Alpheus Hollister (1793-1870) was the proprietor of a sawmill and grist mill and a merchant at Hollisterville, Salem Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania. The collection consists of two account books for a general store at Hollisterville. The first volume (1848-1849) has been used as a scrapbook by a descendant and is filled with newspaper clippings, mostly sentimental or sensational stories from the 1880s, many from central New York State. The second volume (1860-1867) records typical general store transactions.

Anthony Morris (1766-1860) was a lawyer and merchant of Philadelphia. Morris was active in the East India trade. Morris's letters are largely concerned with business affairs, administration and sale of lands, and state politics. The letters date from 1800 to 1808.

Anthony Morris (1766-1860) was a lawyer and merchant of Philadelphia. Morris was active in the East India trade. This collection includes two letterbooks and one ledger. The letterbooks are mostly concerned with his business affairs. The letters date from 1787 to 1800. His ledger includes household accounts and records of expenses on voyages to China, India and England. The ledger dates from 1800 to 1806.

Brown & Hewett were merchants of Oneida County, New York. The journal contains the accounts of individuals doing business with the firm, which was a typical backcountry mercantile enterprise trading imported goods such as brandy, rum, tobacco, paper, textiles, and merchandise for local staples like wheat and lumber.

The Collection of Philadelphia merchants records comprises the papers of major and minor merchant houses in Philadelphia throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and primarily documents trade with major port cities in Western Europe and the West Indies. Included are the papers of merchants Andrew Clow & Co., Dutilh & Wachsmuth, Manuel Eyre, and George Louis de Stockar, along with records of other miscellaneous merchants from the Philadelphia area. The records include correspondence, accounts, bills, orders, invoices and other material that give insight into the rise of capitalism in the Early Republic.

George Bowen (1799-1879) founded a ship chandler's business in Newport, Rhode Island, around 1829, as the George Bowen & Company. The fragmentary records consist of sixteen volumes of account books, which describe the mechanics of the business and the retail trade in coal and wood, giving names of customers, quantities of goods bought and sold, and operating expenses.

Henry S. Leverich (1804-1885), along with his brothers, was a merchant and financier in New York City. The checkbook contains annotated stubs for checks drawn on the Merchants' Bank in the City of New York and several blank checks.

Jane Farson (1704-1792) ran an unidentified shop in Wilmington, Delaware. The letter is from Farson to Samuel Coates (1748-1830), a Philadelphia merchant, regarding her shop and small house and large lot in Wilmington.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. This item is a receipt book containing the signatures of numerous Philadelphia merchants.

Joseph Dugan (1766-1845) was a Philadelphia merchant of the early nineteenth century. The collection is a receipt book of Dugan's household expenses, including fuel (cordwood), specialty foodstuffs such as wine, and furniture.

Joseph P. Hornor (1785-1845) was a merchant in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century. The collection is comprised of a letter book of Hornor's outbound letters, describing mercantile business spreading throughout the Philadelphia hinterlands.

Peter Arnold Karthaus (1765-1840) immigrated to the United States from Hamburg, Germany in 1796 and established a mercantile business in the West Branch of the Susquehanna River Valley. The collection documents Karthaus' mercantile business, land development in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, and his partnership with fellow German immigrant, Frederick W. Geissenhainer, a pioneer in using coal to smelt iron.

Keys & Miller Lumber Company were dealers in lumber, grain, hay, lime, fertilizers, and coal. Located in Elkton, Maryland, the company incorporated in 1892. The records consist of inbound correspondence regarding orders received primarily between the years 1892 and 1895.

Lynch and Stoughton was a New York mercantile firm that traded extensively with Spain, Portugal, Holland, the West Indies, Florida, Ireland, and China, in the coasting trade between Pennsylvania and New England, and with the interior of New York State. The ledger documents the firm's mercantile business between 1783 and 1788. The ledger appears to have later been passed down through several generations of the Stow family of New York and Michigan, who used it as a scrapbook for scrap paper and practicing penmanship.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (1766-1817), known as Madame de Staël, was a writer, philosopher, and politically engaged woman who survived the French Revolution and was exiled multiple times by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). The letter from "Necker de Stael Holstein" to Le Roy, Bayard & Co., New York, concerning accounts with the firm and with W. Saladin.

