Joseph Rankin Papers
A dry goods merchant and chair maker in Erving, Massachusetts, Joseph Rankin dealt in a variety of goods from Boston to Hartford, selling chairs as far away as New York City and Chicago. Rankin’s store supplied the essentials: produce, hardware, news, and gossip.
This collection contains an assortment of correspondence and receipts documenting the nature of business in small town Massachusetts, with small glimpses of the growth of the furniture trade in Franklin County.
Born in Buxton, Maine, on Nov. 11, 1806, Joseph Rankin won success as both a dry goods merchant and manufacturer of wood-seat chairs. Sometime after marrying Lydia Wentworth in 1831, Rankin resettled in Erving, Mass., where he pursued his trade and raised three children. His businesses grew despite the erratic economy and his chair shop, powered by a waterwheel, eventually included a frame sawmill as well. A member of the Harmony Lodge of Freemasons, he was well enough connected in Erving to be appointed postmaster in 1857.
Rankin died on Feb. 19, 1865 (sometimes recorded as 1866) and is buried in a family plot on Hiram, Maine, along with his wife.
This collection contains an assortment of correspondence and receipts documenting the nature of business in small town Massachusetts, with small glimpses of the growth of the furniture trade in Franklin County.
Provenance unrecorded, 1986.
Processed by I. Eliot Wentworth, Sept. 2015.
)Cite as: Joseph Rankin Papers (MS 147). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.