The Face of Joseph Corré

Yesterday I left Joseph Corré in 1803 with his Mount Vernon Gardens theater closing. He advertised that real estate for rent for many months in the New York newspapers. All of the other ads from him that I’ve seen in the 1800s are for real estate, not theater or catering services, suggesting he didn’t go back to those businesses.

The 14 Aug 1823 National Journal reported:

Yesterday afternoon, in the 76th year of his age, Joseph Corré, a native of France, and for many years a resident of this city. His friends and those of his family, are requested to attend the funeral this afternoon, at 5 o’clock, from his late dwelling No. 49 Lespinard st.

The 18 August Boston Daily Advertiser also reported that Corré had died in New York, aged 76.

More information appears in the Genealogy of the Bostwick Family in America, published in 1901, but it’s not fully reliable. That book says:

Joseph Corré was born in Montpelier, France, May 26, 1748. He married in Manheim, Germany, June 15, 1777, Barbara Baker. She was born in Manheim, Germany, Nov. 27, 1759.

The family name was originally spelled Corréard, and on his arrival in this country, having left his native land at the outbreak of the French Revolution, Joseph Corréard changed his name to Joseph Corré.

He died in New York City, Aug. 14, 1823, and his wife died there Apr. 4, 1845.

The couple had eleven children between January 1778 and September 1799, and the second-youngest daughter married into the Bostwick family in 1822.

That family tradition conflicts with William Dunlap’s recollection, quoted yesterday, about meeting Corré first in the winter of 1777 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, cooking for a British army officer. (At the time, the impressive white-wigged cook was apparently not yet thirty years old.) A plethora of newspaper advertisements show that Corré was in business in New York well before “the outbreak of the French Revolution.” But it might have been easier for the family to picture their ancestor as a refugee from the French Revolution than as part of the British military force.

Given that Joseph Corré was in America by early 1777, when and where did he marry Barbara Baker (whose name might originally have been Biekert or the like)? Her reported native city, Mannheim, is right beside modern Hesse, so perhaps she came to New York in 1776 attached to the king’s Hessian troops. Did the couple emigrate together? Or did they meet in New York and marry there? Their first child arrived seven and a half months after the wedding.

The Bostwick family also owned the portrait of Joseph Corré shown above, painted alongside one of Barbara by James Sharples (1751-1811). They were sold at Sotheby’s in January 2010 and at the Leighton Galleries in May 2010, if I read Artfact correctly.

Joseph Corré: cook, hotelier, impresario

Yesterday I introduced the figure of Joseph Corré, President George Washington’s ice cream supplier in the spring and summer of 1790. At the time, of course, New York was the capital of the U.S. of A.

Here’s a profile of the man from William Dunlap’s 1833 History of the American Theatre:

Mr. Corré will be long remembered by the elder citizens of New-York as an honest, industrious, and prosperous man. He was a Frenchman, and is first remembered as a cook in the service of Major Carew, of the 17th light dragoons, the servant of his Britannic majesty.

Sir John Fortescue’s History of the 17th Lancers: 1759-1894 and other sources confirm that Richard Carew or (more often) Crewe was a captain in that unit starting in 1769. Crewe embarked for America with his troop in April 1775, spending several months inside besieged Boston, and was promoted to major there in February 1776. He participated in the New York and New Jersey campaigns of 1776-77, and Corré accompanied him, at least to winter quarters, as Dunlap vividly recalled:

The first time the writer saw Corré, he stood with knife in hand, and in the full costume of his trade, looking as important as the mysteries of his craft entitle every cook to look, “with fair round belly, with good capon lined,” covered with a fair white apron, and his powdered locks compressed by an equally white cap. His rotundity of face and rotundity of person—for he was not related to Hogarth’s Cook at the gates of Calais—with this professional costume, made his figure, though by no means of gigantic height, appear awfully grand, as well as outré, and it was stamped upon the young mind of his admirer in lights and shadows never to be erased.

When we say the costume of his trade, we mean such as we see it in pictures, and as travellers see it; the writer had at that time never seen other than a female cook, and such always black as Erebus. This was in the winter of 1776-7, before the New-Jersey militia and the great chief of our citizen-soldiers had driven the English to the protection of their ships and the safety of water-girt islands. It was at Perth Amboy that Corré stood lord of the kitchen, which his lord, the major of dragoons, had wrested from the black cook of the writer’s father, and held by the same title which made the Corsican lord of the Continent of Europe—military force. The gallant major occupied and improved the upper part of the house, and Manager Corré ruled below.

Maj. Crewe retired on 3 June 1778, replaced by Oliver DeLancey. The major returned to Britain, but Joseph Corré remained in British-occupied New York. He opened a confectionary and catering business, then a tavern, moving to different addresses as the years passed.

When the war ended, Corré chose not to evacuate with the Loyalists but to remain in his adopted city. In 1791, the city council even chose his hotel to host a banquet celebrating the eighth anniversary of the British military’s departure. That same year, Corré first advertised theatricals at the City Tavern on Broadway, establishing a new tradition in American theater.

Over the next two decades, Corré expanded his business, as Dunlap watched:

Mr. Corré afterwards kept the City Tavern, in New-York, with reputation and success, and established those public gardens [i.e., theaters] in State Street still existing, on the site of a part of what was Fort George when he first saw America. He was a thriving and worthy man, and his descendants have reason to respect his memory, although these situations in life might little qualify him to direct public taste, except in the way of his original employment. Mr. Corré and the writer were now, in 1800, both theatrical managers, and Mr. Corré proved the most successful manager of the two. In regard to literary qualifications, Mr. Corré was probably not far behind many other managers who have since ruled the fates of actors and destinies of authors.

