KING DERBY
The genealogical record is exceedingly complicated and
confusing, as “Elias Hasket Derby” has been in fact a
name almost as popular as gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
1707
Elias Hasket Derby was born to Richard Derby and Martha Hasket.
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KING DERBY
ELIAS HASKET DERBY
1712
Abraham Redwood, the father, arrived on the North American continent. We don’t know whether he initially
settled his family in Newport, in Salem, or somewhere between these two towns. However, we know that
Friend Abraham Redwood, the son, would grow up in Newport on Rhode Island’s Aquidneck Island.
As a young man may well have gotten his education in Philadelphia. Following the death of his father and his
older siblings, he would come into immense wealth as the owner of the sugar plantation “Cassada Garden”
in Antigua and its large population of slaves.
Richard Derby was born in Salem.
1739
August 16, Thursday (Old Style): Elias Hasket Derby was born to Richard Derby (1712-1783) and Mary Hodges in
Salem.
1752
The Elias Hasket Derby who had been born in 1707 died.
1761
By this point John Jack, the former slave of Benjamin Barron in Concord, having purchased his freedom out
of his deceased master’s estate, had also purchased out of this estate “four acres of plow land in the great or
common field so-called.” Adjacent to this he also purchased two acres of another party, and eventually he
would possess a total of 81/2 acres. His home was near Merriam’s Corner on a path close to the ridge.
Meanwhile, during this year and the next, a mammoth 3-story, 15-room Georgian Colonial house was being
erected at what is now 168 Derby in Salem, the street which also would have in 1819
the Salem
Custom House in which Nathaniel Hawthorne eventually would become the supervising Surveyor. This
mansion was being erected by Richard Derby for his son Elias Hasket Derby and bride Elizabeth
Crowninshield (it is now the oldest surviving brick house in Salem). This Richard Derby who could afford
such a wedding present had begun as a captain for the “codfish aristocrats.” It would be Richard’s son John
Derby who would carry the first news to England of the fighting at Lexington and Concord between the army
and the militia, aboard the Quero which would sail from Salem Harbor on April 26, 1775. This Elias Hasket
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KING DERBY
Derby, who kept his eye on the shipping in the port and had one blue eye and one brown one, would come to
be characterized both as King Derby and as the “father of American commerce with India.” The most
expensive mansions in America, circa the turn of the 19th Century, would be the mansion of Peter Stuyvesant
overlooking the Hudson River, and this codfish mansion in Salem, Massachusetts. These homes would each
be listed on the special housing-taxation census of that time at over $30,000.00. Derby had built a large wharf
and was trading not only with India but also with China and Russia. By Hawthorne’s day, this merchant would
have been succeeded by others –Simon Forrester was the richest– but Salem trade would have for various
reasons very much dwindled: there had been disputes with the British navy, the harbor had had silting
problems not shared with Boston or New-York, and of course there was a dearth of bulk commodity-transport
connections with the interior.
THE SCARLET LETTER: In my native town of Salem, at the head of what,
half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling
wharf – but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses,
and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except,
perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length,
discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner,
pitching out her cargo of firewood – at the head, I say, of this
dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along
which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the
track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass
– here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very
enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a
spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof,
during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats
or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with
the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally,
and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of
Uncle Sam’s government, is here established. Its front is
ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars,
supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps
descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous
specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield
before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of
intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw.
With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this
unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye,
and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief
to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens
careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which
she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she
looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter
themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining,
I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of
an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her
best of moods, and, sooner or later – oftener soon than late –
is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw,
a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.
What was the big difference between these two New England homeowners, John Jack and King Derby?
Well, as a first approximation — one was poor and the other white.
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1763
December 28, Wednesday: Milan Cathedral accounts list Johann Christian Bach’s successor as organist, suggesting
that Bach had resigned sometime in December.
Elias Hasket Derby was born to Elias Hasket Derby (1739-1812) and Elizabeth Crowninshield (1734-1798).
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1770
Elias Hasket Derby caused to be erected another larger Georgian mansion next door to his wedding-present
mansion in Salem. He would never complete this 60-room house and it would come to be used it as a
warehouse for the goods his Revolutionary-War privateers had taken for trading. (Although the house’s
original design was by Samuel McIntire, today’s “Hawke House” design is the result of Benjamin Hawkes,
who would acquire the McIntire house in 1800 and demolish it in 1815.)
