Pruyn, Vosburgh & Co.

Another wonderful billhead from The Biggert Collection, this one from 1855 showing the venerable establishment of Pruyn, Vosburgh & Co., No. 39 State Street, importers of hardware.

In 1829, John Pruyn, hardware merchant, gave over his business to Lansing Pruyn, Isaac Vosburgh and Abraham Wilson.

In his 1866 “History of the County of Albany, ” George Rogers Howell tells us that Isaac W. Vosburgh was born in Albany in 1801 to a father of old Dutch stock and a Scots mother. He began his business career in the hardware store of George Humphrey on State Street. “here he applied himself assiduously to business and familiarized himself with the hardware trade as it then existed.” The firm of Pruyn, Wilson & Vosburgh was formed, and continued in business for more than thirty years, doing business at No. 39 State Street.

Their ad in the 1843 New York State Register advertised them as importers of hardware, cutlery, steel &c. “Also, constantly on hand, Ruggles’, Nourse & Mason’s superior Ploughs, of different sizes and
patterns, manufactured at Worcester, Mass. Together with Sub-soil and Side-Hill Ploughs, Cultivators, Straw-Cutters, and other Farming Utensils.”

Included on this receipt: slates, pencils, brass kettles, thumb latches, fish hooks, and 3 (or 4) kegs of nails. These were sold for the princely sum of $28.09 to Jacob Settle, a merchant of Berne who is well-known and well-regarded in Amasa Parker’s “Landmarks of Albany County”:

Jacob Settle was engaged in mercantile business in Berne from 1812 to 1864, in which he was uncommonly successful. He was prominent in public affairs, held the offices of justice, supervisor, member of assembly, and was for thirty five years postmaster. It was largely through his influence that the plank road was constructed through this town from Schoharie, and connected with the Albany road. He was in every way a public spirited and valuable citizen.

39 State Street would have been about across from Jack’s Oyster House. The building is long gone, likely subsumed by the Museum Building.