Category: Letters

A few years ago, I had the extraordinary good fortune to come into possession of a letter written by my 5th great grandfather, Paris Jenckes Tillinghast (1757-1822), to “Messers Brown & Ives.” The letter was written 20 February 1809, postmarked the next day, received 4 March 1809 in Providence, and answered on 7 April 1809.

This letter was so full of family connections that I nearly hyperventilated when I saw it on eBay. I lost the auction but persuaded the winner to rehome the letter. Fortunately, he was also interested in family history and understood my excitement.

Fayetteville Febry 20th 1809

Messrs Brown & Ives
Gentlemen
This will make you acquainted that I have drawn on you for $200 in favr Mr Sebastian Staiert of this place payl in N York which I have no doubt will be duly honord & meet with your approbation. I have purchased since my last to you 10 Hnd Tobacco & hope to make out the 45 Hnd in time for the Augus return & not exceed $3 Hn. The planters are now asking more on acct the rumour of the (??a garlemesd??) to be intendd to be repeald that Horrible Law. Cotton is now current at $12½ Cash. I was in hopes to [ge]t hold of some at your limits. But it was improbable as the holders all expect the Odious Law is to be repeald by 4th March. I hope your Mr Ives will have arrd to his Family eer this comes to Hand in good health. I should have been very Happy indeed to have seen him at Fayetl & would chearfully given him my best bed & table. I think he must have had a pleasant jaunt & seen something new among the Demots at Congress. I anticipate the Hope that they the Demos will not Dare to involve their Country in a War with GB to make Free Ships Free Goods for that’s the Bone of all the Quarrel at last I think. Please to inform me your opinion respecting the price of cotton with you & in Boston I shall have a Debt due in Boston next month & wish to know If cotton will do the honors and I have pickd up some few Bales for this purpose. I will do all I can to hand you your pay as fast as I can possible get hold of anything But would (empower?) for your Interest. O Pearce Daughter Eliza intends to take a Husband on Thursday Evening next a Dr Robinson of this town to be Happy man. A good Demo he suits OP well. He is Nephew to the Senator from Vermont now in Senate US. I wish them all the happiness they can desire &tc. I can’t help telling you Mrs Huske had a fine Boy 31st Janry She & child finely. My best wishes for your & family Happiness
& Remain yours Respectfully
Paris J Tillinghast

Nicholas Brown and his brother-in-law, Thomas Poynton Ives, owned an international trading company called Brown & Ives. It was the successor to a series of companies owned by various members of the Brown family for three generations. Thomas Ives was apprenticed to a previous iteration of the Browns’ company, became a partner, and ultimately became family when he married Nicholas Brown’s only sister, Hope.

Nicholas and  Hope inherited the shipping business of their father and three uncles, the famous four Brown brothers of Providence, Rhode Island. Their father and uncles had focused on conventional goods, but a significant portion of their fortune came from the transatlantic slave trade. The Brown family – especially Nicholas – donated a lot of money to Rhode Island College, so the school renamed itself Brown University in the family’s honor. (You may have heard about Brown University’s examination of its part in the slave trade a few years ago.) Hope Hall at Brown University is named for Hope Brown Ives, the sister and wife of the men addressed in this letter. Nicholas and Hope were the only surviving children of Nicholas Brown, Sr., and his wife, Rhoda Jenckes.

Nicholas and Hope’s maternal ancestors also made a significant mark in early New England. Their maternal grandfather, Daniel Jenckes,  was a prominent judge, politician, and landowner. The first patent in North America was granted to Daniel’s great-grandfather. His grandfather founded Pawtucket. His paternal uncle, Joseph Jenckes, was a prominent Rhode Island politician and colonial governor of Rhode Island. Governor Jenckes also married a Brown: Nicholas’s great-aunt Martha.

The author of this letter to Nicholas Brown and Thomas Ives was my 5th great-grandfather, Paris Jenckes Tillinghast. His mother, Joanna, was Rhoda Jenckes Brown’s sister. He was also a grandson of Judge Daniel Jenckes. Therefore, Paris was writing to his first cousins.

Paris’s letter first addresses business. In 1804, Paris had emigrated to North Carolina from Rhode Island with his wife’s brother, Oliver Pearce. (Oliver was married to Mary Smith West, a daughter of the astronomer and polymath Dr. Benjamin West of Providence.) The “Horrible Law” and “Odious Law” that Paris is so upset about in the letter is likely the controversial Embargo Act of 1807, which made international trade illegal. The Act intended to stop privateer attacks on American merchant marines and prevent Americans from being impressed by the British to fight against France, but it nearly devastated the American economy. Since Brown & Ives, like other Brown family entities before them, were engaged in international trade, the Embargo Act nearly crippled them. As Paris anticipated, Congress repealed the Embargo Act two weeks later and replaced it with the somewhat less onerous Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which prohibited trade only with England and France. (The Non-Intercourse Act wasn’t any more popular than the Embargo Act.) The War of 1812 was looming.

I do not know the extent of the Tillinghast and Pearce involvement in Brown & Ives. This letter indicates some shared interest, whether by association, contract, or perhaps even employment. Given the amount of international trade from the Carolina backcountry at the time, Paris Tillinghast and Oliver Pearce may have moved to North Carolina to further the business interests of Brown & Ives and then been hindered by the Embargo Act. For generations after this letter, they were merchants, among other things. For at least three generations before Paris, the Jenckes and Tillinghast men had been ship captains and traders to the West Indies.

The Browns had supplied Dr. Benjamin West Robinson with the telescope he used to observe the transits of Venus and Mercury in 1769, so there is a known connection of the Browns to the Pearce family through Dr. West’s daughter. And, of course, all of these families had roots in Providence, which was a relatively small city at the time. In 1769, Providence’s population was about 3,300 people; by the date of this letter, fewer than 10,000 people lived there.

That’s not all the family news, though. In the letter, Paris tells Nicholas that his wife’s niece, Eliza West Pearce, had met Dr. Benjamin Robinson – the nephew of Senator Moses Robinson of Vermont – and that they would soon be married. Paris also reported that his daughter, Joanna Jenckes Tillinghast Huske, had given birth to a healthy son. This son was John Winslow Huske (1809-1841), the eldest brother of Joanna Anne Huske. Joanna Anne Huske grew up to marry her second cousin, Dr. Benjamin West Robinson. They are my 3rd great-grandparents.

The diagram puts everyone in a tree and in the places where they were (and where they were from). The names of the people mentioned in the letter are ALLCAPS, and the sender and recipients are bold. I also transcribed the letter. Please let me know if anyone can make out any of the writing that I couldn’t read.

Hope Brown was named for her paternal grandmother, Hope Power. The Brown, Power, West, Pearce, Jenckes, and Tillinghast families entangled over generations in Providence and continued entangling with each other and with Huskes, Starks, and Robinsons once they arrived in North Carolina.

At the beginning of the letter, Paris refers to Sebastian Staiert, to whom Paris had advanced some of Nicholas’s money. Sebastian’s daughter Ann married John Jennings, a great-uncle of my 2nd great-grandmother, Laura Pemberton. Two generations after this letter, Laura would marry Oliver Pearce Robinson and bring him to Arkansas to run the plantation she had inherited. That plantation – we now just call it a farm – has been in our family since the 1850s.