KING DERBY
1796
September 1, Thursday: Elias Hasket Derby was born to John Derby and Sarah Barton in Salem.
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1798
March-May: William Wordsworth’s “Goody Blake and Harry Gill. A True Story,” describing how a person was seized
for taking sticks from a hedge for fuel. Making reference to this sad incident in British history, Henry David
Thoreau would extrapolate on our need for warmth:
WALDEN: It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even
in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and
universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and
inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to
us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their
bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than
thirty years ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in New York
and Philadelphia “nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of
the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually
requires more than three hundred thousand cords, and is
surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated
plains.” In this town the price of wood rises almost steadily,
and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year
than it was the last. Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person
to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood
auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning
after the wood-chopper. It is now many years that men have
resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts;
the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the
Celt, the farmer and Robinhood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, in
most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar
and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest
to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.
PEOPLE OF
WALDEN
FRANÇOIS ANDRÉ MICHAUX
Along these lines of “How much do we actually need?”, this happens to have been the year in which the new
United States of America was becoming entangled in a struggle with its former ally, France, and in which in
consequence the US Congress was levying a “Direct Tax” upon each American household for purposes of our
national defense. An inventory was being taken of the nation’s housing to aid in assessing this tax, and it
revealed that the most prosperous 10% of American households were living in structures that represented 50%
of the private-residence structure value. Comparing that situation with 1970, we note that the statistic has
declined from 50% to 30%. The conclusion we might reach from such a decline is that the difference in living
standards, between the well-to-do and the not well-to-do, was more extreme then than it is now. The most
expensive mansions in America, circa the turn of the 19th Century, were the mansion of Peter Stuyvesant
overlooking the Hudson River and the 3-story, 15-room mansion of Elias Hasket Derby (King Derby) in
Salem. These homes were each listed at over $30,000.00. We may be misled as to the adequacy of homes of
that period, due to the fact that the less adequate ones have not survived, so we should keep in mind statistics
such as that, in the country towns of Worcester County, only one home out of each three possessed a 2nd story.
One home in four was listed as being worth less than $100.00. Only one home in ten was worth more than
$700.00, with 6-7 rooms. Only one in a hundred was worth over $3,000.00, with 10-12 rooms.
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1799
September 8, Sunday: At Salem, Massachusetts, death of Elias Hasket Derby (born 1739), reputedly the richest man
in these United States of America due to his gains as a shipowner and privateersman during the revolution. In
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER Derby would achieve recognition as “old King Derby.”
1800
July 7, Monday: Michele Felice Cornè arrived in Salem, Massachusetts from Naples aboard the Mount
Vernon, Captain Elias Hasket Derby, Jr. During this year the Captain was selling off to Benjamin Hawkes the
enormous Georgian mansion his wealthy father “King” Derby had caused to be erected next door to the son’s
own wedding-present mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, because that enormous structure had never been fitted
out for habitation but was instead used as merely a warehouse for the trade goods his Revolutionary-War
privateers had been seizing (Cornè would reside with Derby at his wedding-present mansion in Salem and
paint until 1806, and then relocate to Boston).
