"The Best Lands, Wealthiest Merchants, and Planters in the State of Alabama": A. R. Moen Sells Axes in North Alabama in 1831

Abstract

"The Best Lands, Wealthiest Merchants, and Planters in the State of Alabama":A. R. Moen Sells Axes in North Alabama in 1831 Robert S. Davis (bio) Augustus réné moen (born in paris, france, on september 1, 1799, and died in Samford, Connecticut, on August 24, 1867) found himself writing of his travels in the Tennessee River Valley of Alabama in 1831. That letter, in a small way, fills in for the notorious lack of gazetteers and other descriptive works from the early years of Alabama. How Moen came to find himself in Alabama makes for a colorful tale. He immigrated to America with his parents Louis and Madeline D'Arquienne Moen in 1808. Moen attended the public schools in Wilna, New York. In 1823, he married Sophie LeClanché, also a native of Paris, in Utica and became the postmaster of Houseville, New York. Eventually, Moen settled in Samford, Connecticut, and became the first deacon of the town's Presbyterian Church. He became a United States citizen in Brooklyn, New York, on October 30, 1840, and served as an officer in the New York State Militia. Augustus also patented a product for waterproofing. His son, Phillip Louis Moen (1824-1891), started Washburn & Moen, a steel mill that pioneered the development of barbed wire. His descendants intermarried with such prominent families as the Loorams, Peabodys, and Rothchilds in a family history that touched on the 1898 war with Spain, the Russian Revolution, the crash of the Hindenburg, and the rise and fall of the [End Page 229] Third Reich. No relationship, however, exists between Augustus R. Moen and the famous engineer and faucet designer Alfred M. Moen (1916-2001).1 A. R. Moen made a career in retailing while making a home in Connecticut and New York. In 1830, he became a traveling agent for the Collins Company of Canton, Connecticut. Begun in 1826 by Samuel Watkinson Collins as an axe company, Collins Company would become a leading tool manufacturer worldwide, focused especially in edged hand tools. (Workers even used Collins tools to build the Trans-Siberian Railroad.) In 1833, Moen likely persuaded President Andrew Jackson to purchase Collins axes for the Indians removed to the West. He joined his employer in petitioning not to allow the dangerous economic consequences of closing the Second Bank of the United States.2 On June 16, 1831, Moen wrote a detailed letter to the Collins Company about his adventures in getting orders for their products in North Alabama. Moen describes how business in the Tennessee Valley involved companies as far away as New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg. He also mentions a number of prominent towns, including Athens, Courtland, Florence, Huntsville, Mooresville, Russellville, Tuscumbia, and Waterloo, as well as the names of several prominent local merchants. The letter, reproduced below, comes from the A. S. Williams III Americana Collection, part of the holdings of the University of Alabama Libraries in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The W. S. Hoole Library of the University of Alabama also has a letter from Moen to M. P. Collins, dated May 31, 1831, from Greensboro, Alabama, about selling axes on the Tombigbee and Black [End Page 230] Warrior rivers. It does not include the detailed information found in the letter reproduced here, although Moen does mention that Linden in Marengo County had two merchants: "Chs. S. Davenport late of Maine, a young and active man" and "an old Frenchman who follows the even tenor of his ways." Of Demopolis, he wrote, it is not the place you imagined it to be nor as large or important as I expected. Figure to yourself a high Prairie bluff of about 20 acres on which is scattered a few groves of trees and about ten dwelling houses and 5 Stores—and you have Demopolis—and yet there are more goods sold there than a stranger could possibly imagine. Two of the town's merchants, Moen noted, "are doing a business of from 35 to 40 thousand dlls [dollars] per Year." He described one, Allen Glover, as "unquestionably one of the wealthiest men in the State of Alabama consisting of lands negroes and Bank stock." George Strother Gaines, federal Indian agent for trade...