Coldengham, New York
Store of Cadwallader Colden, Jr.
Copperas
The store had no entries for Monday, April 18, but that may have been an error. It is likely that these entries, labeled April 19th, were actually transacted on the 18th. Colden and his clerks had problems with the dates during the prior few days. They appear to have skipped April 16 and no one seemed to noticed.
David Craig was one of the shoppers on this day, 250 years ago. One of his purchases was one-half pound of copperas (spelled copres, coppres, copras, and coperas in the DayBook) for the price of one-half shilling (six pence). Copperas was the common name at the time for iron sulfate used in black dyes.
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| Ferrous sulfate or Copperas. Image courtesy of Benjah-bmm27 - Own work - Public Domain. |
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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.
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Webster's 1828 definition for copperas was "Sulphate of iron, or green vitriol; a salt of a peculiar astringent taste, and of various colors, green, gray, yellowish, or whitish, but more usually green. It is much used in dyeing black and in making ink, and in medicine, as a tonic. The copperas of commerce is usually made by the decomposition of iron pyrites. The term copperas was formerly synonymous with vitriol, and included the green, blue and white vitriols, or the sulphates of iron, copper and zink."
In the prior eight months, Colden sold about three pounds of copperas in six transactions.
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There were no transactions in the DayBook on Wednesday, April 20. Whether this was a special day, a clerking error, or just Colden's discretionary closure is not known.
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