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Robinson, Edward.

[Manuscript account book of a Thomaston, Maine shipbuilder, merchant, and politician.]

Thomaston, Maine, 1853–1862. 15.25” x 6.5”, half brown leather and marbled blue paper over boards. 156 pp. manuscript, mostly in ink, a few pp. in pencil, 3.5 pp. scratch calculations at end of volume, plus pastedown and first leaf, numerous blank pp. throughout. 9 pieces of printed and manuscript ephemera (notes and calculations in ink and pencil, a slip from the New England Mutual Marine Insurance Company, a newspaper clipping, a circular, and so on. CONDITION: Good, leather chipped at head and foot of spine, wear to covers, layers of front board beginning to separate; binding firm, contents very good.

A daybook kept in the years preceding his death by respected Maine shipbuilder and politician Edward Robinson, recording business accounts as well as some correspondence, and used in the years following his death by his wife and son to record household expenses.

The first forty-four pages of this volume contain copies (or drafts) of Robinson’s business correspondence—including numerous letters regarding and a materials list for the construction of a new ship—and various accounting records of the voyages, cargos, and maintenance of several ships (including the brig Pulaski, the schooner Marblehead, and others) sailing to New York, Philadelphia, Leghorn (i.e., Livorno, Italy), Genoa, Cuba, and so on. Two letters, both dated from January 1857 in a different hand, suggest Robinson may have had his wife or son write for him. Subsequent entries are occasionally signed “P G Robinson” (Penelope G. Fales Robinson, his third and last wife) and “Edward L. Robinson” (fourth child and first son) and record taxes and a wide variety of household expenses.

Edward Robinson was born in Cushing, Maine in 1796 and as a youth “commenced coasting between Thomaston and Boston. From a ‘hand’ he worked his way steadily up to master of ship, going [on] foreign voyages till about the year 1836,” when he settled in Thomaston and entered the ship-building business (“The Late”). He served in the State Senate in 1836 and 1837, was elected to Congress (to fill a vacancy) from 1838 to 1839, and in 1841 and ’42 made an unsuccessful big for the Governor’s office, as a Whig. He “engaged in mercantile pursuits, banking, and shipbuilding until his death in Thomaston” (“Robinson”).

REFERENCES: “Robinson, Edward,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress online; “The Late Hon. Edward Robinson,” Bangor Journal, March 19, 1857, p. 3.

Item #9958

Price: $950.00

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