Nathan Simson: journals, freight books, invoices and receipts

Item

Country: GB
Name of institution (official language of the state): The National Archives (UK)
Language of name of institution: eng
Contact information: postal address: Kew, Richmond TW9 4DU
Contact information: phone number: 0020 8876 3444
Contact information: web address: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
Contact information: email: Contact form
Reference number: C104/13-14
Type of reference number: Archival reference number
Title (official language of the state): Nathan Simson: journals, freight books, invoices and receipts
Language of title: eng
Creator / accumulator: Nathan Simson
Date(s): 1700/1754
Language(s): dut; eng; heb; yid
Extent: 2 bundles
Type of material: Textual Material
Scope and content: This collection is part of the Chancery: Master Tinney's Exhibits series (C 104), which comprises private papers of all kinds, delivered into the court of Chancery by plaintiffs and defendants as evidence in their suits. The Chancery: Master Tinney's Exhibits is composed of business and trade papers and some important holdings relating to the army, individual artists, the book and newspaper trades, the building trades, charities, chemists, churchwardens accounts, the cloth trades, coachmakers, collieries and the coal trade, the diamond, gold and silver trades, hospitals, mining, naval officers and seamen, prize agents, privateers, schools, shipping, the slave trade, street lighting, undertakers, waterworks, and the wine trade.
This series comprises records related to the New York merchant Nathan Simson, namely journals, freight books, invoices, receipts, bills of lading and ledgers. Some of Simson's partners, agents, correspondents and customers were Sephardic Jews from New York, Charleston, Savannah, Jamaica, Barbados or Curaçao, including Abraham de Lucena, Diego & Abraham Gonsales, Abrão Ulloa, Isaac Levy Maduro, Rodrigo Pacheco, Mordecai Gomez, Benjamin & Samuel de Casseres, Jacob Gomez, or Benjamin Pereira. For this reason, this collection contains relevant information regarding Sephardic trading networks in the 18th-century Atlantic.
Nathan Simson papers also include the oldest known synagogue record book of the Jewish community of New York, dating from 1720-21. When Simson returned to England in 1722, he took these congregational financial records with him, together with his commercial papers. After his death in 1725, these records were deposited in the Public Record Office in London (see Marcus 1963).; (source: The National Archives online catalogue)
Archival history: Chancery masters' records remained in the individual custody of the various masters, lodged where they chose. In 1793, a plot of land in Southampton Buildings was bought as the site for a repository, and the building known as Public Office, or the Masters' Office, was built there.; (source: The National Archives online catalogue)
Administrative / Biographical history: Nathan Simson was an Ashkenazic Jew who settled in New York in the early 1700s and became a prominent merchant. Simson was active in the Atlantic trade, and his papers show that he traded with several North American ports and extended his business to Jamaica, Barbados, Curaçao, London, and Amsterdam, among other ports. In 1722, he moved to London and left his nephew Joseph Simson to run the business in New York. He died in 1725.
Access points: locations: Barbados; Charleston, South Carolina (USA); Curaçao; Jamaica; London (UK); New York, New York (USA); Savannah, Georgia (USA)
Access points: persons, families: Benjamin & Samuel de Casseres; Diego & Abraham Gonsales; Levy Maduro, Isaac; Lucena, Abraham de; Pacheco, Rodrigo; Simson, Nathan; Ulloa, Abrão
Access points: subject terms: Sephardim in North America; Sephardim in the Caribbean; Shipping; Trade and commerce; 18th century
Access points: document types: Account books and ledgers; Commercial records
Access, restrictions: Open unless otherwise stated
Links to finding aids: The National Archives online catalogue
Existence and location of copies: Nathan Simson Papers
Author of the description: Carla Vieira, 2022
Bibliography: Ben-Jacob, Michael. 1999. “Nathan Simson: A Biographical Sketch of a Colonial Jewish Merchant.” American Jewish Archives Journal 51 (1–2): 11–37.; Grivetti, Louis E, and Howard-Yana Shapiro. 2011. Chocolate History, Culture, and Heritage. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.; Marcus, Jacob Rader. 1963. “The Oldest Known Synagogue Record Book of Continental North America.” In In the Time of Harvest: Essays in Honor of Abba Hillel Silver on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, Daniel Jeremy Silver, 227–34. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Published primary sources: Faber, Eli. 2003. “Letters from Jamaica, 1719-1725.” American Jewish History 91 (3–4): 485–91. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23887292.

Item sets: WSD Roadmap; WSD Roadmap finais; WSD Roadmap UK

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