Coldengham, New York
Store of Cadwallader Colden, Jr.
Pins
250 years ago today, was twice as busy as the normal day at the Colden store. The DayBook records 60 transactions on 21 different accounts. George Booth included a paper of pins among his four transactions. Pins were a common purchase at the store.
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This article is one in a series of a daily accountings of Colden Store transactions. Be sure you read the first installment for an introduction to the store. You should also read this article which appeared in the Journal of the Orange County Historical Society.
Pins must have been a versatile item in the household at the time. Rees (see below) wrote in 1819 that their principal use was "by the women in adjusting their dress." In the prior six months, Colden had sold 72 papers of pins.
The sales are recorded as "1 paper pins." My interpretation of that is not that the pins were to be used on paper, but that the pins came in units of "1 paper." Pins were stuck in a piece of paper (as many are today) as a convenience in shipping, counting, and storing.
The 1819 Cyclopaedia by Rees has a rather long section describing the manufacture of pins. Pins were made from brass by thousands of craftsmen in English pin-making factories in the early 1800s.
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