The Brown University Library maintains the “Digital Repository” and the “Center for Digital Scholarship” in order to provide a place to gather, preserve, and make available its digital assets to the Brown Community. Below is a series of letters to and from Moses Brown that have been preserved, digitized, and transcribed.

Click on each image to see a transcription of the letter.

August 1764
This document is an account, apparently from August, 1764, from Esek Hopkins to Moses Brown listing all that he had paid for goods and services associated with fitting out the Sally for Africa. Goods include: Beef, Limes, Vinegar, and Candles.

July 17, 1765
Ten months after the departure of the Sally, the Brown brothers finally received a letter from Esek Hopkins. The letter, which Hopkins had dispatched from Africa in May, disconfirmed recent reports that the Sally had been lost or that its crew had perished. (A second letter from Hopkins, written in March, arrived subsequently.) Moses Brown, who had come to Newport to organize the family’s affairs in light of the reported loss of the Sally, was elated.

November 16, 1765
The Brown brothers only learned the full scope of the Sally disaster in mid-November, when they received a letter from Hopkins, dated October 9, 1765 announcing his arrival in Antigua. In this November 16 letter, written in Moses Brown’s hand, they acknowledge the “Disagreeable” news of “yr Losing 3 of yr Hands and 88 Slaves” but add that “your Self Continuing in Helth is so grate Satisfaction to us, that we Remain Contented under the Heavy Loss of our Int[erest]s.”

August 4, 1776
Moses Brown’s decision to manumit his slaves in 1773 disrupted this arrangement. In this contract, dated August 4, 1776, the four Brown brothers agreed not to employ slaves at the works, except during peak periods, when necessary to get the stock out. In such cases, the four brothers agreed, Moses could supply his quota of additional workers with free rather than enslaved laborers.

November 1, 1779
The Brown family’s enterprises included a chandlery, where spermaceti, oil harvested from the headmatter of whales, was manufactured into bright-burning, smokeless candles. Labor demands in the chandlery fluctuated with the season, and the Browns often relied on slaves to supplement the workforce of free laborers.