![]() ![]() Heard Family Business Records Finding Aid, 1734-1901. San Francisco: Friends of the San Francisco Maritime Museum Library, 2010. Gold, Silk, Pioneers and Mail: The Story of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Calais, Eastport and Vicinity, Their Representative Business Men and Points of Interest Embracing Calais, Eastport, Machias, Machiasport, Milltown, Jonesport, Princeton, Millbridge, Cherryfield, and Lubec, Newark, NJ: Glennwood Publishing Company, 1892.Ĭhandler, Robert J. “Advertisement for Lyons Delany & Co,” Pawtucket, Rhode Island City Directory, 1890. It is further proof that American and British merchants such as the Heard family and Peter Iredale were business partners during the clipper ship era of the 1840s to the 1870s. Since a British clipper ship transported a tea chest to the United States, it shows that the Augustine Heard & Co. A study of shipping notices in British and New York shows that the Lizzie Iredale made only two trips to Japan: in 1871-72, and in 1872-73, so it is most likely that the tea chest was made between 18. The Lizzie Iredale was built in Glasgow in 1868 and sailed for 19 years before disappearing at sea in 1887. The vessel that transported the tea chest was the clipper barque Lizzie Iredale, owned by Peter Iredale, a British merchant based in Liverpool. The date that the tea chest was imported from Japan makes the tea chest possibly one of the last items that the Augustine Heard & Co. engaged in a commission business with China until the spring of 1875 when the company filed for bankruptcy. After Augustine Heard retired, his four nephews were in charge of running the company. was a highly successful merchant company that was founded in 1840 by Augustine Heard, a member of an Ipswich, MA merchant family, who ran the company until his retirement. The tea chest’s label and the harbor with Mount Fuji in the background along with a notice in The London and China Telegraph announcing the departure of the ship Lizzie Iredale from Hiogo, Japan to Falmouth, England on Apreveals important information about where the tea chest was made, and who owned the artifact.Īugustine Heard & Co. E 18 / FINEST / NEW SEASON’S / YAMA SHIRO / JAPAN TEA / AUGUSTINE HEARD & CO.” More research needs to be done to figure out who or what “Yatchong” is, and whether this tea chest originated in Japan or Hong Kong. ![]() “Yatchong” is possibly a corruption of the name “Yat Cheong,” which is a common name in Hong Kong. ![]() It is not a variety of tea, like oolong, or souchong, so it is more likely the merchant who sold the tea in Asia. ![]() The last word on the label, “Yatchong,” is a mystery. 6” is the type of tea that is being shipped, highlighting the fact that it is the latest harvest, not old tea, and that this is the 6th box in the shipment for C.W. Vose & Sons,” which gives us a date of between 18 for this tea chest. Vose & Son” only between 18, before being changed to “C. Vose & Son” was a large department store and lumber yard that operated in Machias, Maine between 18. “P M S S C O” is the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, a steamship line that originally was founded to take mail from the western side of the Isthmus of Panama to California, but in 1867 expanded to include regular steamship service across the Pacific to Hong Kong, Yokohama, Japan, and Shanghai, China. On the fourth side of the tea chest is a label in fading black letters. VOSE & SON / CHOICE / NEW SEASON / JAPAN TEA / NO. These three tea chests date from the Japanese trade of the late 19th century. Tea chests are relatively rare, considering the number that were produced, but like today’s cardboard boxes, they were either reused or destroyed once they had served their purpose. Asian merchants, knowing that attractive packaging was an important part of marketing, often painted the tea chests or covered them in printed paper with labels that carried the name of the consigner and sometime the name of the ship. The loose tea leaves were shipped in wooden crates lined with lead foil or later aluminum foil to keep air and moisture out. Up through the mid-19th century, most of the tea shipped into the United States came from China, but after Japan opened its doors to trade with America in 1859, Japanese tea quickly became half of all tea imported into the United States. Almost a thousand years later, in 1606, the first shipment of tea landed in Amsterdam, beginning a Western obsession with these loose dried leaves that shows no sign of slowing down. By the 7th century CE, tea had spread to Japan and Korea. Tea has been cultivated and drunk in China since at least as far back as the Han Dynasty, (about 150 BCE). ![]()
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