The World of Moses Boone

During the decade after the Ameri­can Revolution, the new United States faced a series of economic problems because of the adjustment to a postwar economy that did not depend upon trade with Great Britain. In the wake of price and wage declines after the war came mounting indebtedness as the network of credit engulfed the coun­try. This postwar depression had sev­eral impacts that influenced the devel­opment of the new nation, particularly an inability to pay taxes and reliance upon a barter system in order to survive economically. As residents of a back-country county, Berks Countians were not as dependent upon the fluctuations in external trade as were merchants in Philadelphia, but the readjustment from a wartime to a peacetime economy did have negative effects on some residents of the region. Consequently, although local craftsmen like Moses Boone might not have been directly affected by the economic disruptions of the 1780s, they found it necessary to operate their busi­nesses through a barter system, instead of cash payments, during this decade.

Throughout the colonial period, arts and crafts belonged in the economic category known today as small business – the basic industrial unit was the fam­ily, and the success or failure in a given trade depended entirely on its head, the master craftsman who conducted the business. The typical Pennsylvanian opened and operated the shop, purchased the tools and raw materials, designed the product, trained apprentices, super­vised journeymen, procured commissions for work, and sold finished goods. Add­ing to this practice of a skilled craft would be spring and summer harvests of wheat, which enabled a farmer/artisan to have a smooth flow of income while at the same time providing food for his fam­ily.

A tannery like the one operated by Moses Boone was one type of enterprise run by a farmer/artisan. In a land where farmers butchered cattle for salt meat and slaughtered deer merely for their skins, leather was plentiful and cheap. Being resourceful, colonists used leather clothing for everyday wear. The com­mon tannery, then, was a type of small business that served a local market, one seldom affected by fluctuations in the global economy.

Moses Boone was a cousin of the noted pioneer Daniel Boone. He was born August 3, 1751 (July 23, 1751 O.S.), the tenth child and fifth son of James and Mary Foullte Boone. His father James was a promi­nent member of Exeter Monthly Meet­ing, serving as overseer for Exeter Pre­parative Meeting four times between 1737 and 1757 and as clerk of the Men’s Monthly Meeting between 1746/7 and 1749. In the secular world, James Boone was a justice of the Peace for Berks County between 1752 and 1755 and represented Berks County in the Provincial Assem­bly in 1758. Throughout most of the last half of the eighteenth century, James Boone also was one of the wealthiest men in Exeter Township, operating a prosperous tannery and farm.

As the youngest surviving son, it would not have been unexpected for Moses Boone to venture out into the frontier to seek his fortune, but that was not the case. His eldest brother, James Boone, Jr., became a prominent and respected schoolmaster in Exeter Township. El­der brother John did follow in his father’s footsteps and also became a tanner, but he died before his thirtieth birthday and his widow sold off the tannery in Alsace Township before remarrying. Brother Judah operated a gristmill in Exeter Township, while Joshua Boone eventu­ally took over his father’s sawmill in Brunswick Township north of the Blue Mountains. It would be left to Moses Boone, then, to continue the family tanning business in Exeter Township that his grandfather George Boone had begun after his arrival in Oley Town­ship in 1720.

Moses Boone did not play a role in the larger scheme of American history, but he did leave a ledger that provides a peek into economic activity in the new nation. According to the entries in the ledger, Moses Boone assumed control of the tannery in October 1778, when Samuel Webb sold him a 27-pound hide at 4d. per pound and gave him a 1s. advance toward work that would be completed by December. That Decem­ber, Moses married Sarah Griffith, a Welsh Baptist from Gwynedd Town­ship in Philadelphia County, an action that contributed to his dismissal from Exeter Monthly Meeting in 1780. This union produced four children over the next dozen years, and his eldest son John ultimately took over the family business shortly before Moses Boone’s death in 1823.

For the purpose of this study, the author examined the entries in Moses Boone’s ledger from 1780 through 1789. During this decade, 620 debits and 394 credits occurred, involving 114 separate customers. Over half of the accounts had fewer than four debits or four credits; in fact, over one-fourth of the accounts only involved one transaction or less on ei­ther side of the ledger. Moses Boone’s business, then, was somewhat transient during this decade.

The vast majority of Moses Boone’s accounts reflected his business as a tan­ner, because the transactions described tanning and curing services performed on hides and skins. When dealing with family members, however, the transac­tions reflected other activity. One such account was that of Samuel Webb, an Exeter Township farmer who also was a Quaker and Moses Boone’s cousin. Webb purchased tobacco, flaxseed oil, wheat, oats, Indian corn, rye straw, and apple brandy from Boone between 1778 and 1783. In addition, Webb had hides tanned and skins cured by his cousin. Boone treated calfskins, hogskins and sheepskins and made reins for a bridle and a strap for Webb’s windmill. As part of the arrangement, Boone bought a knife, several hides, a sheepskin, bark and a large oval tub from Webb. In 1780 and 1781 Boone also served as a bank for Webb, for on three separate occasions he exchanged Continental dollars for Spanish dollars, and twice he loaned him cash for expenses and to pay his taxes.

