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Mitchell, Frederick.

[Ipswich Massachusetts Livery Owner’s Daybook].

Ipswich and surrounding area, 1829-1845. Narrow folio (15.5” x 6”), original half calf with marbled paper boards. 248 pp. of manuscript entries.

Day book of Frederic Mitchell, an Ipswich, Massachusetts innkeeper, recording the daily rentals from his livery.

Recorded herein are daily rents and rates for all manner of horse-drawn transportation. With customers, by and large renting chaises in the warmer months and sleighs in the winter. Beyond chaises and sleighs, Mitchell’s livery also offered carts and wagons. Those renting Mitchell’s stock are mostly bound for towns in the surrounding area, Hamilton, Haverhill, Boston, Newburyport, Lynn, Seabrook, etc., with rents ranging from $0.25 to $2.50.

Mitchell appears to have begun his career as a stage-driver with the Eastern Stage Company at the age of 18, eventually going into business for himself as a liveryman and an innkeeper. The Annual New England Directory and General Hand-book for 1878-1879 records Mitchell as still living in Ipswich at the age of 89 and comments on his career at the height of the staging business saying he “is the only person who was in anyway connected with the Eastern Stage company, at that time.”

A substantial compilation of data relating to transportation in pre-Civil War Massachusetts.

CONDITION: Boards detached, rubbed, contents good.

Item #2918

Price: $975.00