A Warehouse Receipt from the San Francisco Bay Area

I thought I'd followup my blog about an ocean passage ticket from San Francisco with one about a Bay Area warehouse receipt. 

The War Revenue Law of 1898 placed a twenty-five cent tax on "Warehouse receipt(s) for any goods, merchandise, or property of any kind held on storage in any public or private warehouse or yard, except receipts of agricultural products deposited by the actual grower thereof in the regular course of trade for sale."

Most of the warehouse receipts I've seen have been for the storage of whiskey or other spirits in a bonded warehouse.  In fact, this Port Costa Warehouse and Dock Company receipt for the storage of wheat is the only non-alcohol related receipt I have seen.  It's an over-sized document measuring 16" x 6 1/2" including the stub to which it had been repasted.  The image below showing the receipt fully detached from the stub is a paste-up of two scans.

Port Costa Warehouse and Dock Company Storage Receipt #3577

8,372 Bags of Wheat Weighing 1,098,871 Pounds

San Francisco, October 19, 1898

As docketed on the back of the receipt, the wheat was stored in three separate warehouse locations:

•  2/468  330,783 lbs (2459 sks)
•  2/52    399,377 lbs (3063 sks)
•  1/52    368,711 lbs (2850 sks)
•          1,098,871 lbs (8372 sks)

It's written out on the front as: "Ten hundred ninety-eight thousand, eight hundred seventy-one pounds of wheat."  That's a lot of wheat, although according to one source the Port Costa Warehouses were capable of holding 60,000 tons (120,000,000 pounds) of grain.  So this deposit of wheat took up less than one percent of the warehouse's capacity.

View of Property of the Port Costa Warehouse and Dock Company

Probably from an earlier time the somewhat idyllic view above mostly shows rigged vessels rather than the steamships that likely filled the Port Costa harbor by 1898. 

All that remains today are the pilings that supported the

Port Costa Warehouse and Dock

 photo by walkersplanet from the panoramio website

  

detail of 25-cent R169 stamp

purple undated cancel reads:

G. W. McNEAR.

G. W. McNear, Sr.

G.(eoge) W(ashington) McNear was born in 1837 in Maine to seafaring stock.  By the time he died in 1909 he was known as the "Grain King of California."  

As a teen he left Maine for New Orleans and by age eighteen was the master of a sailing vessel and for six years commanded packets which plied in Mississippi Sound.  After a few years' residence in New Orleans he returned to Maine and then came to California arriving at San Francisco, August 2, 1860. 

He became a partner of his brother, John A. McNear, in a grain business in Petaluma.  By the 1870s he had established his own grain business in San Francisco and by incorporating his knowledge of both shipping and grain became the largest exporter of grain in California for more than twenty-five years. At one time he was the owner of more than one thousand acres of wheat land in various parts of the state, while his warehouses at Port Costa were capable of holding sixty thousand tons of golden grain. 

To read more of his biography from The History of San Francisco, California click here.

By the time this receipt was issued, the warehouse business was being managed by G. W. McNear, Jr. whose signature it bears.  The grain depositor is listed as Eppinger & Co., another grain export company.  The Eppinger firm later experienced financial difficulties and filed for bankruptcy in 1903.  Eventually its principals, Herman and Jacob Eppinger, were indicted for fraud.  Apparently they avoided conviction when evidence against them was destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.   

Port Costa was founded in 1879 as a landing for the railroad ferry Solano, owned and operated by the Central Pacific Railroad.  McNear took advantage of the locale by buying property and building a 20,000 foot dock and warehouse operation that allowed him to load up to 10 ships at a time literally directly from grain cars.  He also laid out and developed the town of Port Costa.  Packed with both stevedores and railroad men it must have been a wild place in the late 1800s. 

Today the wheat ships and train ferries are gone, but Port Costa remains a popular tourist destination.   Today, McNear's Port Costa headquarters building, built in 1897, is home to a trendy restaurant, the Bull Valley Roadhouse.         



Chicago Board of Trade Members: Rosenbaum Brothers

ROSENBAUM

JUL

26

1901

BROTHERS

"decipede" cancel

David Thompson scans & highlight

Memorandum of Sale for what appears to be 10 contracts of September corn @ $530 to Weare Commission Co.

The Rosenbaum Brothers included:

CBOT #2969 Joseph Rosenbaum

CBOT #6235 Emmanuel Rosenbaum

CBOT #1355 Morris Rosenbaum

From the History of Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Volume 3, 1917:

Joseph Rosenbaum.--Actively identified with the Board of Trade for more than forty years.  Joseph Rosenbaum is not only one of the veteran and time honored members of this great commercial organization but also has the distinction of being a veteran of the Civil War, in which he manifested his loyaly to the Union and the interests of the land of his adoption by according to faithful and valiant service as a soldier in an Iowa volunteer regiment.

He is one of the vigorous men of affairs given our American republic by the Empire of Germany.  Ambition, resolute purpose and fine initiative and executive ability have represented the dynamic forces that have brought large success and benignant influence to Mr. Rosenbaum, and his President of the corporation of Rosenbaum Brothers, Live Stock Commission Company, which has long controlled a large and substantial commission business, besides which he is President of the Live Stock Investment Company and the J. Rosenbaum Grain Company, all of which are important commercial organizations of the great metropolis of the west. 

It is interesting to record that in his extensive operations in the grain commission trade Mr. Rosenbaum now has as his able coadjutors his three sons, Emanuel F., who is vice-president of the Rosenbaum Grain Company; Edwin Stanton, who is treasurer of the company, and Walter Scott, who is assistant secretary of this spendid corporation, each of the sons as well as the father holding membership in the Board of Trade.