One of Moses Boone’s most frequent customers was his brother Judah. Be­tween 1779 and 1788, Judah Boone had fifty-six debits and twenty-five credits posted to his account, totaling £126.1.2 1/4. Only a few of these transactions involved tanning, curing, waxing, and or dressing calfskins and hogskins. In­stead, just like Samuel Webb’s account, most of the ledger entries reflected Moses Boone’s activity as a farmer. The credit side of the ledger reflected that Judah paid his debt by providing Moses with calfskins and hides, wheat, beef, salt, and “3/4 days reaping by Dennis Brady.” The account was balanced after Judah’s death through notes to be paid by Moses to the estate for the balance of Judah’s inheritance.

Throughout the entire period of Moses Boone’s operation of the tannery, he conducted more transactions with his brother Joshua than anyone else. Joshua had been a storekeeper in Oley Town­ship and by this time was operating the family sawmill in Brunswick Township north of the Blue Mountains. Unlike Judah’s account, however, Joshua’s did not balance; the total in the debit col­umn after the last recorded transaction exceeded the credit amount by £75.19.3.

Like the account for Judah Boone, few of Joshua’s ledger entries involved tan­ning. Moses supplied his brother with bushels of oats, wheat, malt, buckwheat, and Indian corn. He also sold him quarts of whiskey and pecks of salt. In addi­tion, Moses lent Joshua cash on four occasions during the 1780s and trans­ferred the balance of Nicholas Drumheller’s account to his brother’s. Moses’s life as a farmer also appeared evident in this account, for he sold two pigs to Joshua in 1784, lent two cow chains and sold a steer in 1787, and stabled Joshua’s mare and colt on two occasions in 1788.

Joshua Boone did make several pay­ments on this account during the 1780s. In 1783, Joshua sold Moses a writing desk and four pounds of calfskins. In September 1785, Moses bought from Joshua “14 gallons and 3 quarts of Fish Oil,” a bedstead, and an 8-lb. calfskin. The transactions recorded for 1786 in­dicated that Joshua made payments for Moses to John Cinle and John Drumheller, both of whom had trans­acted business with the tanner. If the client was not a relative, typically Boone only performed tanning and curing ser­vices.

While the vast majority of entries overall reflected that Moses Boone’s primary activities were tanning and farm­ing, his clients paid for his services or products in a wide variety of ways. For instance, in 1787, Isaac Levan paid by the “run of his wagon to Philadelphia with my body,” and two years later with the “run of his wagon to Robeson’s mill,” hauling six bushels of apples and a barrel of cider from John Popp’s. Other customers settled their accounts by per­forming services that often related to their own crafts. Food, beverage, and supplies were other common repayments for a debt. Sometimes customers satis­fied accounts by working for Boone during harvest time. On a few occasions accounts were settled when someone other than the customer performed work for Boone on his farm.

Transactions at Moses Boone’s tan­nery fluctuated a bit during the 1780s. Business started slowing 1780, with only twenty-three entries (18 deb­its, 5 credits) for that year. The number of entries in the debit column of the ledger (services rendered) outnumbered credits (expenses) throughout the de­cade, but in two years — 1784 and 1787 — the amounts in the credit column exceeded the value of debits, indicating that Moses Boone lost money those two years. He experienced high volume in business in 1782, when he made ninety-one entries in the debit column and fifty in the credit column; after taxes, Boone earned £44.13.0 from his business that year. The greatest num­ber of total transactions occurred in 1786, when Boone recorded 104 debits total­ing £102.16.l and 56 credits totaling £72.14.0 1/4; after taxes, he made a profit of £24.10.6 3/4 that year. His economic distress in 1784 — the value of credits exceeded debits by £48.13.4 that year, not including any tax paid (the tax lists for 1784 have not survived) — can be attributed to postwar readjustment. For example, ironmaster Mark Bird went bankrupt in 1783 because he could not collect debts owed by the American and French governments, and the county sheriff sold most of his property at a public auction. If one of the wealthiest men in the county could suffer such economic problems because of the war, it is not unreasonable that a local tanner would experience the same pain.

By 1786 Boone was doing well again, mainly because of the inheritance from his father. But in 1787 he faced a huge shortage in the balance of accounts. Credits for that year exceeded debits by £90.11.11 3/4, mostly because of the necessity of closing the account of his brother Judah who died that year. On June 13, 1787, two notes, totaling £102.11.6 3/4, were presented to Boone by the administra­tors of his brother’s estate to be paid as part of Judah’s legacy from their father’s death two years earlier. In spite of this enormous expense, Moses Boone did have a positive balance to his ledger by the end of the decade, although it was only £11.16.9 3/4. Without a doubt, Moses Boone operated in an environment in which services were exchanged for goods in a barter situation. Otherwise, it would be extremely difficult for a family of five to survive on less than £2 per year after taxes without moving into the almshouse.

