THE OLD MERCHANTS OF NEW YORK CITY
        Second  Series

By  Walter Barrett, Clerk
     1863

     MERCHANT  DESCRIPTIONS

       CHAPTER  11


GOODHUE & CO.

      The founder of the firm of Goodhue & co., was Jonathan Goodhue. He
commenced business in this city in 1808, under the firm of Goodhue & Sweet,
at No. 34 Old Slip. The store was afterwards removed to No. 44 South street.
This building belonged to Theophilacht Bache.  Goodhue & Sweet did a very
heavy regular commission business for three or four years, and sold largely
of foreign dry goods, and acted as agents of Salem ship owners. In 1811, the
house was dissolved, and J. Goodhue carried on business upon his individual
account until 1816. It was then Goodhue & Ward, and the store was kept at 44
South street. In 1819 it became Goodhue & Co., and Mr. Perit became a
partner. He had formerly been of the house of Perit & Lathrop. Goodhue &
Co., kept at 44 South street until 1829, when they removed to 64 South
street where the same large house is still located. I have written about
this firm in several previous chapters, but not so  much of their first
start as now.

      Mr. Goodhue was born in Salem. Mr. Perit was born in Norwich,
Connecticut, and received a collegiate education at Yale College. This is
not often the case with merchants in this city.

      In the first partnership of Mr. Perit with Mr. Lathrop, his
brother-in-law, he was not successful, and during the war he was connected
with an artillery company, and performed military service in the forts that
protected the harbor.

      After he went with Mr. Goodhue, his commercial good fortunes returned,
and their house coined money. In 1833 or 1834 the health of Mr. Perit
declined, and he conceived the idea that it was necessary to take more
active exercise, and in order to insure that daily, he purchased a piece of
property on the North river, lying between Burnham's and the Orphan Asylum.
It may have cost him perhaps $10,000. He sold it about two years ago. I
suppose it is worth now half a million of dollars. This is a comment on
persevering mercantile life. By a mere accident Mr. Perit buys a small lot
of land, and makes more money than Goodhue & Co. ever made in fifty-three
years hard work!  Probably no house has done a larger business with all
parts of the world than Goodhue for the fifty-three years that it has
existed in a continuous business. This house, so eminent, commanding means
to an extent that an outsider has no conception of, has made merely moderate
earnings in comparison with some lucky land hit, made by unknown and
uncredited persons, that has realized millions.

      Mr. Goodhue died a few years ago, and his funeral at his own
request___was attended only by the members of his family and a few of his
most intimate friends.

      Since Mr. Perit sold his property in New York, he has removed to New
Haven, Connecticut, to a magnificent house in Hillhouse avenue. He married
Miss Coit, a very lovely girl, and still living, the ornament of the circle
in which she moves. They have no children. He has done more than most
merchants do for the benevolent enterprises of the day. He is unequalled as
a merchant, and has been for many years honored with being president of the
Chamber of Commerce.

      The house of Goodhue & Co. ought to last, for the honor of the city, a
hundred years more.

F.  VARET  &  CO.

      F. Varet & Co., French importers, did a very large business at one
time. For years this firm was one of the heaviest in the silk trade. They
imported and then sold heavily at auction through John Hone & Sons. The old
man was named Francis, and the son Lewis F. They did a heavy West India
shipping business.  The old Varet was a French refugee, and settled in New
York as early as 1797, at 26 Reade street. In 1804 he took his son into
partnership, and kept at 112 Chatham street. In the war they kept their
store at 94 Bowery.

      Perhaps the heaviest business they did was in 1830, and for some years
prior to that date. Though the firm was Francis Varet & Son, as it had been
for twenty-six years, I am not certain that old Francis was in it actively.
The son was an old man in 1830, and his private residence was at No. 36
Beach street.

      The house employed their own buyers in France, and he was under
engagement not to buy for any other New York silk house. At one time James
R. Icard was their banker at Paris.  John B. Viele of Lyons, France, was a
partner of this house.

      This house, established in 1798, is still in existence under the firm
of Oscar Varet & Co., 21 Murray street. They yet deal in silks and have
Paris connections. I think the names of the young men are Oscar and Emil.

      I now return to the old house of F. Varet & Son. Their store was at
147 Pearl street for a long time. Lewis Varet was a very close business man;
He kept his affairs to himself and his own book-keeper, whose name was
Durival. He made out all the entries of goods, and attended to the custom
house business himself. He did not confine himself solely to dry goods; on
the contrary, F. Varet & Co. received cargoes of sugar, beeswax, & c., &c.,
from Matanzas. In Lyone he had large manufactories, monopolized in making
little lacets braids, one sixteenth of an inch in width.

      He also imported woolen gloves and mittens in hogsheads, and at first
used to make immense profits, selling them at public sale; but after a while
the market got overstocked, and these goods became a drug in the market.

      It is about eighteen years since Mr. L. Varet died.

JOSEPH  HOXIE

      Mr. Joseph Hoxie came here as a school teacher about 1818. He taught
school in the Fourth Ward, where he is kindly remembered by many of his old
pupils still.

      When he first began to meddle in politics, it was as an active
partisan of Tammany Hall; but I believe he left the shade of the Wigwam
about the time when Moses H. Grinnell and others, now prominent Republicans,
left it.

      Mr. Hoxie kept school as late as 1829, when he went into the
mercantile business, having determined to follow the example of A.T.
Stewart, and widen the sphere of his activity and usefulness.

      He taught many years at 208 William street. It was at the old church
that stood on the corner, where the Globe hotel now stands, of William and
Frankfort streets.

      He began in business about 1829 at 83 William street, and in 1834
removed to 101 Maiden lane, which locality, at that period, was regarded as
the most favorable for the business in which he was engaged___viz., cloths.

