Sewall Family Memoranda BooksSewall Family Memoranda Books, 1843-1881
| Maine Maritime Museum Manuscript Collection Online Catalog
Abstract
Prominent shipbuilders and businessmen in Bath, ME.
Small, bound books belonging to William D. Sewall (1797-1877) and Arthur Sewall (1835-1900). Each contains notes and accounts for the various family businesses and vessels, including construction notes and trip expenses, and also some personal notes and accounts. These overlap materials in MS-22, Sewall Family Papers, and should have been processed with them however, at some point these 24 volumes were separated and were not found until later. Books for WDS cover the years 1843-1871 (incomplete), and those for AS cover the years 1854-1881 (incomplete).
Administrative/Biographical History
Subjects (links to similar collections) Administrative InformationThese twenty-four small volumes are part of a much larger accession, the Sewall Family Papers, MS-22, which was given to Maine Maritime Museum in 1971 by the Sewall family. The Papers were officially signed over in 1991 and became G91.111.
Sometime in the intervening twenty years these volumes, perhaps because they were so small, were separated from the rest of the collection so they were not processed with
MS-22 as they should rightly have been. Found in an unmarked box in 1996, they were processed as a separate collection. Additional memoranda books for William D. Sewall may be found in MS-22, Box 550/2.
Most of these small volumes are identified as having belonged to either William D. Sewall or Arthur Sewall. Each routinely labeled a book as "Memo. Book" and included the date. Some volumes cover just a year, while others include material for more than one year. Those volumes which did not have the owner's name in the front were attributed to one or the other based on handwriting styles.
Within each volume are a variety of accounts and notes. The little text that appears consists of diary entries [s. Diaries in Added Entries/ Partial Index] and a few miscellaneous notes on such diverse topics as sailor intoxification, lists of potential vessel names, and short agreements (or contracts) having to do with the construction of a new vessel. There are a few sketches of equipment or construction details.
Most of the material, however, is accounts. Some are personal, including farm accounts, cash paid out for household expenses, notes and bonds, family estate accounts, and miscellaneous accounts for such things as bridge repairs, household furniture, and damage done to a hay field by the railroad.
Other accounts relate directly to the shipping and ship management business. These include construction accounts, lists of supplies for outfitting, repairs, marine insurance, launchings, etc. There are some expense accounts for trips WDS and AS took to New York or Boston, for example, on behalf of a particular vessel.
Finally there are more general accounts such as those with suppliers in New York or Bath, and there are accounts for ship timber purchased, shipped, and in some cases resold rather than used in their own vessels.
In all cases notes and accounts are mixed together in any given volume, often with entries for the same vessel or topic occurring in more than one place. Some of the volumes were written in soft pencil which has smudged badly over the years. A number of these pages are almost impossible to read. The researcher is urged to study each volume thoroughly to ensure that all the desired information has been extracted from all the pages. Notes about the contents of each volume have been written on the front of the folder and have also been included in the Added Entries/ Partial Index.