The Metcalf family settled in Providence, RI after the Revolutionary War and opened a leather business under the name Joel Metcalf and Sons. Jesse Metcalf (1790-1838) married Eunice Houghton (1793-1858) 1812 April 19. Widowed with five children, Eunice never remarried. Her oldest son Jesse Metcalf (1827-1899) apprenticed in the cotton broker business under the tutelage of Truman Beckwith and Stephen T. Olney. He moved to Macon, Georgia in 1848 and then Augusta in 1850. He and Olney began their own business under the name Olney and Mecalf, maintaining an office in Augusta until the Civil War.
Married to Helen Rowe in 1852, Metcalf returned to Providence in 1857/1858 where Olney and Metcalf entered the woolen mill business. They incorporated under the name the Wanskuck Company in partnership with Henry J. Steere during the Civil War. Helen Metcalf served on the 1876 Women's Centennial Committee of Rhode Island. She led the effort to use the committee's remaining funds to establish the Rhode Island School of Design in 1877. She and her daughter Eliza Radeke (1852-1931) guided RISD's operations for its first 50 years. Stephen O. (1857-1951), Manton B. (1864-1923), and Jesse H. (1860-1942) joined their father in the family's woolen mills business.
See Nancy Austin's dissertation "Towards a Genealogy of Visual Culture at the Rhode Island School of Design, 1875-1900" (Brown University, 2009) for a detailed history of the founding and early years of RISD.
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Jesse Metcalf family papers, Rhode Island School of Design.
The collection consists of the Jesse Metcalf family papers including extensive correspondence, circa 1845-1894, and a family genealogy chart prepared circa 1918. The letters provide a window into Jesse's work as a cotton broker in antebellum Georgia, the family's post-Civil War woolen textile company, and the family's activities in Providence and foreign and domestic travels.
The materials in this collection are tentatively arranged in two series:
The papers are a gift of the Metcalf family.
This series consists primarily of correspondence from family members and Jesse Metcalf's business associates, circa 1845-1894. The letters detail Jesse's life in Macon and Augusta, GA as a cotton broker, 1848-1857, including discussions of the local society, slavery and politics, and the cotton industry. Letters from family members provide a view of their activities and Providence social life before the Civil War. Helen Metcalf's brother, Cornelius Rowe, wrote letters en route to Australia, 1853-1854. Business associates include Truman Beckwith and Stephen T. Olney.
Post-Civil War letters document trips by family members to Europe and the American West. Other letters document the growth of the Wanskuck Company and the involvement of Jesse's sons in the woolen textile industry.
The correspondence has not been processed or organized, but a family member created typed transcripts of many of the letters.
Metcalf family genealogy charts and notes prepared for Houghton Pierce Metcalf, circa 1918.