Equitable Life Assurance Society, Portland, Oregon

L. S A M U E L .

GENERAL MANAGER,

Equitable Life Assurance Society,

OREGONIAN BUILDING

Portland,                  Oregon

manuscript date:

June 30, 1899

David Thompson scans and highlight

Mr. Henry Hyde

New York-based President of the Equitable Life Assurance Society in 1898, his last year as President

From the website Funding Universe:

Equitable was started in Manhattan in 1859 when Henry Baldwin Hyde, an ambitious young cashier for the giant Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, left that firm to found his own. Life insurance ran in Hyde's family; his father was one of Mutual's top salesmen and would sell many policies for Equitable. Hyde organized his new firm as a joint-stock company, enlisting his friends to help sell shares. William Alexander, a lawyer and minor politician whom Hyde knew through their mutual association with the First Presbyterian Church of New York, was chosen as the firm's first president, with Hyde running its day-to-day affairs through the office of vice-president.


Equitable got off to a good start, selling 769 policies worth a total of more than $2.6 million in its first year. Business boomed during the Civil War, as the ravages of armed conflict impressed upon many the wisdom of insuring their lives. In 1865, the last year of the war, the firm had $27.6 million worth of coverage in force. Equitable had begun selling policies overseas almost immediately after its founding. It had an agent in Southeast Asia as early as 1860, and over the next two decades it established its presence elsewhere in the Far East, in Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Canada.

William Alexander died in 1874 and was succeeded by Henry Baldwin Hyde. Business continued to skyrocket during Hyde's active stewardship, and in 1886 Equitable surpassed Mutual to become the largest life insurance company in the world. That year, it sold $111.5 million worth of policies, giving it a total of $411.8 million of coverage in force. During those boom year, the firm could boast of having among its directors Ulysses S. Grant and financier John Jacob Astor.

Henry Hyde retired in 1898 and died the next year.

On Beyond Holcombe: Youthful Tint Manufacturing Company

On Beyond Holcombe, by Malcolm A. Goldstein, is an ongoing series on the firms that used battleship proprietary revenue stamps.

Y.  T.  M.  Co.

1899

As noted in connection with the letter X, the nether end of the alphabet (with the notable exception of W) provides few opportunities actually to match cancels and patent medicine industry companies, so the Youthful Tint Mfg Co, whose boxed “Y T Co” cancel is recognized by Mustacich and Giacomelli as appearing on every value save RB20, presents both a high and obvious target for which to aim.  While the company itself left traces of its existence, its founder, C D Hess, is much harder to isolate as an individual.  This much is known: the Youthful Tint Manufacturing Company was founded and incorporated in 1884 in Rochester, NY.  Its officers in 1903 were C D Hess, President and Superintendent; F Judson Hess, Vice-President and Secretary; and S F Hess, Treasurer and General Manager.  It required so many values of the battleship revenues for its use because it manufactured extensive lines of perfumes, cosmetics and theatrical make up, and, thus, sold goods at every price level.  Its product lines were marketed under the trade names of “Hess,” “Mrs. Hess,” “R S Soule et Cie,” and “Youthful Tint.”  Among its colorfully named products were Cherryola Rouge, Exovia Paste for Facial Enamel, and perfumes such as Heather Bells, Japonotis, Roumania Damask Rose, Tonquin Musk, and Yezzo.

Albeit the names “Hess” and “Mrs Hess,” were prominently featured in the company’s advertising and on its products, C D Hess was known and identified almost exclusively by his initials, as was Mrs C D Hess. Because of this initials only usage, a mystery arises about the identity of C D Hess and his wife.  Census records seem to indicate that the C D Hess of the Youthful Tint Mfg Co was Charles D Hess. According to these records, he was born in New York State in 1844, and, by 1880, had married Delia, for whose father he was working as a clerk in the father-in-law’s tobacco store in Rochester, NY, just four years before he struck out for himself in Rochester with his Youthful Tint Mfg Co. To flesh out a portrait of this C D Hess, one might consult Civil War records, which were a touchstone for late 19^th Century careers.  In fact, there are forty-one listings for Charles Hess enumerated on the National Park Service’s website of Civil War soldiers.  Because of the relatively short durations that army units served during the Civil War, more than one listing may belong to the same individual.  Even so, there were multiple individuals named Charles Hess who fought in the Civil War. The only individual actually identified as Charles D Hess served in the 28^th Battery, New York Volunteer Light Artillery assigned to guard New York City’s harbor.  The unit’s war casualties were 8 men who died of disease.  A more dashing C D Hess from New York State served both as a Lieutenant and later Captain in Company G of the 13^th New York Volunteer Regiment, which suffered casualties of 4 officers and 67 men killed or mortally wounded in battle as well as 29 deaths from disease.  However, that C D Hess turns out to be listed in both the National Park’s and New York State’s record of its Civil War veterans as Clarence D Hess.  His “Mrs C D Hess” rushed from their home in Dansville, NY, south of Rochester in western New York, to serve as a volunteer nurse in Washington, D C in 1861 after First Bull Run and remained there to work beside Clara Barton at nursing Union soldiers.

