Nathan Dunn

NOTES ^DOCUMENTS NATHAN DUNN By Arthur W. Hummel* Nathan Dunn, China merchant and philanthropist, was born of Quaker parents on November 11, 1782, near Woodstown, Salem County, New Jersey. He died in Vevey, Switzerland, September 19, 1844. His father, who also had the given name Nathan, married Rhoda Silver at Piles Grove (now Woodstown) Monthly Meeting on November 4, 1773. By a previous marriage Nathan senior had three children: Rebecca (died in infancy), Zaccheus, and Benajah. By his marriage to Rhoda Silver, he had five children: Deborah, William, Josiah, Rachel (died in infancy), and Nathan, the subject of this sketch. He himself died December 19, 1782, age 39, about a month after Nathan was born.1 By his will of November 14, 1782, recorded in Piles Grove Township, he left a farm of 200 acres, and expressed a wish that Nathan would learn a trade. A house still standing near Woodstown has large brick markers with the letters Z and D, and the date 1743. Very likely this was the Dunn homestead, Z standing for Zaccheus, the given name of several ancestors.2 On October 13, 1788, nearly six years after her husband's death, Nathan's mother married Thomas Osborn of Burlington County, at Piles Grove Meetinghouse. On April 26, 1790, Rhoda Osborn and her children were granted a certificate to Little Egg Harbor Monthly Meeting. There Thomas and Rhoda continued to live, and at their deaths their remains were interred in the Friends Cemetery in nearby Tuckerton. The children of this union were Phoebe, Palmyra, who married Gideon Birdsall of New York, and Rhoda, who married Restore Lamb. The two last named became highly respected ministers among Friends. * Of Washington, D.C; from 1927 to 1954, Chief of the Orientalia Division of the Library of Congress. 1 For names and dates see William Wade Hinshaw, Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1936-1962), II, 27, 67. 2 Mr. Robert Smith, of Moorestown, N. J., visited the house in 1968, and confirms this information. 34 Notes and Documents35 In 1802, when Nathan was nearly twenty, he was received as a member of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, on certificate from Piles Grove Monthly Meeting dated October 21st. For the next ten years he was engaged in trade, but toward the end of that period he encountered financial difficulties. The details are not clear, but on November 28, 1816, he was disowned by the Philadelphia Meeting on the ground that he had favored some creditors over others. There is no record of his having been reinstated or of his requesting reinstatement. But to the end of his life, including his years in China, he was addressed by acquaintances as "Friend Dunn" and he often concluded his correspondence as "Thy friend." In Canton, he was known as deploring the opium trade. He himself refused to engage in it, although fellow merchants—including some from Philadelphia— freely asserted, in letters now extant, that half their annual income was derived from it. Determined to retrieve his fortunes and to repay his debts, Dunn sailed for China, perhaps in the late spring of 1818. After a fourmonth voyage round the Cape of Good Hope, and with the help of the southwest monsoon, he would thus have reached Canton in September . Acquaintances of his had preceded him there, or were soon coming: Benjamin Chew Wilcox (1776-1845); John R. Latimer (1793-1865); and James Hewlings Bradford, M.D. (1802-1859), who went out as resident physician. The Philadelphia merchants with whom Dunn traded were, among others, John A. Brown & Co., Samuel Archer, J. C. Jones Oakford & Co., Thomas Scattergood, and William D. Lewis. Articles imported from China were tea, silks, porcelains, cassia, nankeens (a coarse yellow cloth), furniture, lacquerware , shawls, crapes, fans, mattings, etc. Articles exported to Canton were ginseng, copper, quicksilver, lead, glass, stoves, dyes, tobacco, etc. In pre-treaty days—before 1842—the Canton trade and the mobility of foreign merchants were strictly controlled by a small corporation known as Hong Merchants selected by the local authorities . In the autumn and winter foreigners were kept busy trading or loading cargoes for the homeward sailing by the northeast monsoon in March. They lived in bachelor establishments rented...