These are six original ship manifests from American schooners that were issued between May 1796 and June 1797. The ships were The Guardian, The Syson, The Patty, Anne, Agenoria, and the Nancy, and their manifests showed what cargo the ships were carrying; once the cargo was loaded and other paperwork completed, two copies of the manifest were made out: one to be filed with the customs collector at the port where the ship was and the other to be carried on the ship. When the manifests were completed and all the paperwork reviewed, the customs collector would clear the ship for sailing. Goods were identified by marks that were used to keep track of the cargo, and these marks were also used by inspectors to check what was in the cargo containers. Often these marks were simply the initials of the merchants who were shipping goods. For instance, the schooner Patty has the marks “S P”, “Z F”, and “F G” on the left side of the manifest, and those were probably the initials of the inspectors who checked the contents of the cargo containers. Further research might tell you who the inspectors actually were. The goods on these ships might also have been related to the slave trade in the West Indies and the United States. Rum was an important part of the slave trade, and the manifests show that nearly all the ships had rum on board. Rum would be produced in Jamaica and the West Indies and it was treated like currency - merchants from the Americas would take the rum to Africa and sell it in exchange for slaves, and these slaves were taken back to the New World and sold to plantation owners - a vicious cycle that was part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. We don’t know if the schooners listed here were actually involved in the slave trade, but when you see large amounts of rum on a ship’s manifest, well, you figure out what the rum was used for. The Atlantic slave trade was a triangular route that sold millions into slavery, and can you imagine if these ships were actually part of the slave trade? Such was maritime trade at the time, and it might be worth investigating further to find out what the rum was actually used for. The manifests here are all neatly folded, and they tell where the ship was loaded, who the captain or master was, what cargo the ship was carrying - the “goods , wares, and merchandise” - and where the cargo was going, and each manifest had to be properly made out and sworn to by the master and presented to the customs collector or other appropriate authority before a ship entered or cleared port. a) The Guardian, with H. Harding as the master, was an American schooner owned by William King, R J Portis and Silvanus Cushman and received at the port of Demerara in the Guianas (off the coast of South America) and was sailing to Bath, Maine. The schooner weighed 124 tons and was carrying cotton, coffee, sugar, and iron, and the customs officer, William Webb, signed his name near the bottom of the manifest on May 9, 1786, and it has “No. 6” on the front of the manifest. Demerara was a colony of the Dutch West India Company between 1745 and 1792 and a colony of the Dutch state from 1792 until 1815, and it merged with Essequibo in 1812. The manifest has light edgewear and light browning along the folds and a couple of small holes where the folds meet up. b) The Syson was built in Hallowell, Maine, and owned by Convers Lilly and George Crosby, it weighed 113 tons and was carrying rum, sugar, coffee, meat, and bread, and was currently at port in St. Lucia, Jamaica, bound for Bath, Maine (Kennebec County, Maine). Convers Lilly was also the captain or master of the schooner, the manifest was attested to by Wm Webb, the customs collector and naval officer in port, “No. 7” is at the top left corner of the manifest, and it was signed May 16, 1796. There is browning along the folds, some brown spots, two small holes along the middle seam and a hole along the vertical seam in the middle, a one-inch split along a seam at the top, and light edgewear at the bottom. c) The schooner Patty was captained by Jebediah Farnham and was currently at port in Demerara in the Guianas, headed for Barth, Maine. It was an American schooner built in Brunswick, Maine, it weighed 87 tons and was owned by Thomas Martin, Ephraim Hunt, Robert Demming, Paul Lowell, and [illegible] Spear, and carried rum, sugar, cotton, coffee, beef, pickled fish, and dry goods; it has inspectors’ initials along the left side of the manifest, it was again signed before William Webb, the customs collector, on May 17, 1796, and it has “No. 8” on the front. With some edgewear, light browning and a couple of small holes along the folds, and light brown spots in the middle. d) Manifest for the American schooner Anne of Brunswick, Maine, with Truman Gross as the master, it was loaded with cargo at Essequibo, a port in central Guyana, and bound for Brunswick with shugar [sugar], rum, coffee, and cotton; it weighed 84 tons and had inspectors’ initials on the left side which read “S S”, “E x G”, “E x W”, “ S G”, “E S”, and “F W”, and it was owned by Nathan Coomb, Samuel Gross, John Dunlap, and Samuel Woodward; the manifest was signed by William Webb, the customs collector, on July 18, 1796, and it has “No. 11” on the front of the manifest. There is light edgewear, browning and a couple of small holes on two folds, some brown spots and a half-inch split along the bottom of the fold in the middle. e) The Agenovia was captained by Jabez Barney and sailing from St. Lucia, in Jamaica, to Bath, Maine. The American schooner was built in Hallowell, Maine, it was owned by Fillibrown & Stratton, weighed 125 tons, and carried rum, sugar, coffee, and lime; it has inspector’s initials along the left hand side and was signed by William Webb on July 27, 1796, and it has the No. 12 on the front of the manifest. There is light browning along the folds, a small chip at the top, and two small holes on the middle fold. f) The Nancy was an American ship built in Hallowell, Maine, and sailing from Liverpool, England to Philadelphia and Bath, Maine, with cargo that included coal, salt, mint, and glass, it was captained by Joshua Lord and owned by Lord and Peter Grant, weighed 244 tons, the customs officer, William Webb, attested the manifest was correct on June 12, 1797, and it has No. 8 on the front of the manifest. A ship named the Nancy was shipwrecked in Ireland on a voyage from Savannah, Georgia to Lancashire, England; we don’t know when this happened, but we assume it was the same ship, and if the manifest was signed in June 1797, we believe the shipwreck must have occurred after that date. There is a three-inch split along the horizontal seam, a half-inch tear at the top, an L-shaped tear near William Webb’s signature at the bottom, and light wear at the tips. The manifests all measure about 16 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. wide and even with the minor blemishes, they are solid pieces and can be an invaluable resource for the maritime historian, especially if the manifests were related to the slave trade. #3541 #75