Series II. Business/Financial Papers, 1818, 1825-1890

The Business/Financial Series of the Leverich Papers primarily chronicles the business undertakings of Leverich & Co. and the Oak Lawn and Dogberry Plantations, and the household expenses of members of the Leverich and allied families. The collection documents the trade in a wide variety of products, but is particularly rich in material pertaining to the trade in the products of Southern agriculture before and after the Civil War. The material spans the period from 1825 to 1890, with one item from 1818. Henry S. Leverich, one of the partners in Leverich & Co., was an associate of Peter Remsen & Co. from ca. 1825 to Remsen & Co.'s dissolution in May 1835. Thus, most of the material from before May 1835 pertains to Remsen & Co.

The series is divided into several subseries on the basis of form. Foldered material is arranged chronologically by month within the subseries, based on the latest date on the document. Bound volumes are arranged chronologically, unless otherwise noted. Researchers should be able to access information via various subseries, following a transaction from account books, through invoices and receipts, through bills of lading, etc.

Very little of the material in this series was in original order, and that which was dates from before 1840. In those cases where original order was evident, it was retained. This material was originally broken down into such categories as "Petty Bills", "Bills of Lading Inward", and "Invoices Inward". It appears to have originally been tied together in bundles, which were identified with a wood or paper placard at the top of the bundle. In these cases, where the material was assigned a title by its creator, the title appears in quotation marks beneath the series title on the folder. The original order material can be found at the beginning of the Bills, Receipts, Invoices, Transferable Orders for Cotton, Payrolls, Charges; Accounts, Statements, Tabulations, Trial Balances; and Bills of Lading/Freight Receipts subseries. It is arranged chronologically by the date appearing in the title.

Early on Leverich & Co. dealt in household products such as tobacco, foodstuffs, spices, glass and glassware, and soap and also industrial products such as hemp, hides, and bulk chemicals, specifically brimstone, saltpeter and indigo. A large proportion of the firm's business in its early years entailed the import of wine from Palermo, Lisbon, and Madeira, and its reshipment to other ports in the U.S. The most noteworthy associated firm in the wine trade was J. Oliviera & Co. of Madeira and London. Leverich & Co. enjoyed a long relationship with this firm. In this early period, most of Leverich & Co.'s bulk trade in Southern produce was in sugar and sugar products, i.e. molasses and rum. The source of these products was New Orleans, and the shipments usually originated with William E. & James H. Leverich, James Colles & Co., or Joseph Lallande & Co., all of that city. At this time, Leverich & Co. had dealings with a great number of wholesalers and shippers in, as well as the above-named cities, Naples, Bristol, Liverpool, Hamburg, and Antwerp in Europe, and Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston in the United States. Other shipments came from and went to cities as far afield as Calcutta and Buenos Aires.

Gradually, in the decade after the dissolution of Remsen & Co. in 1835, Leverich & Co. expanded its dealings in Southern products. In addition to sugar, the firm began to deal in cotton and rice, with shipments of these latter products often originating in Charleston, South Carolina. Beginning at this time, Leverich & Co. began its association with James Chapman of Charleston. This relationship endured until the 1870's. Another important associate in the South Carolina trade during the antebellum period was Michael Lazarus.

Natchez, Mississippi provided another source of cotton. Natchez was the home of Dr. James A. Gustine, Stephen Duncan, and William D. Minor; Leverich & Co. acted as the factors for these three planters, arranging the sale of their produce and filling their orders for supplies. Leverich & Co. expanded its Southern trade throughout the 1840's.

Throughout the collection, beginning primarily in the 1840's, are numerous bills and receipts from New York retail stores, reflecting not only purchases for the households of Charles P. and Henry S. Leverich, but the purchases of Leverich & Co. for its Southern clients. Indeed, when the Gustine Family relocated to New York after the death of James Gustine, Leverich & Co. continued to act as agent for the family, arranging its household as well as its business affairs. Among the retail firms with whom Leverich & Co. had dealings are Brooks Brothers, Tiffany & Co., and Macy's. Scores of other retailers are represented in the collection.

Leverich & Co. continued as a commission merchant house until the Civil War. Since the firm dealt extensively in Southern products, the war significantly affected its business. This effect is reflected in the scarcity of business material from the years 1861-1865. It is worth noting, however, that the firm was able to take advantage of the ebbing of Confederate fortunes. In April of 1862, the Union Army occupied New Orleans; by the summer of that year, Leverich & Co. was receiving sugar from that city. Numerous bills from the firms of Dunne & Eagan and Robert Dillon & Co. for the mending of cotton, and from Ford's Stores for the storage of cotton indicate that as the war went on, the firm also received that commodity. From the extant papers, Leverich & Co. does not seem to have done the volume of business during the war that it did before and after it, but it did engage in both domestic and international trade.

Beginning in the 1850's, Leverich & Co. began undertaking other commercial ventures which may have softened the impact of the war on the principal source of the firm's livelihood. During this period, Leverich & Co. began dealing in "negotiable business paper". Most of the firm's transactions in negotiable paper were with Marshall Pepoon, Cammann & Co., and Francis Skiddy & Co. All of these companies were located on Wall Street in New York City. During the same decade, Leverich & Co. began to purchase stocks and bonds, both for itself and for its clients. Most of the stocks purchased in the 1840's and 1850's were of railroad companies. By the 1870's, Leverich & Co. also owned stock in gold and silver mines in California and Nevada.

After the Civil War, the mercantile activities of Leverich & Co. began to center almost exclusively on trading in cotton. The post-bellum cotton trade was considerably different from the trade as it had been practiced before the war. In the late 1860's and 1870's, Leverich & Co., for the most part, ceased to be factors for specific planters and began to purchase cotton from merchants in Southern cities, principally Winnsboro, South Carolina, Norfolk, Virginia, and New Orleans. The firm also traded cotton with other brokers in New York City. This emphasis on the cotton trade in the period after the Civil War is reflected in the volume of material from the 1870's. Almost one half of the material in the sub-series Bills, Receipts, Invoices, Transferable Orders for Cotton, Payrolls, Charges is from that decade. The bulk of this material has to do with the cotton trade. This material documents transactions between Leverich & Co. and a large number of other New York cotton brokers. Prominent among the other firms represented are Walter T. Miller & Co. and Brodie & Dubrow. Forms include Classifications, Contracts, and Transferable Orders for Cotton.

Leverich & Co. went into liquidation in 1879. The bulk of the material from 1880 to 1890 concerns the management of the Oak Lawn and Dogberry Plantations in Bayou Teche, Louisiana. The plantations had been owned by James Porter, for whom Leverich & Co. had acted as factors. By 1873, Leverich & Co. held the mortgages to both plantations, and in 1881 Edward Leverich and his wife Annie purchased them outright. The main crop of Oak Lawn and Dogberry was sugar, and much of the material involves its cultivation and processing. Other items record the workings and expenses of the plantation store, and purchases by and sales to tenants. Of particular note are the payrolls of the plantations, which record a large contingent of Chinese laborers in the plantations' workforce (see Subseries 2, Box 33, Folder 4). The last dated folder in the series contains material from 1890.