Mitchell & Freeman, Boston
Nathan Mitchell Jr. was a partner in the firm of Winslow Hooper & Co. china and glass dealers of Boston. The announcement of dissolution made in May 1823 also carried a notice that Nathan Mitchell Jr. and Watson Freeman had formed a new partnership and purchased the entire stock of Winslow, Hooper & Company, and was offering it for sale at Nos. 1 & 2 Parkman's Buildings, Bray's Wharf, in Boston[i]. They moved from the old premises and by 1825 were established at 67 Broad Street where they suffered an enormous loss, when a fire swept through many of the businesses on Broad, Central and Kirby streets. Mitchell & Freeman Crockery Ware were listed as one of the many stores “entirely consumed” by the conflagration.[ii] In August 1826 they had moved to “the spacious Stone Store No. 3 and 4, South Market-street where they offer for sale … a complete and extensive assortment of CROCKERY, GLASS and CHINA WARE.”[iii] But soon after that they moved again to 12 Chatham Street. This was a huge 4-storey shop close to the Boston docks and they celebrated by commissioning an engraving to be made of their store[iv] and asking William Adams of Stoke-upon-Trent to use the lithograph to create a blue printed pottery design for them. Perhaps the scale of the store or their ambitions were too great, for within a few years Mitchell and Freeman were in financial trouble and their stock was sold at an assignee sale on their Chatham Street premises.[v]
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[i] Independent Chronicle & Boston Patriot, May 28, 1823
[ii] Providence Patriot & Berkshire Star, April 14, 1825
[iii] Boston Commercial Gazette, August 3, 1826
[iv] Boston Athenaeum, http://cdm15482.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p13110coll5...
[v] Boston Courier, March 1, 1832