“To a Hogshead of Rum”

Frontier Commerce on the Lord’s Day:  Dupui’s General Store Ledger, 1743-1753

Abstract:

This essay announces an offbeat discovery:  a full decade of mid-eighteenth century Sunday retail shopping on the Pennsylvania frontier.  One might logically assume that in as much as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had “Blue Laws” on the books since 1682, along with a bevy of religious institutions endorsing and promoting these righteous admonitions against toil and labor on the Sabbath, that commerce conducted on Sundays in the mid-eighteenth century would have universally been regarded as anathema – yet an analysis of Nicolas Dupui’s backcountry general store ledger reveals that for the period of a full decade, the Pennsylvania frontier routinely countenanced instances of Sunday shopping.  This essay will serve to document this anomalous episode and to account for those sets of causes responsible for the rapid rise and fall of Sunday shopping in the remote frontier wilderness of Penn’s Woods.

ENTRIES IN THE DUPUI TRADING POST LEDGER commenced in the early winter of 1743. 

On Sunday December 15^th of that year, a number of credit-based transactions were logged to the account of Garret Decker.  He had purchased a quire of paper, a paper of ink powder, two papers of pins, a knife and fork set, a yard of broadcloth, six yards of Nonesopritty and a gallon of rum.  For Garret, this was a special day, but not because a pre-Christmas shopping spree had secured the blessing of presents for his wife Susannah.   As a baptized member of the Reformed Dutch Church, Garret was keenly aware that Christmas [Kersdag] was not a celebrated feast day and not a day specific to exchanging gifts.  Christmas was just another day to do the Lord’s work.  So no, this day was special for another very important reason:   today capped off a week’s worth of Grand Opening celebrations at Dupui’s trading post and general store.  A good two dozen of his neighbors and fellow congregants had been there to revel in this momentous event, and while Garret was the very first among the faithful to shop at this well-provisioned establishment on a Sunday, he would certainly be far from the last.  In the year 1744, Dupui’s credit/debit ledger reported no less than nineteen Sundays during which the store conducted business (including Apr. 5th, 1744, Easter Sunday). [1]

Garret’s wife, Susannah DePui Decker, had no particular qualms about making purchases on a Sunday.  After all, it was her father, Nicolas Dupui, the post’s proprietor, who had erected the Old Stone Church on the property at Shawnee-on-Delaware, who had retained the services of the Reverend Johanus Casper Freemoutt and who had provided the minister with a house and horse of his own.   If her father, as an officer of the Reformed Dutch Church, had no particular issues with opening his store for business on the Lord’s Day, then it would be far from apropos for her to gainsay such activity.  As a well-informed member of the landed gentry, Susannah knew quite well that the law on this matter was clear: “Whoever does or performs any worldly employment or business whatsoever on the Lord's day, commonly called Sunday, works of necessity and charity only exempted, or uses or practices any game, hunting, shooting, sport or diversion whatsoever on the same day not authorized by law…”is guilty [2].   Everybody knew the law, and everyone knew how to turn a blind eye to the law when it suited their purpose. 

Neither would the honorable Rev. Freemoutt speak a contrary word regarding the ills of Sunday shopping as long as the pews of his church were filled.  The good reverend was a consummate pragmatist who long-recognized the exasperating character of his own congregation, a flock that just wasn’t prone to abiding by what others might have deemed to be mandatory religious obligations.  As noted in the "Register of the Acts, Which have been Passed by the Rev. Consistory of this Congregation",

1741, Aug. 30.     Whereas some among us, in and outside of this congregation, are unwilling to contribute to the Minister's salary, and yet wish to avail themselves of his services, it is decided by the consistory that each person, who will not contribute to the salary of the Minister, shall pay for a child, that they wish baptized, six shillings, three of which shall go to the consistory, and three to the Minister, for the registration. [3] 

If the requisite religious duty to pay for the services of one’s own minister was only being honored in the breech, with the proverbial collection plate as empty as a church on a week-day, then no Sunday sermon in Dupui’s Smithfield plantation would ever be composed that would serve to further rile these skinflint parishioners, such as a timely ministerial discourse on the merits of honoring the Third Commandment.

