| Title: | John Anderson, New York, to William Anderson, Co. Donegal |
|---|---|
| ID | 63 |
| Collection | Irish Emigration Database |
| File | Anderson, John/29 |
| Year | 1857 |
| Sender | Anderson, John |
| Sender Gender | male |
| Sender Occupation | day labourer |
| Sender Religion | unknown |
| Origin | New York, USA |
| Destination | Co. Donegal, Ireland |
| Recipient | Anderson, William |
| Recipient Gender | male |
| Relationship | brothers |
| Source | Copyright Reserved by Andrew S Anderson, 9 Ashford Drive, Bangor, Co Down, Ireland. Formerly from The Diamond, Donegal, Co Donegal, Ireland. E-mail andydonegal@aol.com |
| Archive | Andrew S Anderson |
| Doc. No. | 212204 |
| Date | 04/09/1857 |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | EMG |
| Log | Document added by LT, 17:12:02. |
| Word Count | 961 |
| Genre | |
| Note | |
| Transcript | $$H164 Part of the Andrew S Anderson Collection $$H New-York 4th September 1857 My Dear William I received Janes letter in due time and should have written sooner only waiting every day to see if I could get any employment. It is a very hard matter much harder than you can imagine for a stranger coming here without friends to get anything at all respectable besides I believe it has not been so hard for a great many years past to get employment in New-York as it is at the present time. There has been a great many failures in Business and Banks broke for the past few weeks. I worked one week rather than be Idle in a wholesale Grocery store as Porter milling sugar filling and heading Barrels and disloading Wagons and all sorts of hard work from half past five in the morning until six at night. I only went for the week on Trial and made no bargain about wages, the old chap was so angry when I left him at the end of the week that he only paid me five dollars whereas I should have got Eight or ten what any Porter gets, the Grocers are the hardest workers and the worst paid men in New-York. I have met a great many young men from the North of Ireland several that I had known before and who had all served their time to the Grocery trade at home and not one of them has ever worked a day at it since they came here, they have all gone into the dry-goods trade. When I was a few weeks here and saw how differently it is done here I made up my mind to quit it too. I have been trying to get into some House in the dry-goods trade as entry clerk. Edward Martin has done all he could to get me something of the kind and he says since he came here there never was a year before but he could get dozens of situations for young men. if I was only 17 or 18 years of age I would have far less trouble in getting something of the sort, first rate Book-Keepers can command the best salaries in New-York. Potter is only assistant Book-Keeper and has one thousand dollars a year. I have been I think very fortunate at last, for the past fortnight I had looked for nothing having made up my mind that New-York was not the place for me as there is too many there already, this morning I was going down Broadway to the docks to engage a passage to New-Orleans when I met Mr Burns from Galveston who I had met at Mr Martins several times before. he had got an order from a House there to engage three young salesmen and send them on two he had already engaged one at Eight hundred dollars a year and the other at one thousand. it is a House in the furnishing line where they sell Furniture Crockery dry-goods Jewelry and through Mr Martins Recommendation he engaged me for six months at the Rate of six hundred dollars a year, he made it a pretext that I knew nothing about the business for not giving me as much as the others but the people here think if they can make a hundred dollars out of a young man that it is as well to make it out of any other article of merchandise. Of course there is no difficulty in selling an article of furniture or Jewelry more than in selling a chest of Tea or Hogshead of Sugar. I guess when I am a short time in it I shall know about as much as any of them so that when my six months engagement is up I expect to get a thousand dollars a year. There is a nice Brig called the South loading with goods for Mr Burns and the House I am going to. She will be sailing some day next week and I am getting a Cabin passage in her. Galveston is only a small place containing about 12 thousand Inhabitants. It is the Capital of Texas built on a small island called Galveston some miles from the Main land in the Gulf of Mexico about 400 miles to the South-West by West of New-Orleans. it is my intention when my present engagement is up to go to New-Orleans. I wrote to Mrs Boals and had a letter from her last week a very kind one indeed. Mr Boals said if I should come he would use his influence in forwarding me and I was welcome to make his House my home until I got own house (sic). I did not intend had I went there to have troubled them, I was going on my own [H--k?] altogether. Mr Martin thinks I have got a first rate chance of getting along far better than I could have in New-York, there is too many in New-York and any day that I happen to be down by Castle Gardens where the Passengers are landed I see 2 to 4 ships landing passengers, there has arrived in this port 33 thousand more than had arrived same date last year. Tell Fanny that I will write to her before I sail and that I expected to have heard from either her or James ere this. I had written them both perhaps they may not have received my letter. It takes vessels from 16 to 30 days to go to Galveston just as the weather they chance to get. You need hardly expect to hear from me sooner than latter end of October or 1st November, it will take about 24 or 26 days to take a letter from Galveston to Ireland. [rest of letter missing] Transcribed by Andrew S Anderson |