In fact, a “Mrs C D Hess” greeted and spoke to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington at the White House on April 14, 1865, the day of his assassination, but she is not the “Mrs C D Hess” of the Youthful Tint Mfg Co story.  This “Mrs C D Hess” was formerly Julia Grover, whose brother, Leonard Grover, was a theatrical agent in Washington D C.  According to a biographical website - which discusses at some length that this C D Hess’s first name was extremely hard to ascertain - her C D Hess was a second and different Charles D Hess. This latter Charles D Hess perhaps lived an even more flamboyant life than the former.  He was born in Cohocton, NY, a small town south of Rochester in western New York in 1838.  Like the former Charles D Hess, he also married young and went into his in-laws’ business, in this case, as an actor and singer in his brother-in-law’s theater in Washington, DC.  Performing in spite of a bad cold soon wrecked his voice, and thereafter, he switched over to theater management. Here arises a conundrum.  The biographical sketch of C D Hess, the Washington theater manager, suggests that he fought for the Union at both battles of Bull Run.  However, when examined closely that account actually borrows the war record of Clarence D Hess, a natural choice, since a soldier might naturally volunteer from his birth place and Cohocton is extremely near Dansville.  Since geography has not changed in the 150 years following the Civil War, and since the only C D Hess born in 1838 was a Clarence D Hess, and, since Clarence’s wife would have had a doubly good reason to stay in Washington after 1861 had she come from there in the first place, she, indeed, might have been the “Mrs C D Hess” known to Abraham Lincoln.

Adopting the hypothesis that the latter C D Hess was actually the aforementioned Clarence D Hess, not another Charles D Hess, unravels this part of the C D Hess puzzle relatively quickly. After his service in the Union Army, this latter C D Hess returned to Washington and resumed his activities as a theater manager now at Grover’s National Theater.  On April 14, 1865, his wife was visiting at the White House. According to a meticulous 1922 account of Lincoln’s last hours, Lincoln ran into her on his way to take a carriage ride with Mary, and apologized to her for not being able to attend her husband’s theater that evening.  The latter C D Hess shortly thereafter attained the dubious distinction of announcing on the stage of the National Theater that Abraham Lincoln had been shot at Ford’s Theater.  Tad Lincoln was sitting in the Presidential Box at the National Theater together with Grover’s son, a scene graphically portrayed in the recent film Lincoln.  This C D Hess later successfully managed the Crosby Opera House in Chicago until months before it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871, and then formed and managed touring companies of opera singers, which at one point in 1885 included Lillian Russell.  While he wrote a long account of the development of opera performance in America for a 1901 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine, after 1891 he appears to settled in Indiana with a second wife, the former Clara Walton, a leading advocate of woman’s Masonry, and remained there until his death in 1909. The confirmation of his death and burial is found in a web posting about graves located in Indiana and is found under the name Clarence D Hess.

Returning to the Hesses of the Youthful Tint Mfg Co, its C D Hess seems to have resided in Rochester, NY from its founding in 1884 until his death in 1908.  Delia Hess’s actual role in the company is unknowable.  Since most of the product that the Youthful Tint Mfg Co made was for women, some of the advertising was pitched in Mrs C D Hess’s name, featuring endorsements by women addressed directly to her.  She may have actually played some role in the management of the company, for there are other ads in local upstate New York newspapers soliciting in her name for female canvassers to conduct surveys of housewives in “every city and village of New York State,” perhaps an early effort to engage in marketing research through  customer focus groups.  The F Judson Hess listed as Vice-President seems to have been a nephew of Charles D, born in 1863, son of Solomon F Hess, the Treasurer of the Company, born in 1831.  F Judson probably ran the company after Charles D’s death.  In 1924, he is mentioned in a family history of the Hess family that traced the family’s origins in America back to Johannes Hess, born in  Hesse Cassel, Germany in 1692, who emigrated to the Mohawk Valley in eastern New York State in 1722.  His oldest son, Augustine, who served in the Revolutionary War, along with five of his own sons, is identified as the ancestor of  F Judson Hess (and presumably C D Hess as well).  F Judson Hess died in 1936.            

Perhaps both Charles D and Clarence D Hess preferred to use initials in part to trade on each other’s fame, for, ironically, ads for the one C D Hess’s theatrical make-up appeared on the same theater trade magazine pages as the listings for the opera houses that the other C D Hess’s touring  companies played in.  Perhaps they both tacitly felt they benefitted from the overlap, for, make-up endorsed by a theater manager himself must be the premium goods, and a theater manager who has a side-line in perfumes and cosmetics must be wealthy enough to keep a traveling company afloat.  Ads for theatrical products carried endorsements by such notable actors as Edwin Booth and DeWolf Hopper in the form of thank you notes addressed to C D Hess.  Then again, perhaps neither man ever noticed, and it is left to those who ferret through such proverbially “dusty” records to even notice the juxtaposition.

Chicago Board of Trade Members: J. Finley Barrel, James Barrell, and Stewart Barrell

J. Finley Barrell, of Finley Barrell & Company, was CBOT member #5224 along with James Barrell, #5787 and Stewart Barrell, #6651.  Apparently the father of Finley, James Barrell, was a veteran of the grain commission business and had retired before reentering the business with his sons in a firm named for Finley, above.  The CBOT member numbers indicate that Finley had joined earlier than his father.

F. B. & CO.

CHICAGO

Thompson scan of a cancel by Finley Barrell & Company

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Robert Pringle & Company

R. Pringle & Co.

SEP

17

1898

Chicago.

Langlois scan

Robert Pringle, commission trader, was CBOT member #5267.

New York Times, February 12, 1919

Edwin Hawley, Southern Pacific Assistant General Traffic Manager

E. HAWLEY, A. G. T. M.

FEB

16

1899

NEW YORK.

Langlois scan

***

New York Times obituary on Mr. Hawley from February 2, 1912:

EDWIN HAWLEY DEAD; WORTH $60,000,000

Financier and Railroad Magnate Dies at His Home in His 63rd Year.

DIRECTOR IN 41 COMPANIES

Roes from Office Boy to be Rival of Harriman--Joined with Goulds in Building Western Pacific.

