(TRAVEL) Archive of Joseph Slocum and his business dealings

Sale 2486 - Lot 387

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Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(TRAVEL.) Archive of Joseph Slocum and his business dealings with Russia. 24 items in one folder: 12 letters to Slocum, 1834-50; 8 business cards; 3 receipts, 1834-52; and an essay; various sizes and conditions. Vp, 1834-52 and undated

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Joseph Slocum (1800-1853) was a Quaker merchant from Syracuse, NY who marketed farm equipment to Russia. His daughter Margaret Olivia later married the renowned financier Russell Sage. This collection includes a 4-page manuscript essay titled "A Few Rough Hints About the Productive Power Of Russian Agriculture" which Slocum apparently had translated from the Russian at St. Petersburg in 1846. One letter was written by Jacobus "James" Roosevelt III (1760-1847), great-grandfather of Franklin D. Roosevelt, dated 6 June 1834. Roosevelt comments on Slocum's Russian travels, apparently with some sarcasm: "When I saw you shaking hands with a commander . . . & treading the soil of a despot, there's a Republican for you, I said to myself." Also included are an 1843 letter to Slocum in English from Lev Perovsky, Minister of the Interior for Nicholas I, acknowledging a gift of several agricultural implements to the Agronomical School. Charles Cramer, an important merchant in the Russian trade, wrote from St. Petersburg on 24 October 1846, advising that Henry Clay could not help solve Slocum's business dispute, and observing that "your experience has sufficiently proved the fallacy of your high expectations." Two letters are from an official at the Imperial Garden (J.S.L. Fisher?), who advises: "It is now of great importance to us to get good flowering and fruit specimens" (25 October 1846).