Philadelphia’s Trade with Saint Domingue/Haiti

With some exceptions, each record includes the voyage’s starting and ending points, the date of departure and/or arrival, the name of the captain and vessel, the vessel’s rigging, registry, and tonnage, the merchants having an interest in the cargo, and the cargo’s makeup.

The lion’s share of this information was derived from various sources in the records of the Philadelphia Customs House, housed at the National Archives Mid-Atlantic Regional Branch office in Philadelphia (Record Group 36). Within that collection, the dataset aggregates from the volumes of the Record of Arrivals and Clearances (E1057) and the boxes of Inward & Outward & Coastwise Manifests (E1059B). The data was also gathered from the volumes of the Outward books (E1126) housed in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the microfilmed records of the Philadelphia Health Officer’s Register (roll 0860) and Register of Vessels arrivals and clearances and Pilot’s Reports (roll 0864).