Edwin Hawley, one of the leading railroad men and financiers of this country, died at his home, 19th East Sixtieth Street, at 4 o'clock yesterday morning.  Mr. Hawley had not been in good health for more than two months...  

Mr. Hawley was an interesting figure because his habits of life and his manners were directly opposite to those who are deemed interesting.  He was always a slow moving, careful, and somewhat ponderous figure in the life of Wall Street.  It was said of him yesterday that when he got started in any direction any person patient enough to keep on his trail would finally discover what goal he was bound for, because, once started, he never turned out of his path until he reached it...In 1909, after one of his spectacular moves in the railroad world, it was said that he had amassed a fortune of more than $20,000,000.  Yesterday, it was said that he was worth anywhere from $40,000,000 to $60,000,000.

On Beyond Holcombe: Christan Xander

This edition of On Beyond Holcombe by Malcolm A. Goldstein is a part of a continuing series on the firms that used battleship proprietary revenue stamps:

CHRISTIAN XANDER

DEC  31  1898

The number of cancellations involving the letter “X” on battleship revenues approaches zero, and the challenge of finding one to construct a philatelically based article around is daunting.  The RB27 cancelled by Christian Xander offers such an opportunity and this writer willingly embraces it, perhaps because his family name makes researching Christian Xander considerably easier than it would be to reconstruct the life of a John Smith whose life paralleled Xander’s in every detail.  Suffice to say, Xander proves an interesting subject.

The genealogical records are sufficient and reasonably straightforward enough to sketch the broad outlines of Xander’s life, providing just enough detail to tantalize.  He appears to have been born in Grossweier, a small town in the state of Baden in southwestern, Germany, quite near Strasbourg, France, on January 10, 1837 the son of an earlier Christian Xander and his wife Magdalena Zerr (Zirn), who himself was the son of an earlier Christian Xander and his wife Maria Jorger.  By 1864, he had emigrated to the District of Columbia, and on December 22^nd of that year married Caroline Blume (Blum), also a German emigree born in 1848, at the Concordia Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C.  Although the online baptismal records of the Church (corralled and posted by the Mormon Church) show a male birth (Carl Hy) in September, 1865 and a female birth (Maria Wilhelmine) in December, 1866, he listed his two children as Henry born in 1866, and Mina born in 1868, in the 1880 Census.  Perhaps he simply did not remember his children’s birth dates.

Xander listed himself as a wholesale liquor dealer in that census, but as early as 1872, he was sufficiently established as a merchant to act as an incorporator for the Boundary & Silver Springs Railway Co, a trolley system for the District of Columbia, one of a group of visionary businessmen willing to invest to build the latest transportation improvement for the city of Washington.  However, in responding to a circular letter sent out by the Senate Finance Committee to the business community inquiring about the need for change in custom duties, Xander left a portrait in his own voice of the very small manufacturing portion of his liquor business as it existed in 1893.  As background, he explained that his winery had been established in 1882 and capitalized at $18,000. For the vintage year 1893, he manufactured approximately 10,000 gallons of  “sweet reds and clarets” worth approximately $15,000. Classifying the importance of his business, he affirmed that “[w]ine is a necessity for people of sense as a nutriment and hygienically.” Responding to a series of questions aimed at ascertaining the impact of the then current economic depression, now called the Panic of 1893, on his business, Xander affirmed that he had continued to run at full capacity, had experienced no increase in competition, and had produced more goods than in 1892 “because producing exceptional quality, the demand for it is increasing.” He employed six men at $12 to $21 per week and even sniffed: “[m]y wine-making business is for quality; I care not to sell my own product wholesale - they are above trade wines in quality.” As to his view on the customs duties which were imposed only on imports, he stated, since his trade was “local,” and he feared “no import, ... [his] recommendation [was] to leave things alone.”

 

As a wholesaler, Xander gave a plug to one of his domestic champagne manufacturers in 1896, by issuing a hearty recommendation of its product as equal to the more expensive imported champagnes.  The manufacturer then printed Xander’s letter in a trade magazine with the following elaboration: “The Opinion of a Wholesale Dealer -  Christian Xander is the largest wholesale liquor dealer in the City of Washington, and enjoys the reputation of being one of the most careful and competent judges of wines in the United States.” Xander’s letter carefully explained that:

As many physicians constantly order your Imperial Sec for delicate patients it must be on their experience that your wine can conveniently take the place of the expensive French champagnes, which especially in the case of poor families, are rather inaccessible, and be the sickness ever so severe, your wine does take the place of the foreign brands with equal effect,

and effusively concluded: “You may use these, my assertions and experiences, for they testify simply to the high character of an honest wine.”  Xander was willing to carry the challenge to foreign imports even further by displaying his own quality wines at the Paris Exposition of 1900.

In 1905, Xander was regarded as a significant enough citizen to serve on one of the committees charged with organizing the Inauguration of President Theodore Roosevelt which took place on March 4^th of that year.  However, the most revealing insight into Xander’s private life may be his long support of, and membership in, the Washington Saengerbund, a society dedicated to the promotion of German music.  His son, Henry, who often appeared as the society’s pianist, went on to serve as a longtime director of the group.  Xander died apparently suddenly on March 7, 1908 at age 71 and was buried on March 10, 1908.  His widow continued to make donations of wine to one of the local charity hospitals for years after his death.

Finally A $3 Ocean Passage Ticket -- The Pacific Steam Navigation Company(PSNC)

Frank Sente is back with this post on Ocean Passage Tickets.

It's been nearly two years since we last blogged about Ocean Passage Tickets, and I'm now pleased to report that an example demonstating the $3 tax rate has surfaced.  Now examples are known for all three tax rates: $1 for tickets not exceeding $30; this $3 example for tickets costing more than $30 and not exceeding $60; and $5 for tickets costing more than $60.

