O’Brien’s Wholesale Business Intelligencer and Southern and Western Merchants’ Pocket Directory, to the Principal Mercantile Houses In The City Of Philadelphia For The Year 1839. Wherein each branch of business is distinctly named and separately placed, with the names of the firms, numbers, and streets accurately arranged under their respective…

Where one finds Philadelphia’s marine and landscape painters, bank note engravers, historical, portrait, seal, and door-plate engravers and more….

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John G. O’Brien (1807–1858), an Irish-American purveyor of popular medicines in Philadelphia, published a series of business directories between 1839 and 1853, producing about a dozen in total. He outlined the objectives of his Philadelphia directories as follows:

“The plan of this Directory, previous to its publication, was to present to numerous gentlemen of extensive business knowledge, who unanimously expressed their approbation of the peculiar and effective arrangement of the work, as being better calculated to exhibit to Southern and Western Merchants, and other large purchasers from abroad, a more clear and distinct view of the wholesale business community of our city than any other publication heretofore offered to their notice. The light and portable size, and serviceable order of this book, render it at once a convenient and intelligent pocket companion for the stranger, merchant, or business man in Philadelphia, by affording him a ready and desirable guide to all the principal wholesale business houses of the city…” (Advertisement)

This present second directory from O’Brien follows what he calls a “first Edition” and “embraces the corrections, rivals, and new firms, commencing with the First of January, 1839…” O’Brien meticulously prepared his directory.

Wholesale merchants, manufacturers, and warehouses are arranged in numerous categories of foreign and domestic goods. These include imported silk, lace, hose, glove, ribbon, and merino-shawls; hardware and cutlery; grocery and country produce; Liverpool, queens ware, china, plain, and cut glass; variety and fancy brushes and bellows; morocco, buckskin, kid, fancy leather, and parchment; drug, chemical, medical, dye-stuff, paint, oil, varnish, window glass, white lead, apothecaries’ vials, and glass furniture; Thomsonian physicians, and medicines; books and stationery; law booksellers and publishers; French and German toys, and variety fancy goods; sheet, bar, rolled iron and steel plus spikes and nails; fancy chairs; feathers; confectionery and fruit; wire-sieve, screen, bird-cage, trap, safe, wire window blind, and paper-mill wire; ship chandlery, cable, rope, and twine; grass, garden, and flower seeds; wig, curl, and ornamental hair; salted salmon, shad, mackerel, codfish, and herring; fancy turners in ivory, boxwood, and bone; and lithographers.

Clothing establishments are arranged very particularly according to clothing types. These are further divided according to the “Latest London” and “Latest Parisian” styles: drapers and tailors, hatters, Gentlemen’s Boot Makers, ladies’ dress makers, ladies milliners, cap and head-dress makers, and ladies boot and shoe makers.

Business-to-business services and advertising or printing needs are featured prominently in the directory headings. These include stock and exchange brokers; marine, fire, and life insurances; newspapers (daily, weekly, “penny papers”) and periodicals; transportation (steamboat, railroad, stage offices, canals, packets, omnibuses); architects, engravers (bank notes, seals, wood, portraits); type and stereotype founders; general importers; and commission and forwarding merchants. A few advertisements appear, scattered throughout: Swaim’s Panacea, P. Thurlow’s Manufacturers’ Finding-Store (textile making supplies); various packet lines (one giving prices); and two public news reading rooms: J.M. Young’s in Northern Liberties (free) and Wm. Spragg & Co. off Chesnut Street.

A valuable resource for historians, genealogists, and scholars of American material culture in the mid-Atlantic region following the Panic of 1837.

Price: $650.00