[1797 Nautical Document]: Passport and Roll of Equipage, for the Schooner "Hester" bound from Boston to Guadeloupe, dated 22 September 1797

Boston, Massachusetts, 1797. Very Good. Letterpress document printed and completed in manuscript on both sides (18½" x 15"). Full title: *Passport and Roll of Equipage, Agreeably to the 25th and 27th Article of the Treaty between France and the United States, made the 6th of February, 1778*. Dated 22 September 1797. Signed by James Lovell, former delegate for Massachusetts to the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1782, and a signatory to the Articles of Confederation. Lovell was appointed naval officer of the port of Boston and Charlestown from 1789 until his death in 1814. Additionally signed by Benjamin Weld, Collector of Customs at Boston, and Samuel Cooper, Notary Public. With a long manuscript note written in French on one side (23 lines), signed by Charles Théodore Mozard, former printer and bookseller at Saint Domingue (Haiti), and French consul to Boston. The document has three embossed seals affixed next to the signatures of Weld, Cooper, and Mozard. A few small closed tears and chips at the edges, light toning along two old folds, two holes with minor loss of text, very good overall.

A well-preserved customs document granting permission to Captain Joshua Delano, a prominent New England merchant and commander of the Schooner *Hester*, to depart for French Guadeloupe in the southern Caribbean Sea. The document lists the names, time of entry, and personal information, including age, complexion (dark, black, or light), place of abode, birth, etc., of Delano and six crew which includes two black sailors: Peter Tarnanden, born in Curaçao (a Dutch Caribbean island), and a subject of the Batavian Republic (French occupied Netherlands), and Charles Hunt of New York. A rare primary source document that sheds light on the historically significant merchant trade between the newly independent New England colonies and the West Indies, signed by James Lovell, an important founding father of Massachusetts.