James Doherty -- Rifle & Gun Maker

Doherty, James D., b. abt. 1812, Ireland, d. ________, rifle & gun maker. The adjacent ad ran in the Petersburg’s papers noting James Doherty as a “practical gun maker, on Bollingbrook Street, in the late 1850’s.

The 1850 Petersburg's census reported: James Doherty age 40, gunsmith; Mary Doherty age 40; M. J. Doherty, age 9, VA; James Doherty, age 14, N.Y.; Mary Doherty, age 6, VA; Ann Doherty, age 2, VA.

James D. Doherty, rifle & gun maker was listed in the 1860 Petersburg’s census, age 48, living in Centre Ward with Margaret, age 47, Ireland; M. Jas. Doherty, 24, New York, machinist; Mary J. Doherty, age 17; Margaret Doherty, age 14; Ann Doherty, age 12; Henry James, age 30, England, gunsmith

Brown, Alexander, merchant

The merchant and banker Alexander Brown (1764-1834) became one of America's first millionaires. He was a leading promoter of the city of Baltimore.

Alexandern Brown, a linen wholesaler who emigrated from Ballymena, Ireland, during the late 1790s, Brown resumed his trade upon arriving in Baltimore, announcing in the Federal Gazette a "most complete assortment of 4-4 and 7-8 Irish linen . . . which will be sold by the box or piece for cash or good acceptance within the city on usual credit." After 1803, however, he abandoned the linen trade, making changes to both the commerical and financial aspects of his business. He began purchasing cotton from an agent in Savannah, Georgia, for export toLiverool, England,and quickly became Balimore's most prosperous cotton merchant.70 In addition to the profits from the cotton trade, Brown also acted as a broker for English bills of exchange in Petersburg, Virginia, and then resold them to importers of English goods in Baltimore who needed ready capital accepable to British firms. As the British pound sterling remained the chief exchange Currency in trans-Atlantic trade during the nineteenth century, the brokerage business produced a steady income. Unlike amny eighteeth-century merchants who gambled on bold adventures that produced either spectacular profits or dreadful loses, Brown avoided speculation and invested his capital in enterprises like cotton and brokerage that promised minimal risk. The new endeavors were profitable and provided a steady income; by 1810, Brown had increased his firm's capital to $121,000.71
Although Brown's achivements were impressive, few merchants processed his commerical acumen. Despite the mercantile community's best efforts, the export tradehad reached a plateau and ceased to be the primary engine of economic growth for the city's economy after 1800.

70. Mark Pringle too Lubbock, Colt, and Co., Feb. 14, 1797, Mark Pringle Letterbook, MS 580, MdHS; Robert and John Oliver to Robert Forster, Jun. 26, 1797, OliverRecords Books, vol. 3, MdHS; and Federal Gazette and Balimore Daily Advertiser, Dec. 20, 1800.
71. Browne, Baltimore in the Nation, 92, and Edwin Perins, Financing Anglo-American Trade: The House of Brown, 1800-1880 (Cambridge, MA, 1975), 19-23.
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Certain Victims of an International Contagion: The Panic of 1797 and the Hard Times of the Late 1790s in Baltimore Author(s): Richard S. Chew Source: Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 565-613 Publisher(s): University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Stable.

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30043365