Volume 8 Issue 2 Summer-Fall 2001
A Mercantile Venture in Colonial Simsbury
At the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford there is an account book that holds records for a general store and a sloop owned by Daniel Goodwin and his partner John Bigelow. The first page of the ledger states that the store opened on February 15, 1759 and that it was “in Simsbury in Connecticut in New England.” The partners were members of well established Hartford families. Daniel Goodwin was fifty-three years old and had earned the rank of Captain in the Hartford train band, or militia, and had served until 1755. He was a merchant in Hartford and John Bigelow was his nineteen-year-old stepson.
