Storekeepers at Raritan Landing

From Voices of Raritan Landing

woodcut
Store Interior
John Dunlap, publisher
Philadelphia, 1772

JOHN CASTNER

YOU COULD GET ALMOST ANYTHING in my store, from slates, books, and primers to pewter, stoneware, and earthenware. Of course there were all types of cloth, buttons, shoes, garters, knee buckles, and mittens that every woman needed to take care of the family, but there were also shoemaker's knives, calf skins, and leather on the side. My wife Helena and I ran it together. She administered my estate along with Raritan Landing's most upstanding residents—William Williamson, Daniel Bray, Edward Antill—who made the inventory in 1755. I don't know why they were so concerned. Most of my customers came from Somerset County: out of 47 debtors, only nine of them were from the Landing. Funny, Daniel Bray was one of the debtors and so were other gentlemen: Evert Duyckinck, Peter Low, and Bernardus LaGrange.

woodcut
Shop Counter with Tinware
artist and date unknown

JEAN BLAIR

I OUTLIVED MY HUSBAND by a good twenty years and took over our "good stand of business" at the comer of the causeway and the Road Up Raritan. We supplied meals—"diet" we called it—by the week to other businessmen at the Landing. We got supplies from the storekeeper down the road, for instance, in exchange for three months diet in October of 1759 and another 6 weeks and 5 days of the same in December. Of course, we also did other work, freighting for the storekeeper as well as others, and we even kept a substantial garden. I didn't have any children, but there was plenty of work to do and when I made my will in 1784 I left my negro servant, Harry, to my friend Mary Covenhoven of Somerset County. I gave my mulatto slave his freedom forever, £50 of cash, a wagon, and two horses and a certain plot of land at Raritan Landing joining Raritan River to him and his heirs forever. I wonder what the villagers thought of that.