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Trading in Scrabbletown

Chapter 32: TRADING WITH THE WARWICK COTTON MANUFACTURING COMPANY
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About This Book

A sealed barrel yielded some four thousand papers belonging to a Somerset trader, including shop ledgers, letters, account books, lottery tickets, and legal records from the 1810s through 1832. The documents outline everyday commerce in a small coastal suburb, family and business correspondence, accounts of credit and debt, and responses to maritime disruptions and the War of 1812. They reveal local practices such as lotteries and debtor imprisonment, widespread literacy among residents, and the interconnected social and economic networks that sustained rural mercantile life.

TRADING WITH THE WARWICK COTTON MANUFACTURING COMPANY

In 1820, the partners added another venture. They made connections with the Warwick Cotton Manufacturing Company. This was a yarn mill, situated of course in Warwick, and equally of course managed by a man named Greene.

The Warwick yarn was handled as the other yarn had been handled. There was a written contract. And lucky for Brayton and Bowers that there was. For in 1821, the partners cut their losses and stopped trading with the Warwick Cotton Mill. They received a letter from the Manager.

“I am somewhat disappointed in your discontinuing the bargain so soon” wrote Mr. Greene to Mr. Brayton. “However, you had the priveledge of quitting when you thought proper.”

An unusually large part of the Warwick yarn went into the homes of the weavers of Troy. This can be seen in the Warwick Yarn Book.

From Pawtucket, in October, 1821, Brayton and Bowers received a letter offering more yarn to weave. The letter was signed by J. H. Gridley. I do not know what Corporation Mr. Gridley represented.

——“Wish you to write by the first mail, as we have written to others who no doubt will do it for us——but we should prefer your having it. We shall have a great deal of yarn to put out for a year—”

I insert this bit of apparent futility that you may see that Israel was “approached” by even more business concerns than he could trade with. He certainly branched out. But not, I think, into Pawtucket. There is nothing more about Mr. Gridley in the barrel.