“King” Derby of Salem had died in the previous year, closing one blue eye and one brown. During the
Revolution the father’s privateers had brought in almost 150 prizes. Here is the ranking of the 40 richest
Americans of all time as compiled by American Heritage magazine. The conversions were made using a
formula comparing the original value of wealth to the size of the US economy at the time and appeared in the
magazine’s October 12, 1998 issue. I have highlighted those born before Henry Thoreau, so that you can
perceive that “King” Derby had been the 11th richest American citizen to that point in our national trajectory:
Then
Now
1
John D. Rockefeller
1839-1937
oil
$900 million
$190 billion
2
Andrew Carnegie
1835-1919
steel
$250 million
$100 billion
3
Cornelius Vanderbilt
1794-1877
shipping/railroads
$105 million
$96 billion
4
John Jacob Astor
1763-1848
real estate/fur trade
$20 million
$78 billion
5
William H. Gates III
1955-
software
$62 billion
$62 billion
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Then
8
Now
6
Stephen Girard
1750-1831
shipping/real estate
$7.5 million
$56 billion
7
A.T. Stewart
1803-1876
retail/real estate
$50 million
$47 billion
8
Frederick Weyerhaeuser
1834-1914
lumber
$200 million
$43 billion
9
Jay Gould
1836-1892
railroads
$72 million
$42 billion
10
Marshall Field
1834-1906
department stores
$140 million
$41 billion
11
Sam Walton
1918-1992
retail
$28 billion
$37 billion
12
Henry Ford
1863-1947
automobiles
$1 billion
$36 billion
13
Warren Buffett
1930-
investing
$34 billion
$34 billion
14
Andrew W. Mellon
1855-1937
banking
$350 million
$32 billion
15
Richard B. Mellon
1858-1933
banking
$350 million
$32 billion
16
James G. Fair
1831-1894
mining
$45 million
$30 billion
17
William Weightman
1813-1904
chemicals
$80 million
$29 billion
18
Moses Taylor
1806-1882
banking
$40 million
$29 billion
19
Russel Sage
1816-1906
finance
$100 million
$29 billion
20
John Blair
1802-1899
railroads
$60 million
$29 billion
21
Cyrus Curtis
1850-1933
publishing
$174 million
$26 billion
22
Paul G. Allen
1953-
software
$25 billion
$25 billion
23
John Pierpont Morgan
1837-1913
finance
$119 million
$25 billion
24
Edward Henry Harriman
1848-1909
railroads
$100 million
$25 million
25
Henry Huddleston Rogers
1840-1909
oil
$100 million
$25 million
26
Oliver Hazard Payne
1839-1917
oil
$178 million
$25 billion
27
Henry Clay Frick
1849-1919
steel
$225 million
$22 billion
28
Collis Potter Huntington
1821-1900
railroads
$50 million
$22 billion
29
Peter A. Widener
1834-1915
streetcars
$100 million
$21 billion
30
Nicholas Longworth
1782-1863
real estate
$15 million
$20 billion
31
Philip Danforth Armour
1832-1901
meatpacking
$50 million
$20 billion
32
James C. Flood
1826-1889
mining
$30 million
$20 billion
33
Mark Hopkins
1813-1878
railroads
$20 million
$20 billion
34
Edward Clark
1811-1882
sewing machines
$25 million
$18 billion
35
Leland Stanford
1824-1893
railroads
$30 million
$18 billion
36
Hetty Green
1834-1916
investing
$100 million
$17 billion
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Then
Now
37
James J. Hill
1838-1916
railroads
$100 million
$17 billion
38
William Rockefeller
1841-1922
oil
$150 million
$17 billion
39
Elias Hasket Derby
1739-1799
shipping
$800,000
$16 billion
40
Claus Spreckels
1828-1908
sugar
$50 million
$15 billion
1803
Elias Hasket Derby and Lucy Derby, twins, were born to Elias Hasket Derby (1766-1826) and Lucy Brown
(1771-1829).
1812
December 8, Tuesday: Elias Hasket Derby died in Salem, Massachusetts.
This year had been a year of heavy flooding in Alta California. It had been the year in which a Russian
settlement had been begun, near Bodega Bay.1 The peak of the population of dusky “neophyte” serfs was
reached at Mission San Juan Capistrano, with 1,361 Juaneño souls on the mission roster. Any baptized
primitive who attempted to flee would of course be searched out by the Spanish soldiers and returned to the
mission for punishment, as it was considered that baptism for such a one was equivalent to enlistment for a
common soldier. Attempting to run away from one’s fields and one’s sustaining labor was equivalent to
desertion, treason, and/or apostasy. “On a summer-like morning, Dec. 8, 1812, mass was being celebrated.
What was that distant roar? Was it the sea? The tower tottered. ... Bells swayed, tolled, were silenced and
crashed to the earth. With them fell two Indian bell ringers. The door had been twisted by the earthquake and
could not be unlocked. Nearly forty neophytes were buried under the stone and mortar of the fallen tower.”2
This fault passes out to sea below Newport Beach, California but in the 1812 event, the effects had been felt
strongly enough that the stone domes of the basilica fell in during morning mass, crushing 40 Native American
worshipers.3 Six persons present for the ceremonies escaped with their lives, witness to the infinite mercy of
the Deity. The proud belfry that had been visible for ten miles around had become a pile of rubble over a mass
grave, and a ruin had been created which would become rated as the most picturesque, or at least the most
utterly depicted, in the Sovereign State of California.
