The old merchants of New York City / by Walter Barrett.

OF NEJVW YORK CITY.

49

There ae not many such men as James Edward Boisseau. I now return to the house of Ingoldsby & Boisseau, that lasted but one year, and in 1841 it was chang
ed to Ingoldsby, Boisseau & Co. The company was
David C. Halsted, who had, like Jacob, served seven
year as a clerk with the old house, and had fairly earned
this position. Mr. Halsted was a New Yorker. I remember his father, " O. Halsted," who kept a law bookstore down at the corner of Wall and Broad. He had
as a sign a portrait of the lord Chancellor, Eldon. It
was a wonderful concern that portrait of the great English law Lord, with his flowing white wig, in the olden
time. The O. stood for Oliver. The same O. Halsted
put up the "Law Buildings," corner of Nassau street
and Liberty, opposite the Post Office. They cost him
$30.000. The same concern is now worth $400,000.
He lived as late as 1857. At one time it was Halsted &
Voorhees. At another it was John Wiley & Halsted.
That John Wiley, was father of the present John Wiley,
who is grandson to the Major Wiley of the Revolution,
who was so great a patriot, that on one occasion he said
to a British officer, " Rather than do this thing (something for the benefit of George the Third), I will place
my finger in a candle and burn it off." Suiting his
action to the words, he held it in a lighted candle until it was burnt off. Ascertaining once that a Tory lived
next door to him in Broadway, he sold his house and
moved to another part of the city. In 1822, when the
yellow fever raged here, Wiley & Halstead kept their
bookstore at No. 3 Wall street, and Mr. Halstead lived
No. 107 Greenwich street. To save his family, he
moved to Newark, New Jersey, and took the old Stephen
Decatur mansion, where he lived until the fever depart
ed from New York. Young Halsted, his son, I well
8