Series 43. US Mail Steam Ship Company (1848-1868)
Scope and Content
The series consists of letter books (both transcribed and letterpress copies) of Marshall O. Roberts, New York agent for the US Mail Steam Ship Company; logs of ships on voyages between New York and Panama via New Orleans and Havana, and from Panama to California; a checkbook; a provision list; and both blank and completed tickets and contracts for passage aboard various ships on US Mail Steam Ship Company and other companies' vessels on these routes.
Robert's 1848-1849 and 1848-1850 letter books (Volumes 1 and 2) are indexed by recipients. Some of the logbooks document various commanding officers and multiple journeys back and forth along the same maritime routes between New York and San Francisco. They include details of weather, winds, other vessels passed, and crew actions, but do not otherwise document shipboard life. The provisions list is a preprinted listing of possible foodstuffs and other supplies needed for voyages, with blanks to be filled in with the name of vessel, estimate of passengers and number of days of travel, and the amount of each supply. The checkbook consists predominantly of blank checks; a few have been drawn. The foldered receipts and tickets appear to have been removed from ledger volumes of the same type as the SS Antelope tickets in Volume 9.
Historical Note
Complete transcontinental railroad travel became possible in 1869 and direct shipping from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1914 with the completion of the Panama Canal. Before then, travel between New York and the West coast required sailing to the Atlantic coast of Panama (usually with stops en route in New Orleans, Havana, and sometimes Jamaica), transit across the isthmus, followed by the Pacific journey to San Francisco. The Atlantic harbor in Panama was Chagras until 1855, when it was moved to Aspinwall (founded in 1850 and named for railway builder William Aspinwall; renamed Colon in 1890).
Marshall O. Roberts in 1847 had purchased the contract to provide mail steamships to the US government. He would realize enormous profits from the shipping demands of the California Gold Rush and the Civil War. The US Mail Steam Ship Company operated on the Atlantic coast of the United States, and William H. Aspinwall's Pacific Mail Steamship Company on the Pacific. Transit across the isthmus was by mule, wagon, or foot until 1851 when the Vanderbilt Line opened a route through Nicaragua. In 1855 the isthmus railroad connection was inaugurated.
Arrangement
The materials are arranged chronologically by material type except for the three logbooks of Georgia, which are grouped together for continuity.