David Frieze, Merchant, Maitland

Long before there was a firm called Frieze & Roy, there was simply David Frieze — merchant, of Maitland, Hants County — trading lumber, settling accounts, and keeping up correspondence across half a dozen ports. This post gathers five pieces of mail addressed to him personally between 1850 and 1856, well ahead of the partnership years covered elsewhere on this blog. Where family and company background overlaps with the Grace Dodd post or the coming piece on the Frieze & Roy partnership itself, I've tried not to repeat it here — just to point the way.

David Frieze of Maitland

David Frieze was born in 1807 (some records give 1806), the son of William Frieze (1775–1843) and his first wife, Abigail Whidden (1780–1808). William was himself an American transplant — born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Jacob Frieze (1750–1799) of Massachusetts and Rhode Island and grandson of a John Frieze born about 1725 — part of the wave of New England families who resettled in Nova Scotia in the decades around the Revolution. William had put down roots in Maitland by 1801, when he married Abigail Whidden there.

Abigail died in Maitland in January 1808, not long after the birth of a daughter who was given her mother's name. David was one of four children from that marriage — with siblings Eleanor, Vashti, and the younger Abigail. William remarried, to Janet Dickey Miller of Londonderry, Colchester County, and had five more children, including a son, Jacob Frieze (1810–1871), David's half-brother, who turns up in this correspondence as a fellow figure in the lumber trade.

David Frieze married Almira Oxley (1803–1875). Their children included George (1832–1891), Frederick (1835–1916), an infant daughter Maria who died in 1836, and a daughter Abigail (1837–1870), named, as was the custom, for her grandmother. David appears as head of household in the 1861 census of Hants County. He died in Maitland on the 4th of January 1884 — by coincidence, seventy-six years to the day after his mother's death there in 1808.

What none of that pedigree tells you, on its own, is who David Frieze's Portland and Truro correspondents actually were to him. That took the letters themselves, and some digging, to work out — and it turns out to matter a great deal.

Portland, 1850 — his cousin Alexander D. Whidden

wo letters survive from Portland, Maine, both written to Frieze in January and March of 1850 by a correspondent signing himself “A. D. Whidden.” The January letter runs to three pages and covers a good deal of ground: a market report on hackmatack ship-knees, hardwood plank, and hemlock boards; a note that a debtor, Daniel Burns, still hadn't paid up; and a personal aside — Whidden writes that he was sorry to hear of “the ill fate of Triumph” and of the deaths of “Caleb Douglas & Geo. Lindsey,” particularly the former, who had been “called upon to vacate a responsible situation in this life at an early season,” leaving dependents behind.

Portland, Maine → Maitland, N.S., paid 25 January 1850. Addressed to David Frize Esquire, Merchant, Maitland, Nova Scotia.

The March letter is warmer still. Whidden reports he's sold nearly all of Frieze's lumber — cargoes he identifies as having come aboard vessels named Barnes and Sarah — quotes prices for molasses, flour, hay, and plaster, and asks Frieze to “mention to your Brother Jacob” that he can supply him just as well as any Boston or Salem house. He closes: “Mrs. W. sends her love to Mrs. Frieze and remember us to all friends.” That is not the sign-off of an ordinary trade correspondent.

Portland, Maine → Maitland, N.S., paid 13 March 1850. Addressed to David Frize Esqr, Merchant, Maitland, Nova Scotia.

Portland directories and newspapers fill in the rest of the picture handsomely. The 1850 Portland directory lists “Whidden, Alex'r D., commission merchant, hd Union Wharf, h Brackett, near Danforth.” A display advertisement from the same year bills him as “A. D. WHIDDEN, COMMISSION MERCHANT, and dealer in Groceries, Provisions, Plaster, Nova Scotia Wood, Lumber, &c., Head of Union Wharf” — Nova Scotia wood and lumber advertised as his specialty, in his own words. Classified notices from the Portland Press Herald in December 1849 list his stock down to the thousand: staves, joists, pickets, hewed scantling, plank, ship knees, hackmatack top timbers, plaster, beef, and woollen socks — a wharf doing brisk, varied trade with the Maritimes.

The 1850 and 1860 U.S. federal censuses confirm Alexander D. Whidden as a Portland commission merchant, born about 1816–1817 in Nova Scotia, married to Margaret and raising a growing family — Arthur, Jessie, Eliza, and Louis among them. A Find a Grave record supplies the detail that closes the case entirely: Alexander Dick Whidden was born 22 March 1816 in Maitland, Hants County — David Frieze's own town — and his parents were James Whidden and Abigail Brown Whidden. James Whidden's own genealogical record lists a sister: Abigail Whidden Frieze, 1780–1808.

That is David Frieze's mother. Alexander D. Whidden was not merely a fellow Nova Scotian who happened to trade in the right goods — he was David Frieze's first cousin, the son of his mother's brother, born in the very town he was writing home to. It explains everything about the tone of these letters, right down to the love sent to Mrs. Frieze.

Halifax, 1850–51 — Avery, Brown & Co.

A different kind of document survives from Halifax: not a trading letter but a formal account current, addressed to Frieze and dated 1 January 1851, itemizing a running, interest-bearing balance carried through 1850 — a balance of last account, sundries per bill, and accumulated interest, totalling £78.12.7. A short covering note dated 6 February 1851 asks him to confirm the figure is correct.

Halifax → Maitland, Douglas [township], N.S., 1851. Addressed to David Frize Esqr, Maitland.

