This collection documents the transactions of J & I Newhall, dry goods merchants in Salem, Massachusetts, in the early nineteenth century. Included are letters, receipts, legal papers, shipping papers, and also some personal correspondence to Isaac Newhall (1782-1858).

Folder 1 contains extensive business correspondence addressed to Isaac Newhall or J & I Newhall, dry goods merchants in Salem, Massachusetts, from 1814 to 1836. Also present is correspondence addressed to Isaac Newhall, merchant in Macon, Georgia, from 1834 to 1836. In Folder 2 is personal correspondence relating to the Newhall family members including Isaac Newhall, his mother Lucy, wife Sally, brother Horatio, son Gustavus, nieces Harriet and Lucy Ann, and son-in-law George Collins. There are also letters of introduction for Gustavus as he traveled west to join Horatio in Galena, Illinois. Six of the business or personal letters to Isaac Newhall were transcribed, and typewritten copies are in Folder 3.

Folder 4 contains extensive notes and drafts of correspondence to John Pickering (1777-1846), as well as one letter from John Pickering, concerning the authorship of the Letters of Junius. Junius was the pseudonym of a writer who published this collection of letters in 1772. They were widely circulated in Europe and remained popular for many years both because of their political significance and the mystery surrounding their authorship. Isaac Newhall argued that Earl Temple (1711-1779), an English politician, was the author of the Junius Letters, and he published his theory in a series of letters to John Pickering in 1831.

Folder 5 includes shipping papers itemizing shipment of dry goods between Salem, Massachusetts, and ports including New York, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. Ships named include brigs Return, Dispatch, Eliza, Agenoria, and Harriot, sloops Sattleite(sp?), Packet, Delight, and Stranger, ships Andrew Jackson, and Olive Branch, and schooners Rapids, Greyhound, Fame, Neptune, Washington, and Hero.

Folder 6 contains five documents. The first transfers ownership of a wharf in Salem from Elijah Sanderson to Joel and Isaac Newhall (1814), the second is a rental lease in Lynn (1817), the third describes a disputed lease in Salem (1822), and the fourth outlines the obligations of Newhall and Thayer to their creditors (1825). Also included is a draft of a petition to the United States Congress requesting that small foreign coins be removed from circulation and be replaced by freshly minted American coins.

Folders 7 and 8 contain about 170 receipts detailing the financial transactions of the J & I Newhall business, in particular between 1814 and 1821.

Box 2 contains four account books dated from 1824 to 1842.