WELCOME TO SALLY’S DIARIES:

Before I get started describing this piece, I want to let you know that I have a podcast. I’ve taken some diaries from my private collection and shared them on our podcast called “Diary Discoveries.” We’ve got 64 episodes out now and you can find it on all the usual podcast venues. So if you enjoy the compelling and adventurous stories from vintage diaries then please check it out.

Plus, I was asked to do a TEDx talk in Vienna about this very thing, collecting diaries, and if you are interested in this sort of thing just put into the search engines “10,000 diaries” and you should come up with it. It was a privileged and blessing to be able to share what I’ve learned in the last 36 years. And with all that said……

First off the sepia photo showing the building and the black and white newspaper add for “Carpets” are just ones I copied off the web.

Up for auction today is a rare 1860’s receipt book that belonged to the S. W. Woolsey & Son’s Company of Brooklyn New York. Woolsey sold to some very wealthy and prominent merchants and one of them was W. & J. Sloane Co. who was a chain of furniture stores that originated from a luxury furniture and rug store in New York City that catered to the prominent, including the White House and the Breakers, and wealthy, including the Rockefeller, Whitney, and Vanderbilt families. This name and signature is all over this journal. I looked up a few more names and I learned some very interesting facts (see at the end of this description).

The man who is behind this journal and this company is Samuel Waters Woolsey. I don’t know exactly when he started his business but this journal is for the years 1866 and 1867, just after the Civil War. There are 106 pages (counting front and back) of handwritten entries (receipt type entries) and between 2-4 two cent Revenue stamps per page. The Revenue stamps were first used in the United States in 1862 to pay for primarily documents and goods. Items such as legal documents, alcohol, tobacco, playing cards, patent medicines, photographs and luxuries, including “carpet.” Cancellation was usually done in pen and ink. Between each page is a light lavender blotter pieces of paper.

Samuel Water Woolsey was born in 1817 in New York. His parents were John Woolsey and Rebecca (Waters) Woolsey. Again, I’m not sure when he began his carpet store but the 1860 census records show him owning one. He had two wives, Ellen J. Atkinson who died in 1867 and then Elizabeth Thompson who passed away in 1877. He had one daughter by the name of Sarah Frances and she married Edward McGarvey Sr. and he would soon take over the Woolsey Co. and become President.

As shown above I found two photographs of the buildings Woolsey owned. I’m sure there was an earlier one for the 1860’s and 70’s because the sepia photo is from the 1920’s and then the “11 Fillmore Place” historical description says that Woolsey bought this building in the 1880’s.

I did find the following obituary for Samuel….

“The Brooklyn Union Newspaper.

Friday, November 27^th, 1885

Death of Samuel Woolsey. Mr. Samuel Woolsey, of the firm of Woolsey & Son, carpet dealers at 167 Grand Street, E.D., was found dead in bed yesterday morning, at his residence, 84 Morton Street. Mr. Woolsey was 76 years of age and has been in business in the Eastern District for more than thirty years. He had not, however, been actively engaged in business for a number of years.”

As you can imagine there are tons of handwritten signatures and names in this notebook/journal. I would say there are at least 3 names per page (some of course being repeat buyers) with some pages having 4 names, so that makes between 300-400 names/entries. I wish I had time to look them all up to see why they purchased the carpets, who they were in society, etc. Here are just a few of the many names represented:

Wiggins & Co., L. Edgerton, A. T. Stewart & Co., George C. Richardson & Co., L. B. Chittenden & Co. Draper, Paton & Co., W. J. Sloane, Geo. E. Hyatt, Hoyt Spragues & Co., C. M. Bailey, Beattzon Boak, E. F. Many & Co., DeWolf & Knapp, Alden Sampson & Sons., Joseph Wild, Wisner H. Townsend, A. Cummings Agt., Geo. W. Carpenter, Barlow Stevens, Arnold Constable & Co., Ansel E. Shaw, and more.

Then this is a few fun facts for some of the names found in this journal:

Wisner H. Townsend - Either fell or jumped from a third story window and died in 1897.

A. T. Stewart & Co. - "A. T. Stewart & Co." was a 19th-century New York luxury dry goods department store and a pioneer in the American department store model, founded by Alexander Turney Stewart. The store became known as the "Marble Palace" due to its striking white marble facade and was located at the corner of Chambers Street and Broadway. The company was a significant force in American retail, introducing features like the first mail-order business for female customers and later expanding into luxury mansions, manufacturing, and even planning the planned community of Garden City, Long Island.”

Alden Sampson & Sons – Oil cloth manufacturers and also big collectors in Chinese porcelain.

Arnold Constable & Co. - Arnold Constable & Company was a department store chain in the New York City metropolitan area. At one point it was the oldest department store in America, operating for over 150 years from its founding in 1825 to its closing in 1975. At the company's peak, its flagship "Palace of Trade" in Manhattan – located at 881-887 Broadway at East 19th Street, through to 115 Fifth Avenue – was acknowledged to be the store which took the largest portion of the "carriage trade", in New York, serving the rich and elite of the city, such as the wives of Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

And that’s just a few I looked up! Now as far as the condition of this journal, it has a beautiful leather type cover with a gold embossed design but it’s in poor shape as the spine is torn on the outside and although the covers are attached they are loose. A piece of the spine itself has fallen off but is accounted for. Could use some archival repair. The very first page of the journal is loose and there are three receipts glued to it. The journal measures about 4 1/2” x 7 3/4” and it’s 3/4” thick.