Melville family in NYC Municipal Archives, new find by Warren F. Broderick

Warren F. Broderick reports a new Melville family find in the New York City Municipal Archives, this from an incomplete series of Jury Censuses for the years 1816, 1819 and 1821. Here's a link to the finding aid that describes this series: 

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/records/pdf/Jury%20Census_REC0055_finding%20aid_MASTER.pdf

Herman Melville was born August 1, 1819. Concerning his father Allan Melvill and household, Broderick notes the following information:

• The 1816 census does not list 6 Pearl Street in Ward 1.
• The 1819 census lists "Allen Mevill" at that address in Ward 1 (see image above).
• The 1821 census for the 3rd Ward is missing.
• The 1819 entry reads as follows:

Number of House / Name of Street 6 Pearl St  

Name Allen Melvill 

Occupation Mercht 

Age 36 

Personal estates of $150 1 

Total Number of [eligible] Jurors 1 

White Inhabitants, male 3 

White Inhabitants, female 3 

Coloured Inhabitants, not Slaves, male 1 

Coloured Inhabitants, not Slaves, female 1 

Tenants Earning $5 per annum 1 

Total number of Inhabitants 9

Comments by John Bryant, as forwarded by Warren F. Broderick:

"I find one mention of 'servants' (no number or race) in the Log, and no mention of a lodger. I can account for the 3 white males: They would be, presumably, Allan, Gansevoort, and Herman (assuming the Jury census was conducted in fall 1819 or early 1820). The three females are a puzzle; they would include Maria and Helen, but who is the third? Maria wrote much later that Caroline Taylor Yates was visiting at the time in the "winter" (maybe 1819-1820), and Maria's mother Catherine Gansevoort was also visiting around the time of HM's birth."

In Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 1, 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), Hershel Parker highlights the importance of Caroline Yates and her visit during that "first winter of Herman's life":

Miss Yates (later Mrs. Taylor) read aloud a Dumas novel in French and translated it for Maria sentence by sentence. Herman became "very fond" of his mother's friend, his first recorded preference. (pages 24-25)

Allan Melville advertises for a law copyist

Now my original business—that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and drawer-up of recondite documents of all sorts —was considerably increased by receiving the master’s office. There was now great work for scriveners. Not only must I push the clerks already with me, but I must have additional help. In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.  --Bartleby, the Scrivener

Like the lawyer-narrator of "Bartleby," the author's lawyer-brother Allan Melville once advertised for a scrivener. Allan Melville's want ad for "An experienced copyist" appeared in the New York Daily Tribune on October 12, 1847:

New York Daily Tribune - October 12, 1847

WANTED—An experienced copyist. Apply to ALLAN MELVILLE, 12 Wall-st.

You can see the whole page three of the Tribune with Allan Melville's advertisement amidst similar notices in the online file of Historic American Newspapers at Chronicling America:

• New York Daily Tribune - October 12, 1847

Allan was a newlywed when he placed the ad for a law copyist--just married September 22, 1847 to Sophia Thurston. As Warren Broderick reports in his June 2011 Leviathan article on "Bartleby," Allan Melville, and the Court of Chancery," Allan had been appointed "Examiner" in the New York State Court of Chancery in May 1844, after older brother Gansevoort resigned. Court records show that Allan Melville was formally approved as "Solicitor" in the New York State Court of Chancery, First Circuit, on May 23, 1844. The timing of Allan Melville's Tribune ad for a law copyist backs up Warren Broderick's argument for the influence of Allan's professional experience on Melville's Wall Street story, and to the 1847 feel of its setting, "during the final months of the Court of Chancery's existence."

“If not during 1844, the subject of Allan’s legal career would have surely come up in the autumn of 1847 when the newlyweds Herman and Lizzie secured a residence at 103 Fourth Avenue in New York City, thanks largely to Allan’s assistance…. Herman, Allan, and their new families resided together at the very time Allan would have lost his position in Chancery." --Warren Broderick on Bartleby, Allan Melville and Chancery