Pacific Steam Navigation Company Steamer Colombia  

On March 6, 1901, J.(ohn) O.(scar) Meyerink, a commission merchant from San Francisco, booked first class passage from San Francisco to Punta Arenas on the Pacific Steam Navigation Company Steamer Colombia. 

The Pacific Steam Navigation Company Ocean Passage Ticket

San Francisco, California to Punta Arenas, Costa Rica

March 6, 1901   

At first I assumed the destination, Punta Arenas, referred to the Chilean port city by that name in the Strait of Magellan.  However as I began to research the document and the various travel endorsements penned upon the back side where the $3 stamp is located (see image below), I'm now quite certain that Meyerink's ticket instead was for Puntarenas, then a major port city on the west coast of  Costa Rica.

According to this destination and rate chart for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company as published in the Pacific Line Guide to South America, the company's routes did not extend south of Valparaiso, Chile and note that the reduced cabin rate for "Punta Arenas", Costa Rica is listed as $40, the price of this ticket.  Flip back a page in the rate chart, and you'll see that the rate previously had been $80.  Apparently the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, a British firm, was having a rate price war with the better established and more popular Pacific Mail Steamship Company, a U.S. firm, but that's another story.  I also was particularly interested to note mention of  "U.S. Revenue Stamp Additional" in the heading of the PSNC rate chart.

Reverse of PSNC Ticket
$3 R174 Commerce Issue tied by blue double ring cancel of
The P.S.N.C. Co. and C.S.A. de V.
MAR
6
1901
San Francisco

stamp and cancel detail

(double click to enlarge)
 

The stamp is damaged, creased, and has a cut cancel, but hey, it's the only example of a $3.00 ocean passage usage that's ever been reported, and only the ninth ocean passage ticket recorded from the Spanish American War tax era.
 

Five separate endorsements appear on the reverse side of the ticket.  First, a typed endorsement at right reading:

 

Stop-over between San Francisco and Corinto (Nicaragua)

good for three (3) months.

Balfour, Guthrie & Co.

Signature

Genl Agts.

 

That stop-over provision was standard practice for the firm, applicable to every ticket sold, as it appears as one of the purchase conditions stated on their rate chart.
 

NOTE:      For a map showing the location of Meyerink's various stopover

locations that are detailed in the following text, go to the end of this blog.  

 

The red boxed handstamp at the top seems to be a ship purser's marking in Spanish documenting the first leg of Meyerink's journey from San Francisco to Champerico, a Guatemalan port town. We don't have other examples to compare to, but it appear to read as follows:
 

De San Fc. (San Francisco?) a Champerico (Guatemala)

por "Colombia" illegible Z2? or 32?

Signature CONTADOR (PURSER)
 

I'm guessing it was applied to the ticket when the Steamer  Colombia arrived at Champerico and Meyerink disembarked. The handwritten endorsement to the left of the red boxed handstamp also appears to be in the purser's hand and as part of it extends across the left edge of the box, it likely was written directly after the boxed endorsement was completed.  It appears to read as follows:
 

Good for P.S.N.Co

steamer only from Champerico

to Punta Arenas. Signature

26/3/01 (March 26, 1901)
 

Nine days later it seems that Meyerink traveled further down the coast of Guatemala from Champerico to San Jose aboard the Chilean C.S.A. de V. steamer Tucapel. The relevant endorsement which appears to the right of the $3 tax stamp reads:

Champerico a San Jose

v.(ia)  Tucapel  3

9/4/901 (April 4, 1901) Signature

  

Compania Sud-Americana de Vapores

Chilean Steamer Tucapel

Built in 1900 and primarily a cargo ship, the Tucapel, laden with oranges, sank off the coast of Chile in 1911.

The final ticket endosement, to the left of the cancel tying the $3 tax stamp to the ticket, documents travel from La Union, El Salvador to Corinto, Nicaragua, both ports of call on the PSNC route chart, via the steamer Chile.  The endorsement in green ink reads:

La Union to Corinto

por "Chile" v. 4

May 3/01

Signature

How Meyerink got from San Jose, Guatemala to La Union, El Salvador is unclear.  Perhaps by land transporation, but I suspect by sea via an undocumented PSNC steamer voyage.  I'm betting that sometime between April 4, when he left for San Jose, Guatemala and May 3 when he left La Union, El Salvador there was another voyage between those locales where Meyerink showed his ticket and the ship's purser simply allowed him to embark and travel without bothering to endorse the ticket. That's conjecture on my part, but I doubt that land travel between San Jose and La Union would have been easy and it would have added to his expenses. 

So why did this ticket survive?  Generally, when one traveled they surrendered their ticket to the ship's purser upon boarding.  In this instance as Meyerink had the opportunity to make stop-overs on his voyage to Punta Arenas, he either was allowed to keep his ticket after it was properly endorsed, or it was returned to him at each point of disembarkation so that he could reboard another vessel to continue his voyage. 

While Meyerink's ticket was written for travel to Punta Arenas, Costa Rica I suspect his final destination all along was Corinto, Nicaragua.  The typed endorsement allowing for stop-overs specifically refers to Corinto, not Punta Arenas.  And if one looks carefully, it appears the handstamped word "Corinto" appears underneath "Punta Arenas" on the face of the ticket. 

       

faint "Corinto" underneath "Punta Arenas" on ticket

Again, while simply conjecture on my part, I suspect that when Meyerink bought the ticket he specified a final destination of Corinto and in the course of purchasing the ticket a helpful agent pointed out that the price of a ticket to the further port of Punta Arenas, Costa Rica was the same $40 fee as for the Nicaraguan port of Corinto.  So why not have the ticket written for Punta Arenas so that should Meyerink so decide he could have the opportunity to travel to that further destination?  Per PSNC's rate chart, tickets from San Francisco to Corinto, San Juan del Sur, and Punta Arenas all cost $40.