Congregations were like easily-spooked flocks that could bolt in a heartbeat; they had to be properly managed by a good and stalwart shepherd.  Already there were signs of significant competition from the Minisink’s itinerant Moravian ministers who would soon be preaching to “a promiscuous audience of Swedes, English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Germans, Walloons, Shawanese, Mohawks, Delawares, and Catawbas”. [4]   Complicating matters further, the area’s Presbyterians were even now of a mind to construct their own Meeting-House in the vicinity and to share such space with the Lutherans.   While the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s had indeed spurred a significant religious revival, competition was truly never good for the business of religion, and the reverend Freemoutt had still yet another reason to be cautiously wary:  he was currently serving in the capacity of minister without the benefit of actually having been validly ordained. [5]   As such, it would most certainly not be prudent to antagonize either this vexatious congregation or the honorable Dupui at whose pleasure he served.  Sunday shopping would not – at this time – be challenged by the Church.

As to proprietor Dupui, he was somewhat of a cantankerous old man; it didn’t pay to get on his bad side.  Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in this anecdote drawn from the travelogue of Moravian Count Zinzendorf who on his August 1742 journey to New York’s Mahican Shecomeco mission village secured a modicum of respite at the Dupui home:  “In the evening we reached the bank of the Delaware, and came to Mr. De Pui's, who is a large landholder, and wealthy. While at his house, he had some Indians arrested for robbing his orchard.” [6]  Nicolas Dupui, like many of the wealthiest Pennsylvania merchants of the day, was evidently somewhat of a law unto himself, offering short shrift to dictates, rules and conventions.  While others might have graciously invited the hungry Indians in for a meal, Dupui instead opted to charge them with theft.  It was precisely these kind of haughty high-handed antics that would have resonated well with Pennsylvania deputy governor Patrick Gordon (1726-1736), a man prone to giving “huge feasts and balls,” a man who “drank toasts, ordered cannon firings, and promoted bonfires” and “often held these events on the Lord's Day, much to the displeasure of strict Sabbatarians.” [7]   A trend toward greater secularization was being played out at the very highest levels of government, and Dupui, a consummate merchandiser, was quick to recognize and exploit this emerging trend.  With the Sabbath in the Commonwealth rapidly becoming liberalized (as evinced by those deliberately ostentatious behaviors unabashedly on display within the political realm), Dupui resolved that he too would play his part in this transformative secular revolution.  That which once would have been deemed to be conduct both thoroughly sacrilegious and unlawful was now steadily coming to be regarded as perfectly normative.   Dupui would see to it that shopping on Sundays would become the “new normal” (at least on his corner of the Pennsylvania frontier). [8] 

Yet in the midst of all this profound change, there was one element that would never change – the backcountry craving for an alcoholic brew on Sunday: 

·         To a Quart of Rum for Barney Stroud

·         To a Quart of Rum for Anthony Maxwell

·         To a Hogshead of Rum Containing 107 gallons for James Hyndshaw

·         To 8 Gallons & 3 Quarts of Rum for Thomas Hill

·         To a Quart of Rum for William McNab

·         To ½ a Gallon of Rum for Johannes Courtright

·         To a Gallon of Rum for Delectis

·         To a Quart of Rum for Samuel Holmes, Sr.

All of these transactions for rum transpired on Sundays, with the prodigious 107-gallon hogshead of rum procured by local sawmill operator James Hyndshaw, on Sunday May 10th 1744, serving to confirm the inordinate popularity of this commodity.  One also notes that, at this early date, Dupui’s store apparently did not additionally function as either a tavern or as a yaugh house.  No sales for either rum or whiskey are recorded with pricing reflective of drinks by the gill (a matter that would change during the period of the French and Indian War when the premises were occupied by a rather thirsty company of militia).  Sales of rum during this decade were typically for off-premises consumption as shown by this entry found in the account of Daniel Broadhead:  “To 3 Gallons of Rum on the Raising of his House”.  As such collective drinking was always a convivial matter, one takes no surprise in seeing an entry in the account of Samuel Dupui which reflected a charge of six pence “to your part of a Quart of Rum in Company”.

