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Squire Rantoul and His Drug Store, 1796-1824
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Extract
For one hundred and forty-four years (or from 1796 to 1940) a certain drug store did business in the town of Beverly, Massachusetts, in the same location, for all but the first two years of this long span. To the writer's generation it was known as Baker's Drug Store, and it stood on the corner of Washington and Cabot streets. In 1796, when Robert Rantoul started his shop, there was no Washington Street and Cabot was called Country Lane. But the young man chose his business and its location well and when, an old man, he came to review his life for his grandchildren, he could point with pride to the success of this and his other ventures.
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- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1951
References
1 His civic activities included service as overseer of the poor, justice of the peace and acting trial justice, commissioner of highways, and a member of the school committee. For the First Church, he served as parish clerk, deacon, and superintendent of the Sunday School. He was active for a time in the militia, but with the restoration of peace after the War of 1812 he valued military service less highly. He was a member of the Massachusetts Temperance Society, and later regretted ever having sold liquor in his store. In state affairs, he served as representative and senator for several terms, and was a delegate to two state conventions. He was interested in numerous reforms, and, in later life anyway, was a Democrat.
2 The store's account books, which have been given by the family to the Beverly Historical Society, consist of three daybooks (1796–1799, 1803–1812), two journals (1803–1806), a ledger (1796–1807), an invoice book (1796–1811), and two letter-books (1797–1824). The latter include copies of incoming letters as well as Rantoul's replies. The collection also contains later Rantoul material. The writer is indebted to Miss Alice G. Lapham, Historian, for many helpful suggestions.
3 Referred to in this paper as the Memoir. The manuscript, begun in 1848, shortly after the death of Rantou's wife, is also in the Beverly Historical Society. Extracts from it were printed in Essex Institute Historical Collections, vol. v, pp. 148–152, 193–196, 241ff.; vol. vi, pp. 25ff., 79ff.
4 The titles, following the list, are somewhat abbreviated. The collection is extensive; the list, though undated, reflects his interest in history, poetry, military affairs, and Massachusetts law. The Art of Gauging and American Clerks Magazine doubtless helped him with the management of the shop.
5 There is a record of payment of interest on this sum to his mother, who remarried in 1793.
6 Rantoul later advised his grandchildren against such side excursions, saying that they “diverted my attention from my shop, and employed money which might have been used more advantageously in my shop.” Several adventures during 1799 and 1800 appear to have brought him only $15 or $20 each.
7 The Beverly Historical Society possesses a druggist's cabinet, the gift of Dr. Oscar F. Swasey, who in turn is supposed to have acquired it from Rantoul's son-in-law or grandson, who succeeded to the business. Whether this is one of the two cases of drawers which Rantoul purchased for $40 from Whitney is a matter of conjecture. It is pictured in Antiques, November, 1934.
8 The shop stood between the houses of Andrew T. Leach and Andrew Wallis, according to Rantoul's recollection. It was probably on the same street and but a short distance from the later location of the store.
9 She was the Mrs. Burke with whom Rantoul boarded.
10 In the letterbook is a copy of an order to Captain Thomas Bridges, of the Sloop Industry, to pick up the phials and transport them to Beverly.
11 The firm of Crawley, after 1802 Crawley and Elgie, was located at Spital Square, London. Rantoul used Dr. Osgood's name as reference, and sent his payment through William Gray of Salem, on Messrs. Bainbridge Ainsley & Co. of London. There was a return to him on the insurance premium, because the goods were shipped on the Deane, “sailing in company with armed ships.”
12 Dr. Lee, of Windham, Connecticut, not to be confused with Lee's New London Bilious Pills. Dr. Osgood, of Salem, was agent for the latter, and he and Rantoul defended the merits of each one's pills in advertisements in the Salem Gazette for April 7 and 14, 1801.
13 Samuel died at Bilbao on April 22, 1802. The shop seems to have been rented for a time after that by Zadek Pomroy. Rantoul, his sister, Polly, and his mother sold the Salem land to Benjamin Herbert Hathorne for $8,500 in November, 1804.
14 For the first year of his marriage, he states in his Memoir, “I kept an account of the expenses of my family, which amounted to about $400, and being satisfied that the expense was within my income, I discontinued my account, and did not resume it again until some years afterwards. I now think it would have been useful to have continued it steadily to this time.”
15 This is supposed to be the first Sunday School in the country.
16 From a privately published family history and a letter to the writer, dated December 14, 1950.
17 The original is in the possession of Miss Harriet C. Rantoul; a photographic copy is in the Beverly Historical Society.