Manuscript Record Of Wool Contracts And Sales

HECHT, LIEBMANN & COMPANY

Publication: Sold to Hecht, Liebmann & Company 1901 - 1902, Ephraim, Utah

Oblong 3" x 7," original burgundy leather covers, 46 leaves, printed forms completed in manuscript. Twenty-two completed wool contracts/receipts, recording individual sheep growers, quantities and terms of sale. Among the named sellers are James O. Larson, Paul Paulsen, Henry Jackson, M. Petersen, W. H. Anderson, Charles Johanson, Daniel W. Anderson, A. L. Lamoreaux, W.W. Taylor, John Hall, Andrew Anderson, H. Cook, and Christian Christiansen. These men all operated in the Sanpete Valley (Manti-Ephraim corridor) during the late 1800s and early 1900s when this area became the Rambouillet sheep capital of America, generating massive wool pools and giving the region one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the western United States. Towns and communities represented include Black Rock, Ephraim, Marysville, Milford, Salina, Redmond, and Richfield. Laid in is a trade card for C. Andrews & Co. of Nephi, Utah.

The development of sheep raising in Utah dates to the arrival of domestic sheep with the Mormon pioneers in 1847, and by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries central Utah had become an important center of Western sheep production. The present booklet captures that industry at a particularly interesting moment, when locally produced wool was being systematically gathered and purchased for national distribution.

An unusually revealing piece of primary documentation of the Utah sheep and wool industry, recording actual transactions between individual Utah wool growers and the national wool trade. The booklet was designed to be carried by a wool buyer or agent into the field, where the printed contract was completed with the grower's name and the particulars of the purchase. The individually named growers provide an uncommon glimpse of the men who participated directly in the production and sale of Utah's range wool, while the numerous locations demonstrate the geographic reach of the wool trade across central and southern Utah.

The booklet is particularly significant for its connection with Hecht, Liebmann & Co. of Boston, a major American wool merchant and commission firm whose representatives traveled throughout the West purchasing "Territory" wools for the Eastern textile market. Contemporary U.S. Department of Agriculture material identifies Hecht, Liebmann & Co. as an extensive dealer in Territory wool and records the firm's receipt of wool from southern Utah, among other Western regions. The firm's business illustrates the increasingly national character of the Western sheep industry: wool raised by individual Utah flock owners entered a commercial network extending from local ranges and wool buyers to Boston's major wool market and the American textile industry.