The curious reader might well inquire:  was it only rum and household goods that were purchased on Sundays, or were the purchases a tad more expansive?  Some Sunday purchases, such as the beaver hat for Joseph Wheeler, were for purposes of personal vanity.  Anthony Maxwell bought a pair of leather breeches, John Burk secured a fine tooth comb and James Walling picked up an old jacket.  Other purchases on the Lord’s Day were a bit more substantial, such as the two hogs for John McDowell and the horses bought by Yourian Tappen and Peter Casey.  The most frequent transaction for commodities other than rum was, somewhat surprisingly, for “cash”.  In this era of barter and trade, cash was still needed for a variety of purposes, such as the payment of rent, for official warrants and other such legal matters, or to compensate workers.  As the area’s only cash machine, it becomes important to recognize and credit the Dupui role as a banking institution that served to accommodate its clients currency needs even on Sundays.  Outlays of cash were extended to the Schoolmaster, to Edwart Robinson’s wife, to Katharine Rossagrance and to Allida Kuykandal, among others.  One notes with a certain amount of satisfaction that a great many women on this frontier had their own credit accounts at Dupui’s general store.

The store offered just about everything that a fashionable woman of the day could desire.  Clothing and accessories ranged from a pair of pumps and “the Remains of a pair of Stockins” (bought by Nelly Malholen), to silk handkerchiefs, fine tooth combs and looking glasses.  Fabrics included broadcloth, stroud, muslin, kersey, frize, callicoe, shalloon, buckram, ozenbrigs, garlix and linen.  A hankering for trims would be rewarded by silk laces, gartering, sticks of mohair and assorted buttons and buckles.  Fine furs such as beaver and fox could also be purchased, and one could even buy (for £33) “a Negro boy”.   Foodstuffs were aplenty and included fine and course middlins, bran, wheat, Indian corn, peas, oats and the occasional side of bacon.  Should one be tempted to keep a diary or household records, quires of paper and papers of ink powder were also available.  Then too, there is this highly revealing ledger entry in Thomas Barrow’s account that serves to cast yet another light on items making it into a woman’s shopping bag:  “To a Quart of Rum your wife had”. 

Truly, Dupui’s General store was a shopper’s paradise.  With everything from gunpowder, shot and lead, to wagons, canoes, saddles and scythes, the store was the Wal-Mart of its day, open for business seven days a week.  While Sunday shopping admittedly tapered off somewhat after 1744, there were still numerous Sundays in 1745 in which commerce was transacted.  In fact, Sunday shopping at Dupui’s general store continued unabated until the autumn of 1753 at which point it suddenly disappeared from the ledger record.   At issue is the cause responsible for the death of Sunday shopping.  What triggered the abrupt end of this trailblazing retail phenomenon on the remote frontier? 

1752 marked the year that the Presbyterians elected to build their Meeting-House in Smithfield.  This one defining event had a staggeringly profound effect:  it prompted an ecclesiastical schism within the Minisink’s Consistory of the Reformed Dutch Church.  Up until that point, the Smithfield church had been one of four area congregations that had enjoyed the services of a shared minister (the others being the churches at Minisink, Machackemeck and Walpack).  In 1753, the Consistory of Smithfield withdrew from this arrangement. [9]  The reason?  They now absolutely had to have the benefit of a dedicated full-time minister in light of the local competition that had seen the newly-built Presbyterian Meeting-House opened up to Lutherans as well as to other insufficiently satisfied members of the Dutch Reformed Church.  Nothing less than an always-on-the-premises ministry would suffice (as this was truly a war for men’s very souls).  Church officers, such as Nicholas Dupui, understood their fiduciary duty to safeguard the interests of the faith, and they would perforce re-embrace all traditional religious norms for the sake of their Church, opting to necessarily honor all ten of the commandments.  The days of Sunday shopping on the Pennsylvania frontier were now officially over.  Religious values had triumphed over emergent secularism and the Lord’s Day would continue to be properly honored (at least until the advent of the mid-twentieth century). [10] 

A Sunday toast to Nicolas Dupui!

Notes: