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Bolton Ogden & Co.: A Case Study in Anglo-American Trade, 1790–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

John R. Killick
John R. Killick
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Economic History, University of Leeds
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Abstract

This study of the history of a large group of merchants directing Anglo-American commerce from the end of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century analyzes major long-run changes in the organization and functions of mercantile institutions in that important period.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , Winter 1974 , pp. 501 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1974

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References

1 This study was made possible by a generous fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. The author would also like to acknowledge the extensive assistance he received from the Editor and his main editorial reader during the reorganization of this paper, and its preparation for publication.

Bolton Ogden & Co. was the name of the Liverpool house. The New York house was variously called Ferguson Day & Co., Ogden Day & Co., and Ogden Ferguson & Co., but henceforth the current title will always be given.

2 Buck, Norman S., The Development of the Organisation of Anglo-American Trade, 1800–1850 (New Haven, Conn., 1925)Google Scholar; Thistlethwaite, Frank, The Anglo-American Connection in the Early Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hidy, Ralph W., The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance (Cambridge, Mass., 1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perkins, Edwin J., “Financing Antebellum Importers: The Role of Brown Bros. & Co. in Baltimore,” Business History Review, XLV (Winter, 1971), 421–451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Killick, John R., “Risk, Specialisation and Profit in the Mercantile Sector of the Nineteenth Century Cotton Trade: Alexander Brown and Sons, 1820–80,” Business History, XVI (1974), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Henceforth NYHS and NYGS. The records of Ferguson Day & Co. and successor firms (which are uncatalogued) comprise about 120 feet of shelf space. Accordingly, this article is based on a sampling of the records that would well repay extended study. I am grateful to Professor Morton Rothstein for bringing them to my notice and to the NYHS and NYGS for permission to use them.

4 Most of the family information was in NYGS and had been partially organised by Miss Helen Ferguson, a descendant of Samuel Ferguson. I am grateful to Mrs. Sally Hill for research in the Liverpool libraries on the Boltons. Henceforth, initials will often be used instead of the full names of the principals in footnote references.

5 This partnership history is inevitably simplified. Commercial crises frequently led to a new arrangement of partnerships within the same group, but the group itself was fairly stable.

6 Information was provided by a huge and regular correspondence with firms all over the United States and Europe. Bolton Ogden & Co.'s own excellent printed circulars demonstrate their commercial knowledge and experience, but they preserved their most valuable comments for private letters.

7 John Ferguson, Robert L. Bolton, and Jonathan Ogden, Jr. were readily accepted into the partnership, but the credentials of a new agent in Mobile in 1835 were examined very carefully. See J. D. to J. F., 1834–1835, NYHS. The partnership agreement itself, renewed every five years, reflected a judicious assessment of each partner's contribution to the firm. See J. D. to J. F., April 17, 1833, NYHS.

8 Heaton, Herbert, “Yorkshire Cloth Traders in the United States, 1770–1840,” Thoresby Society Publications, misc. for 1941, XXXVII, part 3.Google Scholar

9 Contract dated 1797, available in the NYGS. Griffith was a cousin from Leeds to whose house in Liverpool Ferguson was sent for his initial training in 1787. Business relations were maintained into the 1830s. Peel, Yates & Co. was the firm of Sir Robert Peel. The Rhodes and Rawsons were friends and relations in Halifax.

10 Account available in NYGS.

11 S. F., “Notes on a voyage from Philadelphia to Bombay,” 1795 and letters, S. F. to R. E. G. from Canton, NYGS.

12 J. D. (London) to S. F. (at Rhodes & Briggs, Halifax), January 14, 1801, NYGS.

13 J. D. (Hamburg) to S. F. (Halifax), February 13, 1801, NYGS.

14 J. D. (New York) to S. F. (at William Rawson's, London, and in Suffolk) winter 1806–1807, NYGS.

15 Ferguson Day & Co.'s correspondence (NYHS) in the early 1820s is filled with complaints about their sales in New York.

