Enclosure: Resolutions of the Trustees of Smith & Riddle, 9 July 1819
Enclosure
Resolutions of the Trustees of Smith & Riddle
We, the undersigned duly appointed Trustees, for the Estate of the late firm of Smith & Riddle, Merchants of this City, for the benefit of their Creditors, having the most implicit confidence in the honor and integrity of Mr. Andrew Smith, a partner of the late firm, have solicited and received his consent, to lend his aid in endeavouring to settle the outstanding accounts, and closing the concerns:
We therefore, hereby, fully authorize the said Andrew Smith, to demand, collect (and if necessary) to sue to judgment and recovery, all balances or debts due to the said late firm of Smith and Riddle, and to deposit in the Bank of Virginia, or the Farmers’ Bank, all monies so collected, to be appropriated agreeably to the tenor of the Deed of Trust, executed by the said Smith and Riddle, the 6th day of July, 1819, unanimously approved of under the seal and signature of every resident Creditor, as well as such Agents of distant Creditors, as attended the meeting.
In testimony of which, we have hereunto set our hands and seals in Richmond, this 9th day of July, 1819.
| James Gibbon, | (Seal.) |  |
TRUSTEES. |
| David Barclay, | (Seal.) | ||
| Charles Palmer. | (Seal.) |
Printed circular (MHi); conjoined with covering letter and first enclosure.
David Barclay (1782–1858), tobacco merchant, was a native of Ayrshire, Scotland. He served in the British army in India and Jamaica before being discharged and moving in 1806 to Virginia, where he became a tobacco processor in Richmond. In 1813 he was exiled from the city for violating the Embargo laws, but he was allowed to return later the same year. Barclay owned 99 slaves in 1820 but only 16 twenty years later and eventually lost his wealth entirely. He died in Richmond (Melatiah Everett Dwight, The Kirbys of New England [1898], 191; Madison, Papers, Pres. Ser., 6:128–9; The Richmond Directory, Register and Almanac, for the Year 1819 [Richmond, 1819], 34; DNA: RG 29, CS, Richmond, 1820, 1840; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 17 Nov. 1858).
Charles Palmer (1795–1866), commission merchant, was born in Gloucester County. He moved to Richmond in 1810 to take a position with Smith & Riddle and served in the Virginia militia, 1813–14. Palmer was a longtime merchant and ship broker in the city. He temporarily moved to New Orleans by 1849 but returned permanently to Richmond, where his combined real and personal estate was valued at $21,000 in 1860. A Unionist throughout the Civil War, Palmer endured a brief imprisonment in 1862 and provided financial support to Richmond families sharing his sympathies (ViHi: Palmer Family Papers; , 361; Ellyson’s Richmond Directory … for 1845–46 [1845?], 65; Gregg D. Kimball, American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond [2000]; Meriwether Stuart, “Colonel Ulric Dahlgren and Richmond’s Union Underground, April 1864,” 72 [1964]: 180–1n, 187–90; DNA: RG 29, CS, Richmond, 1860; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 1 Aug. 1866; gravestone inscription in Shockoe Hill Cemetery, Richmond).
Index Entries
- Bank of Virginia (Richmond); deposits in search
- Barclay, David; as trustee of Smith & Riddle search
- Barclay, David; identified search
- Farmers’ Bank of Virginia (Richmond); deposits in search
- Gibbon, James; as trustee of Smith & Riddle search
- Palmer, Charles; as trustee of Smith & Riddle search
- Palmer, Charles; identified search
- Smith, Andrew; and Smith & Riddle search
- Smith & Riddle (Richmond firm); insolvency of search