RICE! July 25, 1768 at the Colden Store, Coldengham, New York

Monday, July 25, 1768
Coldengham, New York
Store of Cadwallader Colden, Jr.

Rice

Colden sold seven pounds of rice to four customers (twenty-eight pounds total) at his store on this day, 250 years-ago. Colden sold two pounds of rice in the prior September, but with that exception, no rice had been sold at the store until recently. It appears that Colden had brought back several seven pound sacks of rice from his recent procurement trip to New York.

Colden Day Book Entries for Rice for July 25, 1768.

This day at the store was the busiest yet recorded in the DayBook. The number of items sold totalled 182!

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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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Just a few days prior, on July 18, 1768, news from South Carolina appeared in the New-York Post Boy. The dispatch bragged of the economy in that colony, pointing to the large exports of rice. "Thousands of barrels of rice" had been exported from South Carolina in the past year. Perhaps some of those exports had found their way north to New York.

The British Dictionary of Traded Goods and Commodities 1550-1820 contains this comment on 'Carolina Rice.'

"RICE from Carolina, one of the southern states of the United States of America. According to John Houghton, the growing of rice in that area was introduced by a Mr Ashby, who 'was encourag'd to send a hundred pound bag full of rice to Carolina: from which rice, I am told, came last year hither sixty tun' [Houghton]. According to Toussant-Samat, however, the introduction came about after some enterprising colonists planted rice found on board a ship wreck [Toussaint-Samat (1987)]. Whichever way rice was introduced, the growth of rice in these southern states suited the slave economy entrenched there. Certainly it was well established by the mid-eighteenth century, with a reference to rice carried from southern Carolina and Georgia in an act of 1765 [Acts (1765)]. Carolina rice may already have been distinguished by a higher proportion of starch compared with other rices, for instance for a later period Simmonds states that it consists of 80 per cent starch, and by a more rounded grain [Simmonds (1906)]. In which case rice from Carolina would easily have been distinguishable. It seems to have been promoted by fashionable retailers, and was offered both whole and GROUND [Tradecards (19c.)]."

Rice was sold at the Colden store on nine occasions. [The DayBook is not fully transcribed at this date, so there may be more sales not yet revealed. The rice sales appear to be clustered in the latter part of the DayBook which is the part not yet transcribed.] Eight of those transactions were for seven pounds of rice sold for two-and-one-third shillings (4d per pound). It appears that the rice came in seven pound bags.

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