1. This settlement would eventually become known as Fort Ross.
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1824
Graduates from Harvard College in this year with the degree of Bachelor of Arts included the 21-year-old
Salem heir Elias Hasket Derby (his “Calculation and Projection of a Lunar Eclipse” is still on file there <http:/
/oasis.harvard.edu:10080/oasis/deliver/~hua17004>):
Graduated with Class of 1824
Died
Francis Amory, A.M.
1881
James Winthrop Andrews, A.M.
1842
David Hatch Barlow, A.M.; Div. S. 1829
1864
William Hazzard Wigg Barnwell
1863
Zephaniah Ames Bates
1842
John Francis Bingaman
1828
Edward Blake, A.M.
1873
Duncan Bradford
1887
George Washington Burnap; A.M.; Div. S. 1827; S.T.D. 1849
1859
Charles Henry Carter
1871
Samuel Adams Cooper, A.M.
1840
Phineas Miller Crane, A.M.; M.D.
1828
Benjamin Cutter; A.M.; M.D. 1827, Univ. Pa. 1857
1864
Elias Hasket Derby, A.M.
1880
2. In a similar earthquake in October 1987 the stone basilica of nearby Mission San Gabriel did not collapse but was rendered too
dangerous for occupancy. This temblor of 1812 which destroyed the historic basilica is attributed to the Newport/Inglewood strikeslip fault, which is now known to run northwest to southeast along the California coast from the Cheviot Hills overlooking what has
become Culver City down through the Baldwin Hills, the Rosecrans Hills, the Dominguez Hills, Signal Hill and Reservoir Hill
overlooking what has become Long Beach, Alamitos Heights and Landing Hill behind what has become Seal Beach, through the
coastside Bolsa Chica Mesa, Huntington Beach Mesa, and Newport Mesa behind what has become the hoity-toity residential
communities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. This is the same fault which caused an earthquake of magnitude Richter 6.3
early in the morning of March 10, 1933, ten kilometers below the surface of the earth just offshore from Newport Beach, rupturing
the shoreline for 25 kilometers. The 1933 quake killed only 120 people, in Long Beach CA, because like the recent Northridge CA
quake it happened to occur very early in the morning; however, many of the school buildings in Long Beach collapsed and it was
clear that thousands of children would have been crushed had the earthquake occurred during school hours. This 1933 event brought
about the Field Act governing the seismic engineering of public school structures and the Riley Act governing the seismic
engineering of buildings larger than two-family dwellings. The scenario which is now used in this area for planning allows for an
earthquake of Richter 7.0 with 25 seconds of shaking causing surface displacements of one meter. It has been estimated that in such
a scenario, worst case, there would be 23,000 dead and 91,000 hospitalized, with $69,000,000,000 in property damage (by way of
contrast, only $2,400,000,000 was lost in the Orange County bankruptcy of 1995). This makes the Newport/Inglewood strike-slip
zone potentially more dangerous to human life and property than the San Andreas strike-slip zone, and the most dangerous by far
in the continental United States. The University of California – Irvine is 15 kilometers from this fault but most of its structures, with
the exception of the Humanities Office Building (which is expected to crush people, as cracks have already been found) and the
Main Library (to be renovated Summer 1996), have been rated as adequate for this planning event. It is anticipated that the primary
disruption for the UCI community would be the demand on the services of the primary and secondary medical personnel of the
Orange County area.
3. One person was extracted alive from the rubble.
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George Bucknam Dorr, 1866
1876
Robert Brent Drane, 1825; A.M. 1841; S.T.D. Univ. N. C. 1844
1862
John Thomas Philip Dumont; A.M.
1852
Alexander Clarke Dunbar
1852
Stephen Elliott; A.M.; P.E. Bishop Ga.; Prof. Sacr. Lit. So. Car.
Coll.
1866
Edward Bliss Emerson, (I); A.M.
1834
Joseph William Faber; A.M.
