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12 Youth's Golden Gleam
in soliciting the trade of local manufacturers and merchants and the patronage of the travelling public. The young partners—they were still in their twenties—had made a good start. Dunning Foster, after several years as a clerk on an Ohio River steamboat, had brought river experience as well as good, looks and affability to his work as a solicitor.7
The energy and stability of Irwin & Foster, however, were supplied by Archibald Irwin, Jr. His father, "Archibald Irwin, Esq.,"8 had come from Pennsylvania in the early 'twenties9 and had won success as a commission merchant; now he was treasurer of the Little Miami Railroad Company.10 Archibald, Jr., displayed the Scotch Presbyterian qualities of his father and of their relatives at Pittsburgh, where the Irwins were prominent in industry and in law. He saw to it that Irwin & Foster sailings always had top place in the steamboat advertisements in the newspapers.3 He was a vigorous figure in the movement of the river men in the fall of 1848 to support General Zachary Taylor for the Presidency.11
When the new clerk and bookkeeper turned to the steamboat advertisements in the local newspapers he found that, of nineteen aiv, nouncements, Irwin & Foster ranked second, in number only to Rogers & Sherlock among the local steamboat agents.3 Right at the top of the column were five separate notices that Irwin & Foster boats were sailing for Pittsburgh, St. Louis and points on the Arkansas |
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