Name/Title
Letter, 1820Scope and Content
Eastport February 5th 1820
Dear Cousin,
As Mr. Neal Shaw, who is Mr. Wheeler’s clerk in this place will sail for Portland, and recollecting what you said before I started, I have taken my pen to write a short epistle to you. In this place there all kinds of people and those of almost all nations yet among these are many good men. I have boarded in the family with 4 merchants and have enquired much as to the state of trade. Most of the traders or merchants are from the Westward as are the other people of character. When the English held this island most of the merchants of this place did business at Lubec and that town increased more than this, but as soon as it was delivered up to the Americans they returned and not alone but brought others with them. Since that time the growth of the place has been astonishingly rapid. In the course of the last summer they have established a bank and built 2 new meeting houses, and they have now contracted for the frame of a third. The advantages for trade here are many. It is near the line, money is ? than with you, and there is much business done here in the summer season. Smuggling is carried on upon high scale at all seasons of the year. But a stranger knows not at first whom to trust and often loses for rogues will cross the line to escape punishment and avoid paying their debts. There is no doubt but that they will have a gaol and a courthouse here soon and make a half ? town of it. There are many men of property here, of whom I have heard it said that Mr. Wheeler my employer is the richest. The Bucknams are men of good standing. There are on this island 3 ministers 2 lawyers 2 or 3 doctors and 3 school masters besides a school mistrefs. There master & mistrefs more and the master who was a Scotsman who could read sermons to the ? But he drank a little too much Christmas Day and they dismifsed him. The mistrefs a Scottish woman had a few scholars but we divided them amongst us so that she had but one left and she could not ?
I think you had better come down and see this place next spring for I think you will like it and if you do not you will see the country and it will not cost much. Mr. Thuston told me that what goods they had sold the last summer in 7 or 8 months cost them 7,000 dollars in Boston and ? The profits could not be small. I intend to have written a letter to Uncle Pence to send by Mr. Shaw but I have not time. I have written this letter in great haste and do not know as you can read it but want of time must be my excuse as also for closing here. J Parsons
Give my love to to uncle and aunt and all enquiring friends.
I remain your affectionate cousin J Parsons, Eastport