1861
Benjamin Franklin Fisk
1832
Richard Fuller; S.T.D. 1853, Columbian (D.C.) 1844
1876
Lewis Glover; A.M. 1828
1839
John Mark Gourgas; A.M.
1862
John Henry Gray; A.M.
1850
John Grenough
1852
Alfred Greenwood, Andover Theol. Sem. 1827
1868
William Horton, Andover Theol. Sem. 1827; S.T.D. Hobart 1858
1863
Lucius Virgil Hubbard
1849
William Pitkin Huntington; M.D. 1835
1885
Asa Farnsworth Lawrence, Principal Groton (now Lawrence) Acad.
1873
Edmund Lewis LeBreton; A.M.
1849
Thomas Lowndes
1833
George Lunt
1885
William Perkins Matchett; A.M.
1834
Artemas Bowers Muzzey; A.M.; Div. S. 1828; S.T.D. Tufts 1890; Overseer
1892
William Newell; A.M.; Div. S. 1829; S.T.D. 1853; Memb. Mass. Hist.
Soc.
1881
Joseph Osgood; M.D. 1827
1876
John Cochran Park; A.M.; LL.B. 1827
1889
Samuel Parker
1882
Samuel Parker Parker; S.T.D., Union 1861
1880
William Edward Payne; A.M.
1838
Henry Coit Perkins; M.D. 1827; Fellow Am. Acad.
1873
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Edward Pickering
1876
William Pratt; A.M. 1828
1842
Benjamin James Prescott
1838
Samuel Cordes Prioleau; A.M.
1831
Charles Gideon Putnam; A.M.; M.D. 1827; Fellow Am. Acad.
1873
Daniel Clark Relf; A.M.
1876
David Roberts; A.M.
1879
George Thomas Sanders; A.m.
1856
Nathaniel Silsbee; A.M. 1862; Treasurer 1862 - 1876
1881
Calvin Stephen Smith
1838
Joseph Lewis Stackpole; A.M.; LL.B. 1828
1847
William Gordon Stearns; A.M.; LL.B. 1827
1872
Jeremiah Chaplin Stickney, 1825
1869
Caleb Morton Stimson; A.M.; LL.B. 1827
1860
Christopher Toppan Thayer; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1827
1880
Augustus Torry; M.D. 1827
1880
Charles Church Chandler Tucker
1836
Henry Samuel Tudor
1864
Stephen Palfrey Webb
1879
George Wheatland, A.M.
1893
William Wilson Wheelwright
1832
George Whitney; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1829
1842
William Augustus Whitwell; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1827
1865
Samuel Williams
1884
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Although a South Carolinian, the Stephen Elliott above was not the botany professor whose textbook was
available to Henry Thoreau, as that botanist had graduated from Yale College. The above Harvard graduate
was Stephen Elliott, Jr., the botanist’s son, who would become the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the
Confederate States of America.
Dr. John Edwards Holbrook assisted in the organization of The Medical College of South Carolina, and
became its Professor of Anatomy (the Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Infants was Thomas Grimball
Prioleau, Professor of Chemistry was Edmund Ravenel, the Professor of the Institutes and Practice of Physic
was Samuel Henry Dickson, the Professor of Botany and Natural History was Stephen Elliott (the Yale botanist
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father, not the Harvard bishop son), and the Professor of Materia Medica was Henry Rutledge Frost).
1839
November 14, Thursday: Lucy Brown Derby, wife of Elias Hasket Derby (1766-1826), died.
1840
December 3, Thursday: Elias Hasket Derby died in Medford, Massachusetts.
1861
January 22, Tuesday: Elias Hasket Derby died.
[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR JANUARY 22]
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Elias Hasket Derby died.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,
such as extensive quotations and reproductions of
images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great
deal of special work product of Austin Meredith,
copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will
eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some
of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button
invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap
through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—
allows for an utter alteration of the context within
which one is experiencing a specific content already
being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin
Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by
all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any
material from such files, must be obtained in advance
in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”
Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please
contact the project at <[email protected]>.
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until
tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”
– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”
in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: December 11, 2013
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a
human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that
we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the
shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these
chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by
ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the
Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a
request for information we merely push a button.
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious
deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in
the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we
need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —
but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary
“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this
originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,
and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever
has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire
operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished
need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect
to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic
research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge.
Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.
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Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith