James Hyatt is age 63 in the 1880 census, a chemistry teacher in Stanford, among his household is his mother
Sarah (Deuel) Hyatt.
So Hyatt was old enough to know Jonathan5 Deuel himself, or at least his sons, and given that he lived in
Stanford it is conceivable that he did so, so I have to cut him some slack on his judgment that Jonathan's parents
were Silas4 Deuel and Mary Wilbore.
Silas I.6 Deuel is in Bangall in 1830 and in Manhattan thereafter, a dry goods jobber (what we would call a
wholesaler or middleman) on Pearl St. I think Pearl St. goes by the US District Courthouse for the Southern
District of NY, it's one of the few places in Manhattan I would know how to find. I don't know where Silas6 is
buried, I don't see him in Dutchess County cemeteries. So Silas's daughter Mary is born in Manhattan or at least
grows up there, which is how she met a Birney, that is a very cosmopolitan family, with the sons of JGB2 going
to France (William), Philadelphia (David), Harvard, Germany and Italy (Fitzhugh). The newlywed feminist
Elizabeth Cady Stanton writes about a voyage to England with old James Gillespie Birney himself, he was
widowed at the time and smitten with Miss Fitzhugh, who was a friend of Stanton's.
Word of Silas' daughter bagging --- I mean marrying --- a Birney was so notorious that it makes it way back to
Stanford, where Hyatt puts in his book even he doesn't know the first name of either party to the marriage.
(John) Newton Deuel settles in Manhattan after stints as a dentist in Virginia and a merchant in Bangall,
eventually becoming a note broker. Today, I guess a "note broker" would probably connote mortgage notes, but
back then it usually meant buying notes from wholesalers, which had been issued by retailers, using their
inventory as collateral. They would buy these notes from the wholesalers at a discount, as holding a lot of notes
put a crimp in the jobbers' cash flow. The note broker would either sell the notes to a third party at a profit or
hold them himself and assume the risk of default by the retailer. There was a lot of risk in this type of business,
especially when they would have had financial "panics" like in 1873, so you would think Newton went into it
with a pretty fair amount of capital.
It's surprising how few Deuels with the right spelling are in the 1880 census for Manhattan, I think there are only
six, including Newton and Penelope. The Deuel brothers' involvement in the Manhattan retail business in this era
may put a couple of old pieces of information in a different light.
The first is the Henry L. Deuel you found in the directories, who had a candy store at 284 Seventh Ave. in 1870
and the following year had a toy store at 286 Seventh Ave. in 1871. You would think that a guy who couldn't
make it selling candy wouldn't go into business the next year selling toys unless he had some connections. He
was born in 1843 according to the information you found in the 1870 census, wife Annie born 1847 in NJ, a
Susan Howard age 17 NJ in household. I can't find their births on IGI (I am presuming maybe these two are
sisters). There are few Howards in NJ, but I notice a bunch lived in Paterson. In any event, he could be a son or
nephew of the right Henry.
One of the other few Deuels in Manhattan in 1880 is a James M. Deuel, 57, Retired Merchant. I think you had
found him too in a directory but I don't recall offhand what he did. His wife is Anna McLaughlin and they live
with her father. You would think he did pretty well, in those days before Social Security, to have enough salted
away to retire at 57. I can't find a trace of them either on IGI, etc.
Maybe there was just something in the Deuel blood that made these different guys go into various aspects of
retailing. Of course, if you wanted to start a retail business in this era in the New York City area, in Passaic, for
example, it certainly wouldn't hurt to have an uncle who was a jobber and another who was a note broker, those
are just the type of people to help a young guy get started.
Richard Gifford
Septemer 27, 2003
The brothers Silas I. 6 & (John) Newton 6 Deuel in Manhattan
and some other entrepreneurial New York City Deuels