The signature is difficult to read with certainty, but the likeliest identification is Avery, Brown & Co., a well-established Halifax wholesale house — “Importers and Jobbers of Drugs & Medicines of every description, Spices, Dye-stuffs, Oils, Chemicals, Dry Colours and Varnishes, Patent Medicines,” per their own advertising, established 1824 and operating from George Street. The firm was founded by Dr. James Fillis Avery (1794–1887), Edinburgh-trained, born of Loyalist stock at Lower Horton (now Grand Pré), who practiced medicine in Halifax and built the drug business that later carried on as Brown & Webb. He never married, and died in his ninety-fourth year.

This account is a different texture of relationship from the Whidden letters — a country storekeeper's ordinary line of wholesale credit with a city supplier, carrying interest like any such account would. One loose thread worth naming here, though not run fully to ground: Dr. Avery's sister, Elizabeth (Eliza) Avery Brown, died in Maitland in 1852. Whether her married name connects to the “Brown” of Avery, Brown & Co. — and whether that in turn explains why a Maitland merchant banked with this particular Halifax house — is an open question I haven't been able to close.

Truro, 1855 — his cousin Charles B. Whidden

A shorter, plainer letter comes from Truro, dated 16 February 1855, and is signed “C. B. Whidden” — confirmed by docketing on the reverse as “Mr. Charles B. Whidden.” Its business is personal rather than commercial: Whidden acknowledges receiving, by the previous day's mail, a letter from Frieze enclosing twenty pounds cash, and writes that he has told a Mr. Gammell the money is in hand and will be paid over as soon as he calls. He adds that a Messrs. Rettie & Crow have settled the amount of their bill.

Truro → Maitland, Hants, N.S., 17 February 1855. Addressed to David Frieze Esqr, Maitland, Hants.

Charles B. Whidden turns out to be Alexander D. Whidden's brother — another son of James Whidden and Abigail Brown Whidden — which makes him, like Alexander, David Frieze's first cousin. Where Alexander handled Frieze's lumber trade from Portland, Charles seems to have served as a trusted hand in Truro for exactly the kind of errand you'd only ask of family: holding cash, paying a third party on your behalf, no commission or markup in sight.

Small footnote: the envelope is addressed to “David Frieze Esqr., Maitland, Douglas” — which reads, at a glance, like it might refer to the Douglas family mentioned in the Whidden letters above. It doesn't. Douglas was the name of the historic township that Maitland sat within, founded in 1784 for disbanded Loyalist troops of the 84th Regiment and named for Sir Charles Douglas — an entirely unrelated coincidence of naming, and, incidentally, the very same township where James Whidden himself died in 1830.

New York, 1856 — J.S. Whitney & Co. and the estate of William Keating

The most striking of the five items is a letter dated New York, 15 March 1856, from a firm signing itself “J.S. Whitney & Co.,” written and signed on the firm's behalf by an A.J. Whitney. It encloses a settlement statement for the estate of a deceased seaman, William Keating: wages paid via a “M.O. Roberts” — almost certainly Marshall Owen Roberts (1813–1880), the New York shipping magnate who co-founded the U.S. Mail Steamship Company and later headed Pacific Mail — together with funds from the Seamen's Savings Bank, for a net balance of $413.74 credited to Sprague, Soule & Co. at Frieze's own request. The firm notes it is holding “two chests” of Keating's effects, to be forwarded to Maitland by the first vessel.

Boston → Maitland, N.S., 1856. Addressed to David Frize Esq., Maitland, Nova Scotia.

Who Whitney & Co. actually were remains genuinely unresolved. An 1856 Boston directory places a “J. Whitney & Co.” at 40 Pearl Street — Boston's shipping-merchant row — with a partner, George W. Badger. An 1857 New York directory, by contrast, lists a “John S. Whitney & Co.,” grindstone dealers, whose initials match the signature far more closely, and whose trade — grindstones being a real Nova Scotia export in this period — offers a plausible if unconfirmed reason for the firm's dealings with a Maitland connection. I haven't been able to settle which of these, if either, is the correct house.

William Keating himself remains unidentified. A William Keating, able-bodied seaman, born about 1836 in Nova Scotia, served aboard the brigantine Village Belle out of Maitland in 1863—164 — too late to be our man, but good evidence that Keating was an established Maitland seafaring surname, and a possible relative. A Joseph Keating headed a household of seven in Hants County in the 1861 census, another lead worth following in the nominal returns if they can be located. This is squarely the kind of research that needs Nova Scotia vital statistics and period newspaper death or shipping notices rather than general search — if anyone reading this recognizes the name, I'd be glad to hear from you.

Open threads

A few names surface in these letters that I haven't been able to run down with any confidence, and I'd rather say so than force a fit:

Caleb Douglas. Whidden's January 1850 letter mourns his death. Family-tree research points to a Caleb S. Douglas of Maitland — gravestone dates 1 April 1827 to 6 February 1849, age twenty-one — son of James D. Douglas and Mary Polly Putnam, married to Lydia Blois, with a daughter, Susan, born the same year he died. Several same-named Douglas men from Maitland appear tangled together in online trees, so I've leaned on the gravestone for vital dates and treated the family details as probable rather than certain.

George Lindsey. Named alongside Caleb Douglas as recently deceased. No identification yet.

The vessels Barnes, Sarah, and Triumph. Frieze evidently shipped lumber to Portland aboard vessels called Barnes and Sarah; Whidden also mentions “the ill fate of Triumph.” A schooner Triumph of Cape Elizabeth, Maine — Portland's near neighbour — appears in one Prince Edward Island shipwreck list, driven ashore at St. Peters Harbour, but I couldn't confirm the date lines up. Worth a look at Lloyd's Register or period shipping columns if anyone wants to take it further.

Looking ahead

Five letters, five correspondents, three countries, and — it turned out — two first cousins hiding in plain sight. A separate post covers the later Frieze & Roy partnership years and the Grace Dodd cover that started this whole thread; more Frieze & Roy correspondence, when it turns up, will follow in its own piece.