Over two-thirds of Moses Boone’s clients lived in three townships – Amity, Exeter, and Oley. The remainder of his business was scattered throughout eastern Berks County and northwestern Philadelphia (after 1784, Montgomery) County. These men and women were predominantly farmers (over sixty percent), but they also followed a wide variety of occupations. Six shoe­makers dealt with Moses Boone as a tanner during this decade. Four of his clients were women, either widows or daughters of previous customers. Other craftsmen who considered Boone wor­thy of tanning hides for them included a cooper, a fuller, a papermaker, a saw­yer, a collier, a hatter, a tailor, a stock­ing weaver, a storekeeper, a schoolmas­ter, two masons, two laborers, two sad­dlers, two tanners, four smiths, four carpenters, four millers, and four weav­ers.

As a craftsman and businessman in Exeter Township during the 1780s, Moses Boone dealt with a variety of cli­ents, not just in occupation and wealth, but also in ethnic and religious back­ground. Thirty-two of his 114 creditors (28%) were of British ancestry, almost three times the proportion of British settlers in the county. Most of the En­glish or Welsh settlers for whom Boone tanned products were relatives (eight were brothers or cousins) or area Quakers who probably had done business with James Boone and continued patronizing the tannery after Moses assumed control, even if he no longer belonged to the monthly meeting. Because almost three-fourths of Moses Boone’s clients were of German ancestry, it is clear that he recognized the necessity of dealing with non-English residents in order to sur­vive economically. By the 1780s, most of the German residents of the county were familiar enough with the English language to conduct business with Boone, but he evidently was not fluent in Ger­man, based upon the way he spelled the names of his German customers.

Aside from those customers who are known to be Quakers, it is difficult to ascertain the religious affiliation of Boone’s clients. Most of the Germans were probably either Lutheran or Ger­man Reformed, worshiping at one of the union churches in the area, or Ro­man Catholic. The few British who were not Quakers would have attended St. Gabriel’s Anglican Church in Amity Township, the lone Episcopal Church in the area, if they did have an affilia­tion.

An examination of the tax lists for Amity, Exeter, and Oley Townships (those with the highest number of cli­ents) revealed that few of Boone s cus­tomers were among the wealthiest men in the township. Less than three per­cent could be considered among the top 10 percent of taxpayers. More likely, they would fall into the upper 30 percent or middle 30 percent classification. From 1780 until 1784, Moses Boone himself was among the bottom 30 percent or middle 30 percent of the taxpayers, as were other tanners in those three town­ships. In 1785, in fact, Moses Boone did not even pay taxes because of a nega­tive balance between his income and expenses (values of debits and credits). But in that year his father died, bequeath­ing to him the family home in Exeter Township, including 212 acres of farm­land and the tannery. As a result of this bequest, Moses Boone rose in economic status to be among the top 10 percent of the taxpayers in Exeter Township, a rank he would continue to hold throughout the rest of the decade. In contrast to Boone’s newfound wealth, Charles Bingeman, the other tanner in Exeter Township, continued to rank in the bottom 30 percent, and in 1789 his name did not appear on the tax list.

Furthermore, Moses Boone was not the only tanner in the region. The Oley Valley, where the Boone tannery was located, had three tanneries in 1775. Throughout the 1780s there were at least four other tanners in Exeter and sur­rounding townships. George Hughes’s tannery in Exeter Township was barely one-half mile south of the Boone Tan­nery, while Nicholas Boyer’s shop was scarcely two miles east in Oley Town­ship. The close proximity of these busi­nesses, however, was really not that dis­tinctive. In Reading, the county seat of Berks County, the founders of the town restricted the location of Isaac Levan’s tannery to the south of Penn Street be­cause of the noxious odors emanating from the operation. Perhaps township officials consciously made these same arrangements when authorizing the construction of these enterprises, for the Boone family owned several land tracts in Exeter, Oley, and Amity Townships by 1775, but the only tannery was lo­cated near the others. According to county tax lists from this era, seven other tan­neries in Exeter and adjacent townships would be operating at various times during the decade. For Moses Boone, then, it would be important to satisfy a first-time customer, because in any given year a cordwainer who needed some leather tanned could choose among over a dozen other tanners in the county to perform this service.

The 1780s indeed were a tumultu­ous decade for the new American na­tion. Colonial artisans who worked in a family setting, like Moses Boone, were better able to adapt to changing eco­nomic conditions than were merchants and craftsmen in cities like Philadelphia, where external trade could adversely affect a man’s income and economic status. For Moses Boone, the decade would also be a time of transition, from assuming control of his father’s prosperous tan­nery in 1778 to coping with postwar economic dislocations and the death of his father. By the end of the 1780s, his business was returning to prosperity, but to accomplish this he would have to broaden his clientele to include residents of different ethnic and religious back­grounds from his own. Local craftsmen like Moses Boone learned to adapt to the evolving market economy of the new nation, while at the same time perpetu­ating the colonial heritage of personal contact. Moses Boone’s success at main­taining the family business during this transitional era ultimately would per­mit the tannery to fall into his son’s hands, continuing the legacy of handing down skills through generations.

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2002-2003 issue of the Historical Review of Berks County – published quarterly by the Historical Society of Berks County.