In 1801 Corré and a rival theater manager got into a newspaper debate over whether they could mount productions on the same nights. Corré, who was infringing on the other man’s usual dates, made the free-trade argument: “The public in America are not to be told, on Monday you shall go here, and on Tuesday you shall go there…” Nevertheless, Corré’s Mount Vernon Gardens closed after three years.

A Presidential Ice Cream Order

According to this report, today as the third Sunday in July is National Ice Cream Day. Furthermore, in 1984 Ronald Reagan issued another order designating this whole month as National Ice Cream Month. And none of that should limit me: as a Bostonian, I consider every day to be Ice Cream Day. [Shout outs to Wally’s Wicked Good Ice Cream, Cabot’s, Lizzy’s, and J.P. Licks.]

Last week Lee Wright at The History List asked me about a statement that shows up in many feature articles this time of year that President George Washington spent a great deal on ice cream. Lee found statements of the current value of that purchase ranging from “over $5,000” to “about $100,000”—on ice cream in 1790. But what’s the historical basis of that claim?

I followed dribbles on the web back through Paul Dickson’s Great American Ice Cream Book (1973) to mid-century trade journals with titles like Confectionary and Ice Cream World and The Ice Cream Trade Journal. Several of those sources say the merchant who billed Washington for about $200 worth of ice cream was “Mr. Cove of Chatham Street.”

In fact, he was Joseph Corré, a native of France, reportedly a former cook for a British army officer who stayed in New York after the war. He ran nine notices in the New York Daily Advertiser in May-June 1790 thanking patrons for buying ice cream and ice from him. He sold out of his house at 55 Wall Street.

In May 1791 Corré opened a theater on State Street, presenting The Beaux’ Strategem and The Lying Valet. His Columbia Gardens and Mount Vernon Gardens businesses became notable values for plays and concerts in early New York, and he also appears in histories of the American circus.

According to this catalogue page, Mount Vernon owns Corré’s receipt for £51.6s.2d of ice cream and “mouls” (molds) delivered to Washington’s household from June to August 1790. I also saw mention in an antiques magazine of another Corré receipt for the President’s kitchen for earlier that spring, so he was a regular supplier. I don’t know when Corré’s ice cream receipt became public knowledge, but it looks like that happened about 150 years after he wrote it out.

Did George Washington eat that much ice cream? Not by himself. Rather, ice cream was part of how he and Martha entertained guests, officials, their wives, and members of the public at regular “levees,” or receptions. Abigail Adams described them in a letter to her older sister, Mary Cranch, on 27 July 1790:

mrs washington…has fix’d on every fryday 8 oclock. I attended upon the last, [with] mrs smith & charles. I found it quite a crowded Room. the form of Reception is this, the servants announce—& col [David] Humphries or mr [Tobias] Lear—receives every Lady at the door, & Hands her up to mrs washington to whom she makes a most Respectfull curtzey and then is seated without noticeing any of the rest of the company. the Pressident then comes up and speaks to the Lady, which he does with a grace dignity & ease, that leaves Royal George far behind him. the company are entertaind with Ice creems & Lemonade, and retire at their pleasure performing the same ceremony when they quit the Room.

Adams put a similar description, also including “Ice creams,” in her 6 Feb 1791 letter to Cotton Tufts.

(Those period quotations negate a statement in Benson J. Lossing’s Mary and Martha: “Ice-cream, the favorite delicacy of today, was then unknown.” But that book about the women in Washington’s life has long been recognized as hopeful myth. In fact, Mount Vernon has found records of the Washingtons buying ice cream equipment as early as 1784.)

The next question is how much £51.6s.2d. was worth in American dollars in 1790 and would be worth today? And that’s quite a complex question. In fact, examining how early American money worked is a very good way to realize that colonial life was by no means simple. There wasn’t enough specie (gold and silver coins) circulating in the economy, so most people paid off bills with paper notes whose values fluctuated depending on who had issued them, how far away the issuing institution or person was, and other factors. Most articles suggest the President’s ice cream purchase amounted to $200, which is probably a low approximation.

The next issue is how to calculate changes in currency between 1790 and today. The Measuring Worth website has been developed out of John J. McCusker’s monograph How Much Is That in Real Money? But there’s still a problem with equivalencies: because of technology, changing demands and supplies, the move away from coerced labor, and other factors, the real prices of different goods and services have changed at different rates. For example, unskilled labor is much more expensive these days while cloth is much cheaper. When I enter “£51” and “1790” into the Measuring Worth page for “Computing ‘Real Value’ Over Time With a Conversion Between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1774 to Present,” the result is:

When using the CPI/RPI, the (average) value in 2010 of £51 from 1790 is $6830.00. The range of values is from $0.00 to $9250.00. This answer is better if the subject is a consumer good or something else of interest to an individual.

Ice cream is of abiding interest to me, but I can’t say that fact makes narrowing a range between zero and $9,000 any easier. But I think we can eliminate the “about $100,000” figure cited above.

Because of modern refrigeration, ice cream is probably much cheaper relative to other foods than it was in Washington’s time. That means even if £51 in 1790 is on average about $6,800 today, I bet $6,800 today could buy even more ice cream than £51 bought for the Presidential mansion in 1790.