Thus when he disembarked in Corinto, Meyerink was allowed to keep his ticket as it still allowed him the opportunity to travel on to Punta Arenas.  I'm betting he did not travel beyond Corinto, Nicaragua.

Further, in seeking information about J. O. Meyerink, I discovered he was a stamp collector!  His name appeared in the March 1893 Secretary's Report of the American Philatelic Association (became American Philatelic Society in 1908) as a reinstated member.  APS confirmed that Meyerink originally joined in 1891 and became a stockholder in 1893 after the APA incorporated.  He apparently let his membership lapse in 1894.  That he was a collector, I'm sure gave him added incentive to keep this document , not only as a souvenir of a trip, but also because it had that $3 tax stamp on it.  Thank goodness for stamp collectors!

I found him listed in several San Francisco directories at 428 Sansome Street as a shipping and commission merchant, one of which indicated he was a fruit wholesaler.  An 1895 suit against a California salt manufacturer who delivered inferior salt through Meyerink to a Guatemalan firm and an 1894 report of dealings with a Guatemalan coffee plantation offer confirmation of his Central American business dealings and connections. 

His listing in the 1900 census indicated he was born in Germany in 1862, immigrated  in 1880, and became a U. S. citizen in 1892.  In 1884 he married Katie Meyer and they had four children between 1887 and 1895.  Apparently he died sometime before 1910 as he doesn't appear in that census, but Katie, listed as a widow, and the four children are included in the 1910 census.

Most assuredly this was a business trip to either visit existing merchant contacts or to establish new business connections.  It must have been a fancinating trip and a great time to be living in San Francisco.       

Central America Map showing the location of the

five ports referenced on Meyerink's ticket:

1. Champerico, Guatemala

2. San Jose, Guatemala

3. La Union, El Salvador

4. Corinto, Nicaragua

5. Puntarenas (Punta Arenas), Costa Rica

Anyone having knowledge of other taxed ocean passage tickets is invited to report them, with scans if possible, to 1898revenues@gmail.com.



  

Chicago Board of Trade Members: John F. Harris

J. F. HARRIS.

APR 17  1899

CHICAGO

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Luther W. Bodman

Luther W. Bodman was member #3829 of the Chicago Board of Trade.  Edward Bodman was member #6269.  Bother were commission traders on the CBOT.

Milmine, Bodman & Co.

APR  26  1899

CHICAGO

Langlois scans

Milmine, Bodman & Co.

OCT  17  XXXX

CHICAGO

Chicago Board of Trade Members: George A. Seaverns Sr. & Jr.

G.  A.  S.

JUL   29   1898

G.  A.  S.

NOV  12  1898

G.  A.  S.

APR  24  1901

The obituary for Louis Seaverns in 1991 tells us something about the work of the George A. Seaverns during the 1898 tax period.  George Sr. was a grain broker along with his son George Jr.  By 1921 George Jr. would start Seaverns & Co. with Louis:

From The Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1991:

Louis Seaverns, 103, a retired stockbroker for Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., worked for the firm until he was 94 years old. He graduated from Harvard University and was in the 1910 class with poet T.S. Eliot, columnist Walter Lippman and John Reed, subject of the movie, ``Reds.``

A longtime resident of Lake Forest, he died Sunday in Lake Bluff Health Center.

His grandfather, George A. Seaverns, had started as a grain broker in Chicago in 1853 by spending $5 to become a member of the Chicago Board of Trade. Mr. Seaverns became a broker in 1913 and he, with his father, George Jr., started the firm of Seaverns & Co. in 1921.

He was successful in the 1920s, but lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash.  In 1936, he became the treasurer of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee.  He left the brokerage business in the late 1930s and did not return to it until 1960, when he was hired by Dean Witter at age 72.

Survivors include a stepson, James Holliday; a stepdaughter, Winston Dwyer; and a brother, George A. III, 101 years old.

Services for Mr. Seaverns will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Church of the Holy Spirit, Episcopal, 400 E. Westminster Ave., Lake Forest.

New Orleans Stock Brokers and Cotton Factors: H. Abraham & Son

H. ABRAHAM & SON,

6

JUN

1901.

New Orleans.

David Thompson scan

The Abraham building at 833 Gravier Street in downtown New Orleans.  To view other Cotton Factor posts on this site, click on the Degas painting from New Orleans in the right column of this page.

On Beyond Holcombe: C. Wakefield & Company

This week, Malcolm Goldstein returns with an article on C. Wakefield & Company.

C. W. & CO.

JUL  23  1900

C. W. & CO.

May  25,  '0.

Cyrenius Wakefield, the superstar of C Wakefield & Co, never intended to be either a physician or a patent medicine manufacturer.  His ambition was to homestead a farm and raise stock, and he initially molded his life to pursue this goal.  However, circumstances, both fortunate and unfortunate, led him to ownership and control of a large and prosperous mid-western patent medicine company.  Because of the westward progression of his ancestors and his own westward journey, he may be the most truly representative Nineteenth Century pioneering figure that this study so far has chanced to discuss.