      His genial disposition did not qualify him for the intricacies of
mercantile life. "Profit and loss," was an account he could not rightly
understand. Although popular with the clothing trade, and exceedingly
industrious, yet the disasters of 1836 and 1837  forced him to quit
merchandizing. He had become a prominent politician in the Whig ranks
previous to that period. In 1837 he was elected Alderman of the Seventh
Ward. The next year he was elected county clerk for a three years term. He
came up again for nomination at the expiration of his term, but was defeated
by the nomination of Revo C. Hence, who was defeated by the democratic
candidate at the election.

      Shortly after he was elected Judge of the Fourth Judicial District for
four years. The difficulties of others being constantly brought before him,
he did not like it, and when his term expired he sought employment another
way.

      He was truly a friend of Henry Clay, and openly acknowledged as much
by the great Kentuckian for many years of his life. While on a visit to
Ashland, after the expiration of his Justiceship, he formed such an
acquaintance with leading Western men as to secure to him the agency of two
or three Western fire insurance companies. He then opened his office as an
underwriter agent at the corner of Wall and Pearl streets. Some years after,
when fire insurance companies' stock became a very profitable investment,
and under the new insurance laws, permitting the formation of insurance
companies without any special act, he with Hugh Maxwell, Moses Taylor, the
late J. Hobart Haws and others, associated themselves together and formed
the present Commonwealth fire insurance company, of which Mr. Hoxie is the
President.

      He was one of the early members of the Whig party, and when that broke
up he became one of the most active spirits in the Republican party, but not
an Abolitionist. Mr. Hoxie is one of the most venerable looking men in the
city. He is a popular speaker, for he never speaks long so as to weary his
audience, and his speeches are always interspersed with such anecdotes as
bring down the house. This also applies to his social life. He is one of
those great friends of humanity who do kindness by making men laugh. He is
an honest man. He is opposed to corruption both at Albany and at Washington,
and denounces them whenever he gets a chance. In the campaign of 1840, when
public singing was in vogue, Mr. Hoxie was one of the best vocalists of his
party. He is now an officer in the Market street church, and still a
resident of the Seventh Ward, that first elected him to public life. His
anecdotes, although perfectly chaste in language would hardly bear, my
repeating them, except one as a sample. I have said nothing about the
nativity of Mr. Hoxie. Of course, he is from the East, or he would never
have been president of the New England society.

      A friend once met him in Wall street and asked "Judge, where were you
born?" Hoxie cocked his eye in a very peculiar way, and replied:  "There was
once a man residing in the south-western part of this country who prided
himself upon his judgment of human nature, and that he could tell the State
in which a person was born, if he heard him speak a few words. Being seated
in a tavern in Kentucky, on a turnpike road, frequently resorted to by
travellers from all sections, he amused himself by his discriminating
observation upon men who entered, as to the whereabouts of their
birthplaces. On a certain day, a traveller on horseback approached the
tavern. After alighting, he asked the landlord, "Have you any oats?"  "Yes,"
replied the landlord.   "Give my horse two quarts."  "That man," said the
observer,  "is from Connecticut."  Shortly after another traveller arrived.
"Landord have you any oats?"  "Yes."  Give my horse four quarts."  "That
man, said the observer,  "is from Massachusetts."  Presently, a third
traveller arrived and asked  "Have you any oats?"  "Yes."  "Give my horse as
many oats as he can eat.  "That man," said the observer,  "is from Rhode
Island."  "Now,"____says Mr. Hoxie,___"I come from the State where they give
their horses all the oats they can eat."

WILSON  G.  HUNT

      Wilson G. Hunt was also in that neighborhood for a long time, and made
money there. He had formerly been in the retail dry goods business in Pearl,
near Chatham, where he was unfortunate, and was obliged to compromise with
his creditors; after which he commenced in the cloth business, under the
auspices of his brother Thomas, at the corner of Pearl and Chatham streets.
This new business to Hunt was successful, and he coined money. Here I must
stop to narrate a most honorabe transaction of Wilson G. Hunt. Although he
had settled with his creditors for a certain sum on the dollar, and had
received a full release from all his indebtedness, yet on a certain New
Year's day he invited all of his creditors to dine with him; and judge of
their surprise, when they had taken the seats allotted to them, they each
found under their plates a check for the full amount of the balance of their
original claims, with interest to that date. No wonder that Peter Cooper
selected such a man for one of his trustees.

      I have a full sketch yet to write of Wilson G. Hunt.

ABNER  CHICHESTER

      Another of these old dry good merchants now retired, and a resident of
the Seventh Ward, is Abner Chichester. He made a large fortune by steady
devotion to business, and lives to enjoy it, without changing his habits of
life or moving into the Fifth avenue. He was in business in Pearl street,
near Fulton, of the firm of Chichester & Van Wyck, for a long period.

      He is one of the few of that successful class of dry good merchants
that have done honor and added to the wealth of the city.

      One of his daughters married Jackson S. Schultz of the firm of Jackson
Schultz & Co., the large leather dealers in Pearl street. Mr. Schultz is a
director in the Park bank, and has lately distinguished himself by his
active exertions in putting down this war.

      Another daughter married Robert M. Strebeigh, principal business
manager and one of the wealthiest and most liberal stockholders of The N.Y.
Tribune, who has a fine mansion in East Thirty-fifth street.




Source:  The Old Merchants of New York City
Author:  Walter Barrett, Clerk           Second series
Publisher:  Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway
Entered according to the Act of Congress 1863
             _____________________________________

    Researched, Prepared and Contributed by Miriam Medina
                  For the Brooklyn Information Page

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