Cope and Mendenhall letterbooks

The collection consists of four handwritten volumes of outgoing business correspondence produced between 1788 and 1853 by Thomas P. Cope and Thomas Mendenhall as a byproduct of their mercantile shipping businesses in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. The letter books contain copies of all the outgoing letters used for later referral in the line of business correspondence. At the beginning of each volume is an alphabetical index where recipients of the letters are organized by last name with corresponding page numbers. The first volume has copies of outgoing business letters written by Thomas Mendenhall when his nephew Thomas P. Cope was training under him. Mendenhall's ships ran from Wilmington Delaware to the West Indies. Half way through the volume the business is taken over by Thomas P. Cope and the letters are all authored by him from that point forward through the successive volumes. Cope's packet ship line ran between Philadelphia Pennsylvania and Liverpool England.The letters are written to other merchants that Thomas P. Cope and Thomas Mendenhall did business with and include common business topics such as orders, sales, receipts, price lists, balance inquiries, debts, shipping delays and updates. Other weightier, but less frequent topics include local politics, embargos, taxes, canal construction, tariffs, and the founding of Haverford School. These letter books are a great example of the tone and content of business correspondence in The United States at the turn of the nineteenth century while offering deep insight into the daily operations of the mercantile shipping trade at the time.