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Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,813

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This is the grave of Elias Hasket Derby.

Born in 1739 in Salem, Massachusetts, Derby grew up in the seafaring world of that town and time. His father was a ship captain and a merchant. Derby himself did not go to sea, not sure if that was his father’s choice or his. But he did focus on the merchant side of the business. From the time he was 21, he was in charge of the bookkeeping for his father’s firm and he would remain doing that until the American Revolution. It was a big business, with at least a dozen ships at any given time working the West Indies, which of course meant slavery. All (or nearly all) of these big New England mercantile and shipping firms were involved in the slave trade and much of the old money in New England today began in the human flesh trade. That’s where the Derby fortune initially came from.

During the American Revolution, Derby, by now running the whole enterprise, invested heavily in the gigantic piracy business out of Salem that attacked British boats (or whoever they ran across I suppose). Derby’s investment in pirates had begun back in 1776 when he supported a guy who wanted to take a British ship. It was a successful operation that stole a bunch of goods and Derby realized there was a lot of money in this. He invested in at least 158 privateering operations, including his own ship, The Grand Turk, which was very successful at raiding British ships, at least seventeen times by the time hostilities officially ended in 1783. Probably by the end of the war, the Derbys were the second richest family in New England, only behind the Cabots.

The years after the Revolution were less kind to traders like Derby. The U.S. was shut out of the British trade system and piracy was now illegal. But Derby was really quite forward thinking in his approach to trade and Salem really was the center of American shipping for just a bit longer here. He had already shifted the family trade from the Madeira wine trade that was so popular to supply rich people in the United States at the moment when wine first entered the American palate. That’s what his father had made so much of his money on.

Instead, Derby started sending ships to eastern Europe and then also directly to Asia. His ship The Grand Turk made it all the way around the world to Canton in 1786. That trip wasn’t totally successful–it was undercapitalized and it could barely trade given all of that, but still, it helped lead the way to the American entrance into the China trade in following years. Upon reaching home in 1787, it became the first American ship to trade directly with China and bring a cargo back home. Despite it being undercapitalized, the journey made Derby a smooth 43% profit. Derby and others then immediately went all in on Chinese investments. By 1789, sixteen American ships landed in Canton and Derby owned five of them. But they were mostly trading for tea and they glutted the American market so rapidly that not a single American ship went back there again until 1797. As it would always be, until the very recent past, trade with China was more a mirage than a reality.

But Canton was hardly the only port in Asia and Derby was heavily involved in sending ships to Batavia for all that good stuff coming out of what is today Indonesia. He had trading activity in Sumatra as well. Plus he had interests in Mauritius and India. So he was getting very wealthy. He sent his son to India to manage operations there. India became a major area of trade for the Derby empire, with the beautiful textiles produced there being a top notch product with plenty of demand at home. Bombay, Rangoon, and Calcutta all became important global shipping points for the Derby empire. What did Derby trade for those textiles? Madeira wine, primarily. He still held onto those connections and he used the supplier for that and other finer European goods to leverage himself into Asian markets. What this really demonstrated was the possibilities for enterprising Americans now freed from the British mercantile system. Sure, for most traders, losing the set markets that provided was really rough, but Derby showed a different way and plenty of other American traders were ready to listen and follow.

Much later, Nathaniel Hawthorne memorialized Derby in The Scarlet Letter, at the very beginning of the book when the author was still describing the present. He called him “King Derby,” which probably no one would have used at the time. But Derby was possibly the first millionaire in the United States, or if not, he was very close to that.

Now, as it happened, I was at the always excellent Peabody Essex Museum in Salem a few days ago. I had visited this grave last time I was in Salem (don’t worry, I did visit some additional Salem graves this trip too). Knowing I was about to write this up, I was curious if I would see any portraits of Derby in the museum. That museum by the way is quite remarkable, in part because all those old Salem merchant families gave it all their stuff when it was founded all the way back in 1799 and later combined other museums from the 19th century. Today they have an astounding collection of Asian art, not to mention all the other stuff that came from these families and the art their legacies could purchase. Anyway, Derby was in the museum. It’s perhaps the only known portrait of Derby and I took a picture of it but the portrait is also on Wikipedia and is far better portrayed than my bad photo. So here it is, painted by James Frothingham sometime in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, after Derby’s death:

Derby himself died in 1799, at the age of 60.

Elias Hasket Derby is buried in Burying Point Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts.

In 1998, American Heritage compiled a list of the richest Americans ever, based on adjusted income. This is obviously a sketchy list, but still, Derby ranked 39th. If you would like this series to visit other rich guys, who are of course always my favorite people, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. I’ve already covered a lot of these types and a few are still alive. Stephen Girard, ranked #6, is in Philadelphia. Alexander Turney Stewart, ranked #7, is in Garden City, New York. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.

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