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River Commerce |
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business that the family packed Stephen off for Cincinnati.2
The prospect there seemed a good one. He was to enter the office of his older brother, Dunning McNair Foster, who was in partnership with Archibald Irwin, Jr.3
Dunning had engaged a room for Stephen in the boarding house where he now lived. This was the home of Mrs. Jane Griffin,4 a widow who was a communicant of St. Paul's Church;5 a circumstance which, as the Fosters were devout Episcopalians, doubtless pleased Mrs. Foster much better than Dunning's earlier quarters at the Broadway Hotel.6 The boarding house was on tree-shaded Fourth Street, in a good neighborhood,* within easy walking distance of the Irwin & Foster office.
2.
The sign Stephen saw as he stood before the door at No. 4 Cassilly's Row, East Front Street, near the wharf, read IRWIN & FOSTER, AGENTS.3 They were designated as commission and forwarding merchants and steamboat agents. Stephen soon learned precisely what that title meant. It meant competition with the half dozen firms3 in Cassilly's Row and other office buildings along the river front for freight and passenger business. Each firm represented several steamboat companies
* This is the present site of the Guilford Public School, Fourth Street between Broadway and Ludlow, and near the University Club. |
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