Cyrenius Wakefield

Directly descended from an ancestor who had emigrated to the colonies about 1680 from the village of Wakefield, England, (the same memorialized by the 18^th Century writer Oliver Goldsmith in his novel “The Vicar of Wakefield,” as Wakefield’s advertising later trumpeted),  Cyrenius (sometimes Sirenus) Wakefield was born in Watertown, NY in 1815, the fourth of the six children of Joseph Wakefield.  Joseph himself had moved west from Rutland, VT to develop his farm with his wife Susan, born in New Hampshire.  Young Cyrenius grew up in Watertown, farming in season and teaching school in winter.  In 1837, he journeyed by steamboat, stage and on foot (for the last two days, since there was no public conveyance) to Bloomington, IL, then on the western frontier, where he apparently believed he would find his opportunity to homestead. Exactly why he harbored this supposition about this particular location on the frontier is not recounted in the extant records.  Supporting himself for fifteen months as a school teacher, particularly to benefit in winter from the large stove (rare in the West) with which the schoolhouse was equipped, he eventually purchased land in DeWitt County south of Bloomington. Over the next several years, he cleared land in summer and taught school in winter, until he had created enough of a farmstead to begin his own family.  In 1843, he journeyed back to Watertown, to marry “an old schoolmate” to be his “housekeeper” (in the quaint words of the Nineteenth Century Illinois regional history book puff biographies of Wakefield).

One of Dr Wakefield’s neighbors summarized the pristine state of the region around Bloomington, IL in the pioneer era in the following poetic doggerel:

Great western waste of bottom land,

Flat as a pancake, rich as grease;

Where mosquitoes are as big as toads

And toads as big as geese.

Beautiful prairie, rich with grass,

Where buffaloes and snakes prevail;

The first with dreadful looking face,

The last with dreadful sounding tail.

I’d rather live on camel’s rump

And be a Yankee Doodle beggar,

Then where they never see a stump

And shake to death with fever ager.

In 1845, Cyrenius was visited by his older brother, Zera, a circumstance that ultimately altered the trajectory of both their lives.  After graduating from medical school in Cincinnati, OH, Zera had settled in southwestern Arkansas and had been practicing medicine there for ten years.  He was so favorably impressed by the farm that Cyrenius had develop in Illinois, that he decided to re-settle there himself, and moved to Bloomington.  In 1846, Zera lent Cyrenius money to start a country store, which Cyrenius managed successfully while Zera established his medical practice.  When the seasonal “miasmatic” fevers began in the region the next year, Zera applied the techniques he had developed “down South” in Arkansas, and was recognized immediately as an expert able to “break up the most severe cases here in a few hours.  His wonderful success created a great sensation, and his fame soon extended fifty miles around.  With the aid of a driver and a change of horses, he was quite unable to fill all of the demands upon him.”  To meet the needs of those patients he was unable to attend himself as demand grew, Zera prepared careful formulas for his medicines and taught Cyrenius how to compound them. This development, in turn, led Cyrenius to order uniform bottles and himself prepare directions so that growing number of patients could self administer the medicine that Cyrenius was preparing.  The Wakefield country store gradually transformed into a medical laboratory.  Advertising for Wakefield’s remedies always thereafter dated the founding of the company as 1846.  Then Zera died suddenly in 1848 of a “violent congestion of the lungs which carried him off in thirty-six hours.” Although devastated by his brother’s death, Cyrenius felt obliged to sell his farm, invest the proceeds into consolidating control of the business by buying out his brother’s bride of two months, and move to Bloomington to “obtain better postal and express facilities.” In this way, Cyrenius Wakefield created C Wakefield & Co out of the opportunity of his brother’s fortuitous re-settlement and the bitter adversity of that same brother’s death.

Once settled in Bloomington, Cyrenius operated a retail drug business in a storefront with a partner, while using the rear of the store as his manufacturing plant.  He “applied himself diligently to the study of medicine and pharmacy ... and here gained the title of Doctor.” In other words, Dr C Wakefield’s title was self conveyed.  By 1857, he gave up the retail drug trade and devoted himself entirely to the manufacture of the line of Wakefield remedies.  While there were setbacks along the way - a fire that burned his newly built house in February, 1853 (or 1854) (for which he was uninsured) and another great fire in October, 1855, that, in the course of destroying downtown Bloomington, destroyed most of his business location (for which he was under-insured) -  the business ultimately grew and prospered as he “extended his local agencies over all of the Western States.”  Although Wakefield never bothered to order and print his own private die proprietary stamps during the period of the Civil War revenue tax between 1863 and 1883, cancels on several RBs are identified with his company.

In 1868, Wakefield’s older son, Oscar, became “superintendent” of the company’s laboratory, and in 1871, Wakefield elevated his brother-in-law and Oscar to the status of partners and turned day to day control of the business over to them.  As a puff biography stated, by 1874, the Wakefield Co employed: 

forty persons in [its] medicine business (one-half of whom are female) and [its] annual sales amount to $100,000. [It] converts twenty-five tons of paper into almanacs every year for free distribution, for the purpose of advertising [its] remedies. [Its] largest sales are made where fevers are most dangerous and most common, particularly in new[ly settled] counties where [the doctor] is glad to know that his remedies are the means of doing great good. It seems now well recognized among advertisers that advertising is only of temporary benefit unless the product advertised presented to the public has intrinsic merit.  The  Doctor has made himself quite independent by the judicious advertising of good and reliable remedies.

By 1879, the company’s printing production numbers had doubled and its net worth was estimated at $150,000.  It was producing approximately “ten different remedies ...  mostly fever and ague specifics, balsams, cough-sirups [sic], [and] pills.”  These medicines were sold in “Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa ... [as well as] the Western and Southwestern states.”  To oversee his business, Dr Wakefield maintained a separate team and  wagon in six of those states and operated the business through “six thousand local agents, mostly druggists and dealers, who sell his medicine on commission.” The business employed “twenty-five to fifty hands, according to season” and kept four printing presses running to generate the necessary almanacs and other publicity. “In 1860 he got up 100,000 almanacs for his agents to circulate,” and in 1879 he sent out “1,500,000," using “fifty tons of printing paper,” and printing them in “English, German, Norwegian and Swedish.” 

