Publications
The Counting House is the ongoing thread — a weekly essay on one primary-source document at a time. Alongside the newsletter, longer-form scholarly work moves at a slower cadence. Two pieces are currently dormant with editors who have not yet replied; both are grounded in documents I own and have researched, and both may be redirected to other venues.
Academic paper: dormant, no reply
Before the Storm: Commerce, Credit, and the Coming Revolution in a Triple-Signed Transatlantic Sight Draft of 1765
Submitted for peer review, February 2026. Dormant; no editorial reply as of August 2026.
On August 27, 1765 — the morning after a Boston mob tore through the house of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson — a transatlantic sight draft was drawn that would, two and a half centuries later, prove to carry three signatures from three different Atlantic worlds: a future signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock; a documented Loyalist merchant, Jonathan Sayward; and a member of the founding family of Barclays Bank. This paper reconstructs the commercial and political world of that single document — the credit relationships that produced it, the men who signed it, and the charged Boston autumn into which it was issued — drawing on diary triangulation with the Sayward papers at the American Antiquarian Society and the surviving correspondence of the parties involved.
Draft available on request.
JAR essay: dormant, no reply
A Quarter Cask of Public Wine: Francis Hopkinson and the Documentary Case for the Flag of the United States
Submitted to a scholarly journal, May 2026. Dormant; no editorial reply as of August 2026.
An essay on Francis Hopkinson’s August 1776 wine procurement, his signing of the Declaration of Independence a month earlier, and the documentary record that has pointed to him for nearly 250 years as the designer of the American flag. The piece is timed to the run-up to the 250th anniversary of American independence.
Draft available on request.
Newsletter
The weekly essays — the primary work — live in the Archive. Each begins with one document and traces the network of merchants, congressmen, and international agents that used it. Fourteen essays published as of this writing.
Affiliations
Member, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR).
Contact
For inquiries about the papers under review, or to discuss any of the documents referenced in the newsletter:
Paul G. Molé
paulm@swartswoodlaketcg.com