Coldengham, New York
Store of Cadwallader Colden, Jr.
Rum!
250 years ago today, 15 separate persons shopped at the Colden store and bought 53 items. See below.
Two of those persons were women and one of them, Mrs. Daniel McMullen, purchased the largest number of items of anyone on that day.See the first 13 of her 15 items below.
One of her purchases was rum. That was not a unique purchase at the store. On that day 6 of the 15 persons included rum in their purchases. Between August 1767 and January 18, 1768 (about 5 months) about 540 gallon of rums were sold by the store.
There were two grades of rum sold at the store: Y Rum and W Rum. The Y Rum was priced between 3/4 and 3/9 and the more expensive W Rum between 5/ and 5/6. [I use the same shorthand used in the DayBook. '5/6' means 5 Shillings and 6 Pence.]
Occasionally the 'Y' and 'W' are followed by superscripts which are difficult to decipher. In the case of 'W' the superscript appears to be 't' or even 'st.' It could stand for 'West Indies Rum' which was imported in great quantity into the colonies. It would also explain the higher price.
My guess at the meaning of the 'Y' is that it stood for 'York' Rum. New York City was referred to as York City or just 'York' in those times. But the rum could have been from other sources. It is estimated that at the time of the Revolution there were over 150 distilleries in New England.
The customers must have brought their own containers because there are a few entries where the customer purchased both a container and the rum.
Rum is made from sugar cane products, usually molasses. Molasses was also a common purchase at the store. Between August 1767 and January 18, 1768 (about 5 months) about 125 gallon of molasses were sold by the store. I think it is unlikely that the purchasers had distilling equipment for rum manufacture. It is more likely that the molasses was used for making home brewed beers. [See colonial recipe for Molasses Beer in Kimberly Walters' Book of Cookery]
You can read more about rum consumption in the colonies here: http://theplate.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/10/rum-the-spirit-that-fueled-a-revolution/
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