Masters & Markoe was a mercantile house which operated throughout the early nineteenth century. Most of the records date from the period 1810 to 1814 and document the West Indian trade of Markoe & Masters. The collection consists of the business correspondence and accounts records which shows that the firm was primarily involved with the importation of sugar from Santa Cruz (St. Croix). The company also imported molasses, rum, coffee, mahogany, and logwood. There are also personal papers of the firms co-founder, Thomas Masters (1781-1844) and members of his family.

Trading stamps were small paper coupons, given to customers by merchants, that had a minimal cash value. Customers could save these coupons and exchange them with the trading stamp company for premiums. The use of these coupons grew with the proliferation of chain gas stations and supermarkets in the early 20th century. Two perforated sheets of "merchant's coupons" (possibly trading stamps) are included, one with fifteen stamps and the other with ten. The coupons in this collection have no markings to determine the merchant or trading stamp company of origin.

Mordecai Lewis & Company (Philadelphia) was a merchant firm that owned several ships and specialized in imports of European goods, including white lead and, eventually, paint. The account sheet documents the sales of powder to William Bingham (1752-1804).

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Pennsylvania was already a leader in the coal, iron, steel, railroad, and petroleum industries. As the manufacturing industries grew in the cities, so did the small businesses of craftsman and artisans that populated the surrounding areas selling their goods. These merchants played an important role in trade, community relationships, and the economy.  This is an artificial collection of account books, cash ledgers, and receipt books of nineteenth-century merchants of various industries in Pennsylvania. Minimal correspondence is included as well as a poem.  Mineral, iron and leather industries are represented as well as organ building which includes two treatises written in German.  

The firm of Orrick, Grubbs & Parker, iron merchants, was formed in Philadelphia around 1839, succeeding the firm of Samuel D. Orrick & Co. The records consist of 26 letters addressed to Orrick & Fox, Samuel D. Orrick & Co., Orrick, Grubbs & Parker and E. B. & C. B. Grubb concerning shipments of iron from the Grubb furnaces and its resale to manufacturers along the east coast.

The Phillips family were prominent Philadelphia merchants and manufacturers over four generations. The records consist of four volumes of merchant and importer William Phillips (1771-1845), a daybook from the textile firm of Lewis, Phillips & Co., and an unrelated receipt book of Philadelphia wine merchant Francis Coppinger, dating from 1794 to 1795.

Scheiffelin & Co. was a leading pharmaceutical and liquor-importing house in New York City. The records consist of a fragmentary series of account books from the firm of H.H. Schieffelin & Co. and its predecessors. Record types include day books, journals, order books, invoice books, and inventories, all documenting the importation and resale of drugs in use in the early nineteenth century.

The Stockly/Stockley family were merchants and bankers in Smyrna, Delaware, during the nineteenth century. The family papers consist primarily of account books for various Stockly enterprises, recording shipments of grain, barley, and hides between Delaware and Philadelphia.

Thompson & Company was a general mercantile business located at Riga Corners, now the village of Churchville, town of Riga, Monroe County, New York. The daybook documents a typical rural merchant at a time when the Rochester area was just being opened to white settlement.

W. Elwood Chipman (1893-1977) was a grain, feed, and hardware dealer in Laurel, Delaware, between 1925 and 1961. The collection consists of the business records of Chipman & Penuel (later Elwood Chipman). The records of W. Elwood Chipman's agricultural mercantile business largely consist of ledgers of accounts receivable; sales; orders; purchases; and expenses of produce, sweet potatoes, feed and grain supplies, packaging materials, broiled chickens, and other operational necessities.

William Deas (1768-1806) was a merchant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Initially, Deas was in a partnership with David Knox (dates unknown) and James Henderson (1756-1801) Knox, Henderson, and Co., which formed in 1796. After that partnership was dissolved, William Deas and David Knox formed a new partnership, Knox and Deas, located at 30 Front Street in Philadelphia. The business imported and sold textiles and garment-making items as well as dry goods and other things. This collection consists of a letterbook of approximately 175 pages of business transactions from William Deas to his business partner, English merchant David Knox, from 1800 to 1803 inclusively.