The Nantucket Navigators: Thomas Jenkins
Thomas Jenkins was the driving force in establishing a new settlement in New York of merchants and whalers from Nantucket, Providence, Newport, and Edgartown. Originally from Nantucket he settled in Providence and became a successful and wealthy maritime merchant trading in goods from the West Indies to London and various ports in eastern North America. He led the effort to form a new association of proprietors and the search for a new port.
The Thomas Jenkins Letterbook (November 21, 1782-December 2, 1785), consisting of Jenkins’ correspondence copied for his own record, traces the buying and selling, bargaining, managing, inventorying, and accounting of goods from whaling and smaller cargo voyages, called packet voyages. Halfway through this book Jenkins has moved to Hudson from Providence. These letters are snapshots into the dealings of the main Proprietor, second mayor, and lead businessman of early Hudson. In a November 8, 1783 letter he states:
from Thomas Jenkins Letterbook
Thomas Jenkins Letterbook, Courtesy ©Hendrick Hudson Chapter, NSDAR
We have made a purchase up Hudson River in York State in order to carry on trade by a considerable number of inhabitants of property and where I doubt not but we shall have a good staple will consist of Wheat, Flour, Pot & Pearl Ash for Spars, Plank, Ship Timber board, Staves of the best kind with many articles of provisions which if any of the above article.
This list of items shows the attraction of Claverack Landing for the Proprietors as a river port with rich agricultural land, developed farms, and forests of trees to supply shipbuilding and other construction industries. It also shows the diversity of trade that had already made Thomas Jenkins wealthy.
Several factors contributed to the Proprietor's decision to settle here: The riverfront that comprised Claverack Landing was deep enough for a port with whaling ships; there was established commercial wharf infrastructure; and the farm land nearby could supply the merchants with diverse goods to trade, and there was also an abundance of forest lands with lumber to construct the ships.Advertisements such as this one, from the Hudson Weekly Gazette of April 4, 1787, illustrate the type of commerce that Thomas Jenkins and others were engaged in the earliest days of Hudson.