Includes: Copy letter from John Cryder to William Wetmore. Marked "Private". 4 pp. July 4, 1835. * Letter from John Cryder to William Wetmore. Regarding legal troubles "...a suit had been brought against me by Ireland Co...I think all the trouble I ever had in my life put together, was not equal to those produced by the shame of such an affair at the very moment when I was entering on the most brilliant career ever a person did....but good God Wetmore, why did you lay yourselves & me open to such an affair as this..." 4 pp. August 8, 1835. * A lengthy letter from John Cryder in London to Wetmore in Canton. Marked "Private". With mention of trade in opium and much regarding the expected success of the company "I think this year W & Co. with make twenty to thirty thousand pounds if we have no bad debt." 15 pp. April 3, 1836. * Letter from Samuel Wetmore in Canton to William Wetmore. Regarding the depressed state of the market in Canon. With some discussion of the Canton tea crop and the shipping of Opium. 10 pp. March 8, 1837. * Document comprising extracts of letters to W.J. Hale between 1836 & 1840 regarding shipment of various goods. 22 pp. After March 27, 1840. * Letter to William Wetmore from his representatives in Canton regarding difficulties in collecting payment and requesting the forwarding of funds. 9 pp. December 3, 1837. * Copy letter from Wetmore & Co. in Canton to Mssrs. Sanderson, Fry, Fox, et al. of London. regarding the shipment and sale of teas. 3 pp. January 9, 1838. * A letter addressed to Mary, from an unspecified sender. 3 pp. Dated Canton, October 14, 1838. * A copy letter from Wetmore in Canton to John Cryder. Regarding the business difficulties surrounding the inappropriate use by Cryder of correspondence deemed Private by its sender. 13 pp. December 12, 1838. * Letter from W.S. Wetmore to Richard Alsop, with discussion of tea cargos and other matters. 5 pp. June 9, 1839.
Important archive of letters written to one of the leading Yankee merchants in the heyday of the China Trade, from fellow merchants, business partners, and employees around the globe. William Shepard Wetmore (Jan. 26, 1801-June 16, 1862) was born in Vermont, and raised by his aunt and uncle in Connecticut following the death of his mother when he was one years old. William’s uncle, Samuel Wetmore, was a merchant and at age 14 William went to sea. In 1823, he was shipwrecked near Valparaiso, to which port he had gone as supercargo of one of the ships of Edward Carrington & Co., of Providence, a business partner of his uncle. In Valparaiso he went to work for the firm Richard Alsop of Middletown, Connecticut. This eventually led to a partnership of Alsop, Wetmore and Cryder in 1825 with John Cryder of Philadelphia. He retired from the firm around 1831, and, apparently on advice from his doctor, left for Canton, China where in 1833 he established the firm of Wetmore & Co. with Joseph Archer of Philadelphia. The company went on to be one of the largest mercantile houses in the East Indies brokering tea, tea papers, silks, spices, wines, ports, hemp, pearl buttons, copper and coffee, and on occasion opium, though apparently in lesser quantities than rival British houses.