Oliver Wolcott letterbook

1803-1808

Oliver Wolcott (1760-1833), was United States Secretary of the Treasury, 1795-1800; United States Circuit Court judge for the Second Circuit, 1801-1802; and governor of Connecticut, 1817-1827. Wolcott also served as the state comptroller of Connecticut before joining the United States Treasury Department in 1789, and presided over the Connecticut constitutional convention in 1818. He was deeply involved in mercantile and banking affairs in New York City during his hiatus from public service. In 1803 Wolcott established the firm of Oliver Wolcott & Co., commission merchants, in partnership with James Watson, Moses Rogers, Archibald Gracie, and William W. Woolsey, in New York City. The firm dissolved in 1805, and Wolcott continued as an independent merchant, primarily in the China trade. Prior to his return to Connecticut in 1815, Oliver Wolcott was a director of the Bank of the United States, 1810-1811, and the first president of the Bank of America, 1812-1814. He was also the first president of the Merchants' Bank, 1803-1804. The letterbook of Oliver Wolcott & Co., 1803-1805, and of Oliver Wolcott, 1805-1808, contains copies of outgoing letters, some in the hand of Oliver Wolcott, documenting mercantile, real property, and other domestic and foreign commercial transactions. Letters concern the trade in fur and tea with Canton, China; importation of coffee and sugar from Batavia, Java; importation of pepper, salt petre and other commodities from Calcutta, India; exportation of tobacco to Holland and France; trade with Portugal and Barbados; prices and methods of doing business; voyages of the ships Triton and Trident; and the impact of the Napoleonic wars and the Embargo Act on American shipping and commerce. Recipients include, among others, Theodore Dwight, William P. Cleveland, Asa and Daniel Hopkins, David Humphreys, Baring Brothers & Co., and Canton hong merchants Cheonqua and Houqua.