$$H164 Part of the Andrew S Anderson Collection $$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