In retirement, Dr Wakefield visited Atlantic City and Philadelphia in the Centennial year of 1876 and traveled with his family to Europe in the summer of 1878.  One of the regional histories summarized his character as “a man of very firm and decided principle.” Among his most notable achievements, he was a founder of the Republican Party in Bloomington, advocating for the new political party after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and participating in the first local meeting held on September 9, 1854.  In fact, a very recent book on Lincoln’s development as a politician in Illinois prior to his run for the presidency identifies Dr. Wakefield not only as a backer of Lincoln, but also a close friend.  He was also a “liberal supporter of the Free Congregational Church” in Bloomington, and, while declining to stand for formal public office, he did serve stints as a member of the Bloomington City School Board, and as the head of the local volunteer Public Committee on Distribution.  “As a citizen, he stands among the foremost of the best known of the many public-spirited men of our city, having a fame that extends outside the city, county or State, being, in fact, a man of national reputation.”  Wakefield died in 1885 in Bloomington.

In the 1890s, C Wakefield & Co was marketing a line of remedies which included   Blackberry Balsam, Cough Syrup, Golden Ointment, Wine Bitters, Liver Pills, Pain Cure, Eye Salve, Worm Destroyer, Nerve & Bone Liniment, Egyptian Liniment, Fever Specific and Egyptian Salve. Blackberry Balsam was advertised in a company guide to its remedies as a “sure cure” for diarrhea, dysentery, cholera morbus, cholera infantum, winter and mountain cholera, summer complaint, flux and relaxed conditions of the bowels.” It was described not only as “an astringent, checking the relaxation of the bowels, but act[ing] as a regulator, leaving the stomach and bowels in such a condition that nature again asserts control.”  The prescribed average dosage was one large tablespoonful, however, “when the liver is torpid and the stomach bilious, the action of the bowels may not be fully regulated for several days.”  Cough Syrup was prescribed as a cure for “colds, coughs, la grippe, typhoid and lung fever, croup, measles, whooping cough and all throat and lung affections.”  The syrup was administered at a rate of one teaspoonful every one or two hours, with relief reported sometimes as quickly as after “four doses during an afternoon and evening.”  Golden Ointment was described as the cure for all external applications where “soothing, softening or healing” was needed, such as burns, scalds, cuts and ‘frosted parts,’ as well as “corns, running sores, boils, felons, sore nipples, caked breast, scald head, chapped hands” and finally “no equal for sore throat.”  The Ointment was formed into a plaster and applied over diseased parts.  Wine Bitters gave “tone, energy and vigor to the digestive organs, renews the blood, increases the appetite, removes old long-standing headaches, acts as a gentle laxative, breaks up a costive heart, cures dyspepsia, boils and sores by thoroughly cleaning the blood, and will soon give renewed vigor to the whole physical system.”  Recommended dosage was one tablespoonful three times a day shortly before meals.  An advertising booklet lavished similar warm praise on all of the other remedies.  Liver Pills were classed as vegetable purgatives and averred to be “superior for liver and kidney troubles, costiveness [constipation], jaundice, sick-headache, gout and all bilious affections.”  The directions were to take one every night before bed, and depending upon one’s constitution possibly one in the morning as well.  The goal was to achieve “one action of the bowel daily, and slightly increase the quantity and fluency of that action.”

After the passing of its luminous central personality, C Wakefield & Co settled into the role of a stalwart supporting player among the many patent medicine manufacturers.  In 1897, it was listed as a member of the Proprietary Association of America (PAA), the patent medicine manufacturing trade association, and its principals were listed as the Estate of C Wakefield, Oscar Wakefield, Executor; General Manager Oscar Wakefield; directors Cyrenius’s younger son, Dr Homer Wakefield, and his younger daughter, Hattie Brady.  In 1902, the company, as a member of the PAA, specifically and voluntarily endorsed the Tripartite Agreement, the master retail price maintenance control plan entered into by the PAA, the National Association of Wholesale Druggists and the National Association of Retail Druggists later deemed illegal under the Sherman Act. 

C Wakefield & Co persevered through the muckraking era without its products ever drawing direct flak from the reformers (for containing either undisclosed poisons or water parading as a miracle drug).  However, its advertising of “sure” cures was included by the Federal Drug Administration in its large compilations of objectionable advertising appended as exhibits to its congressional testimony in 1912 pressing for the legislation ultimately passed as the Sherley Amendment. That law extended the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 beyond merely requiring disclosure of poisons and barring adulteration, and finally made such promises of “sure cures” also unlawful.  Yet, deprived of a dynamo at its core or even promises of “sure” cures for humans, the company continued to exist.  Since Wakefield’s remedies had been promoted equally for animals as for people, veterinary usage allowed the company to reshape its marketing policy, and by the late 1920s, Wakefield’s advertising seems to have been centered upon poultry journals, and pitched to convince farmers to use its Blackberry Balsam to cure poultry diarrhea.  Appealing to that particular audience seems to have allowed the company to carry on through the economic hard times and the era of more stringent regulation that followed.  On the Internet, one can locate an image of a box of Wakefield’s “Balsam for Diarrhea” manufactured by a C Wakefield & Co, “established in 1846,” now from a location in Levittown, NY 11756 (5 digit zip codes date from 1963, although one source concludes, perhaps on the basis of that image, that the products were being manufactured as late as the 1980s).  The final tepid word on C Wakefield & Co seems to be that it survived because its remedies did no great substantive harm to their users.