1791 -- WHISKEY
              INSURRECTION

The Whiskey Act, intended to generate revenue for the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War, became law in March 1791.   

At first glance, it appears that the passage of the Act didn't seem to have had any appreciable impact on the Dupui family business.  Although one might have expected the Dupui merchants to once more put a freeze on customer credit arrangements (as had been past practice whenever storm clouds had appeared on the horizon), credit-based transactions continued unabated, and yet something was nevertheless very much awry, something at the store was palpably and discernably wrong...

The entirety of 1791 saw only two customers conducting business at Dupui's store, John DeLong and Patrick White.  Finally, in April of 1792, customer DeLong made the store's last recorded purchase:  8 quarts of seed corn, 2 bushels of rye, and 1 1/2 bushels of potatoes.  Thereafter, no new purchase entries would ever again appear in the Dupui ledger.  DeLong's account would ultimately be settled in May of 1793 "By Cash 4 Dollars". 

The end of a mercantile dynasty... and yet one simultaneously notes a truly remarkable surge of area settlement during this particular time period.  In the Monroe County map presented below, all of the tracts denoted in red obtained their land surveys in the 1790s.   ...apologies that the map is not fully filled in as yet... revisions are forthcoming.