16 J. D. (Suffolk, in retirement) to J. F. (New York), June 20, 1835, NYHS. However, Bolton did hold some security against this adverse current balance.

17 The Gibsons were old friends and in the 1830s had houses in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and London. Details of Bolton's suspension are given below.

18 Jos. M. (Manchester) to John M. (St. Petersburg), December 29, 1781, NYGS.

19 J.D. (New York) to J. F. (England), December 26, 1806, NYGS. Thomas Hindley of Liverpool was a cotton buyer who was frequently sent to Charleston by Liverpool and Manchester firms. 1806–1830.

20 J. & S. Bustall (Hull) to S. F. (New York), August 16, 1810, NYHS.

21 For instance, J. G. Glover of Leeds, Edmund Morewood's father-in-law, had 1,100 bales in New Orleans in 1814 ready to ship to Bolton.

22 Ogden Ferguson & Co.'s principal southern correspondents apparently were: in Charleston, 1821–1825 Thomas Hindley, 1826–1840 John Frazer (this firm later became Frazer Trenholm & Co.); in Mobile, 1819–1823 Peters & Stebbins, 1824–1836 K. Stebbins, 1836–1847 Dawson & Ferguson; in New Orleans, 1819–1820 Amory Callender & Nott, 1821–1841 Bowers & Osborne; in Savannah, 1819–1820 Carnochan & Mitchell, 1821–1826 Samuel Wright, 1832–1834 S. Parkman, 1838–1840 G. Gordon. However at any one time they did business to a greater or lesser extent with many more correspondents in each port, and the great size of the collection is explained mostly by the consequent flow of in-letters, aggregated over about forty years.

23 J. D. (Suffolk) to J. O. (New York), July 12, 1828, NYHS. Henceforth, all J. D.'s letters are sent from England and all Ogden and Ferguson's letters are received in New York.

24 J. D. to J. F., July 11, 1829, NYHS.

25 J. D. to J. F., May 31, 1833, September 1, 1834, NYHS. There had been some haggling over the division of profits, and Day was playing a mediating role.

26 Alexander Brown & Sons' Letter Books, 1834, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

27 R. L. B. (Liverpool) to J. F., December 17, 1845, NYHS. Or T. B. (Liverpool) to J. F., August 18, 1841: “This American trade of ours my good friend is the grave of English capital and I see little chance of extirpating the reckless and pernicious adventurers who transact the greatest part of it.” Letter in NYHS.

28 They also did a large exchange business through Philadelphia with the Hollingsworths. See correspondence in NYHS and in the Hollmgsworth papers in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Penn.

29 T. B. to J. D., July 27, 1847, quoted in J. D. to J. F., September 2, 1847, NYGS.

30 T. B. to J. F., May 16, 1837, NYHS. J. D. to J. F., November 28, 1831, NYHS. Day's uncle left £ 130,000 in cash when he died. Day received & 20,000 and farmland in England. Charles Day to J. D., July 16, 1822, NYGS.

31 For instance, Thomas Holt of Liverpool and John Day. Bolton's assets at the time of his suspension were £ 289,700, his liabilities & 223,000, the former difficult to realise, the latter including obligations “becoming due daily.” J. D. to J. F., June 17, 1837, NYHS.

32 Dawson & Ferguson, for instance, found themselves in possession of Mobile real estate and slaves in 1843 as a consequence of their debtors' inability to pay.

33 Day suggested they could also be used as security against bank credits in case of need. J. D. to J. F., August 29, 1830, NYHS.

34 Letter from the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, May 20, 1933, NYGS.

35 R. L. B., “crude and speculative,” saddened his father. The Fergusons distrusted J. O. Jr. and humoured Bolton, “the old man.” Only John Day tried to hold the association together.

36 Paradoxically, improved communications may have meant that less visiting was required. Agents could be kept in line by mail and telegraph.