| Ref No | MS 3219/3/3/3/4 |
| Finding Number | MS 3219/3/99 |
| Title | Incoming letters to James Watt of Greenock concerning general business, orders and shipping in Europe, North America, Antigua etc. |
| Level | File |
| Date | 1747 - 1776 |
| Description | 173 items. There are 21 small bundles of letters and papers arranged by year, some containing only 1 item. the papers mostly concern shipping and cargoes of tar, turpentine, timber, seeds, wine, naval supplies. There is also information on agents and debts.
The 1748 bundle includes a letter about a Daniel Clark, shipmaster, disciplined by his crew at Zetland, and a list of furniture for a new ship for James Crawford.
The 1750 bundle includes information on the sale of rum and cargoes at Roanoak and Cape Fear, North Carolina.
The 1754 bundle includes house insurance papers for James Watt of Greenock.
The 1763 bundle has papers and plans for building a wall at the back of his house.
The 1774 letter is from James Weir. |
| Extent | 1 |
| Format | File |
| Related Material | A single receipt from 1744 was discovered at Doldowlod in 2002 and donated to the City Archives. It is listed in the ‘Later additions to the papers of James Watt and Family’ part of the MS 3219 catalogue.
The Watt and Muirhead papers were microfilmed by Adam Matthew Publications as part of Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History. ‘Muirhead I’ was published in Series One: part 2 in 1993; ‘Muirhead II-IV’ in Series One: parts 6 and 8, in 1997; and the ‘James Watt Papers’ in Series Three, in 1999. All the microfilms are available in Birmingham City Archives. |
| Physical Description | Papers and correspondence |
| Access Status | Open |
| Arrangement | These have not been listed in detail. |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Three Generations of Watts. Extracts from the Doldowlod Papers, by Julian Gibson-Watt (1995), has a section on the trading correspondence of James Watt of Greenock and on the Finlay & Cation papers. [B&W Pamphlets G/7] |