This letterbook spans fifty years and contains three sections, covering three separate endeavors.
The first section is the Payne & Swiney letterbook, and later the Harrison, Swiney and Co. letterbook, which documents a furniture, hardware, and dry goods retailers in Vicksburg, Mississippi. These 56 pages date from October 6, 1836 -May 24, 1840. The contents are primarily orders for goods and furniture inventories, with a few letters to customers and letters discussing business ventures.
The second section consists of the Henry S. Clubb letterbook from January 13 to August 4, 1865, while he was captain and assistant quartermaster for the 17th U.S. Army Corps. In the first letter, he explains that he has just come from Vicksburg, where he obtained this volume. He writes from Louisville, Kentucky; Charleston, South Carolina; Alexandria, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and New Orleans, Louisiana. Many of the letters are addressed to Gen. M.C. Meigs, and contain lists of quartermaster stores, discussions of orders, and movements of his operations. These entries offer excellent insight into the challenges of being a Union quartermaster.
The third section is a geographical notebook containing calculations concerning "Henderson's formula" for the determination of latitudes. This portion is of indeterminate authorship, but apparently done in Allegan, Michigan, in the 1880s. These notes are comprised of over 80 pages of calculations interspersed with brief commentary such as:
"Thus I have deduced an original formula for finding the length of the seconds pendulum in any part of the world...I have added to our knowledge of the world upon which we dwell."
"What I claim as original in the treatment of this subject, is the discovery of the Ellipsoid of Gravity, and the relation of its constants to one another, and their application to the solution of all questions within the realm of territorial gravitation and the variations in the lengths of the seconds pendulum."
Jacob U. Payne and William P. Swiney were merchants in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the early 19th Century. They ran a furniture, hardware, and dry goods retail business.
Henry Stephens Clubb (1827-1922) was born to Stephens Clubb, in Colchester, England. Henry was raised Swedenborgian, a sect of Christianity, and later identified as a Bible Christian, also known as a Cowherdite. Clubb worked as a clerk at the Colchester Post Office and moved to England in 1842, where he found work as a secretary to James Simpson, an early leader of England's vegetarian movement.
Clubb settled in New York in 1853 and distinguished himself as an abolitionist journalist. After reporting on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Clubb attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish a small pro-vegetarian-abolitionist-temperance colony in Kansas on banks of the Neosho River. With much of the colony ailing, the settlement disbanded and Clubb moved back to New York to work for the abolitionist Tribune newspaper. During the Civil War, Clubb served as captain and assistant quartermaster in the 17th U.S. Army Corps (1862-1866). He survived a bullet wound at Corinth, Mississippi.
After the war, Clubb married and moved to Grand Haven, Michigan. He published the Clarion newspaper from 1857-1862, and founded the Grand Haven Herald in 1869. Clubb served as a Michigan state senator of the 29th District in Ottawa County from 1873-1874. Clubb moved to Philadelphia to become the minister of the Bible Christian congregation. He remained active in vegetarian causes and was president of the American Vegetarian Society. Clubb died in 1922 at age 95.
