Series I. John Osgood (1758-1826) Papers contains correspondence, financial, legal, and estate papers that document John's activities as a shipmaster and shipping merchant, and briefly describe his other business concerns. The correspondence incudes general merchant correspondence, letters with his mercantile partner, William Gray, and correspondence regarding Count Basile Apraxin's fiscal affairs during his visit to the United States (1802-1807). The paucity of shipping records in the series does not reflect the thriving trade that John conducted with Europe and India. Only one folder of legal and financial records documents the privateering and shipping vessels that John owned or mastered (See Appendix I for a listing). Of interest in the financial papers are receipts and accounts of Basile Apraxin and his mother, the Countess Elisabeth Apraxin of Russia, real estate accounts, and household receipts for furniture made by William Appleton and Nehemiah Adams. Also included are receipts from the Salem Iron Factory, of which John was an early shareholder, and accounts and shareholders' lists that John kept as treasurer of the Salem Female School. Besides numerous deeds for land on Brown Street in Salem, the legal papers contain John's Justice of the Peace certificate (1816), a house building agreement (1781), and a Gedney family genealogy that related to the Brown Street lands. The estate papers include the wills of John and his wife, Rebecca (Messervy), house inventories, and John B. Osgood's' estate trustee papers.