A British merchant who traded with the colonies. Seems to be an embodiment of the mercantile system. The entry provides a tangible look the development of the colonial economy in North America.
- Click here for the entry.
Excerpts:
- In London, by age 27, Gee became a master of the Grocers' Company by purchase (without serving an apprenticeship) and a freeman in London. By 1700 he was already trading with the American colonies. In 1715, Gee and Augustine Washington founded The Principio Company. It was backed by an association of British iron-masters, merchants, and capitalists. Principio produced pig-iron and bar-iron in the Province of Maryland and the Province of Virginia for sale in England. By 1723 Gee and his partners owned or controlled more than 12,000 acres of land in North America containing iron ore deposits.
- Most of this work focused on labour shortages in the American colonies Gee suggested that England transport domestic convicts, the poor and unemployed to work in the colonies. He also recommended creating free ports at Gibraltar and Port Mahon. Gee also encouraged foreign import-replacing production in the plantations.
These stuck out to me:
- Grocers' Company.
- The Principio Company.
- British iron-masters, merchants, and capitalists
- Province of Maryland
- Province of Virginia
- iron ore deposits
- Colony of Pennsylvania
- Board of Trade and Plantations.
- The Grazier's Advocate
For more:
- THE ORIGIN OF THE IRON INDUSTRY IN MARYLAND.
Captain John Smith is generally credited with the discovery of iron ore in Maryland. There is no evidence that the Native American population ever smelted ore, although they did use it as a pigment. On a voyage in 1608, sailing up what is now called the Patapsco River, Smith noted the presence of iron ore, or as he called it "bole armoniack and terra sigillata." In 1609 he sent two barrels of the ore from Maryland, or possibly from Virginia, to England. (Little distinction was made in the early colonial days between Virginia and Maryland, and the records are sometimes confused.) Nothing is known of the fate of the samples in the barrels or what reports, if any, may have been generated regarding them (Whitely, 1887; Singewald, 1911; May, 1945).
Any smelting done during the next hundred years or so must have been on a very small scale and very localized, as virtually no records of domestic iron manufacture exist for this period. The colonists apparently preferred to import their iron and ironware from England. There is a mention in 1681 of "a duty on the exportation of old iron," apparently designed to encourage the growth of local iron industry
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