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Charlotte's Mercantile Community

Commerce was an important component of Charlotte's economy throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.  As a small regional market serving those in  Mecklenburg and the surrounding counties, Charlotte developed a brisk trade supplying area farmers and townspeople with those items that could not be grown or manufactured locally.  An assortment of domestic goods and groceries could be found in a dry goods store.  Itinerant traders and peddlers carried large stocks of dry goods and novelties and traveled from county to county, contributing to the stock of many area merchants.  Many merchants also made yearly, or twice-yearly, trips to Charleston, Philadelphia, or New York to purchase their stock for the next season.  Many Charlotte merchants did a cash-only business, but others accepted cash, traded for country produce, or extended credit to those who promptly paid their bills.

 

"At this time probably every store was hung overhead with bales or bundles of yarn for the chain - or warp of a web; nearly every farmer's wife had a loom to weave cloth for all on the farm....  The old fashioned loaf sugar wrapped with twine around blue paper, was hung overhead.  This sugar was known as loaf sugar, and used on Sunday morning to sweeten "bought" tea, and probably a little of it was used to sweeten morning dram of brandy or rum....  Dry goods stores all kept iron - that is bars of iron, slabs of iron for making bull-tongues; large slabs, eight to twelve inches wide by one inch thick, for big, heavy plows, one or two horse plows..."

An excerpt from The History of Mecklenburg County from 1740 to 1900 by John Brevard Alexander, page 20.

 

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