilman; see
Record of Assessments
,
3rd Ward
, various years, NYMA. No descriptions of these shops survive. Gilman’s earliest surviving federal tax assessment, for $10, was paid at the end of 1864.

18
.
New York Herald
, May 27 and 30, 1863. On retailer advertising in this period, see Laird,
Advertising Progress
, 23–31.

19
.
AG
, November 12, 1870, acknowledged that tea “has become the controlling power in the grocery trade,” indicating its importance to retailers. Tedlow,
New and Improved
, 190;
Trenton Daily State Gazette
, July 28, 1863;
Atlantic Democrat and Cape May (N.J.) Register
, August 15, 1863;
Columbus (Ohio) Crisis
, September 16, 1863.

20
. Many sources tell Barnum’s story, not least Phineas Taylor Barnum,
The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself
(New York, 1855). A website prepared by the American Social History Project,
www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/intro.html
, provides a good introduction. On Great American’s horses, see Wakeman,
Lower Wall Street
, 94.
NYT
, June 16, 1833;
New York Sun
, October 28, 1863. Bullock, “Early History,” 292, contends that the company used little newspaper advertising during its early years; he apparently was unaware of the many advertisements that appeared starting in May 1863.